Ever heard of Geocaching?

Well, I hadn't until last fall. Brian got us into it with his old GPS unit. There's an online place where people record the coordinates of caches they hide and clues, etc. Then you go find them and record back that you did or didn't find it. Today we were looking for 4 and found 2 of them. One required me to decrypt a poem that was in gibberish to get the coordinates. A puzzle for my head! And then it took us up on this dirt road to the top of a plateau where we could see the bottom of the canyon with a stream, a bit of the Columbia River, and the Cascade mountains off in the distance. Gorgeous! And the first one I actually found the container!

So, a good end to a rather long week. I did not get the middle school science job I interviewed for. I didn't feel good about the interview and they hired someone with a lot of experience. However the principal did say they had another opening coming up for 6th grade science in a week or two. We'll see...

The high school kids I'm teaching are interesting. Funny, seems like I was doing the same thing this time last year... in St. Paul, Oregon! Only 4 weeks left of school!

School News

An update here: I subbed a couple times for a science teacher at my old high school. Last Wednesday he called and asked if I would be his sub for the rest of the year. His mom is dying of cancer and he wants to be with her. So there I am! He showed me where they were and said "have at it". So I am now teaching Chemistry, Biology/Zoology (dissections, ugh), and Advanced Biology. The main class to worry about is Chemistry and those kids need help. They all just failed a test on the main thing you need to know, how to do math and conversions with chemicals and reactions. Yikes! Biology is doing a section on ecology and water quality. Something I know a little bit about after my lab job in Seattle! We're taking a field trip at the end of the month to do a program called Kids in the Creek. Thankfully there will be professionals at the other end to lead it otherwise I'd be way in over my head! ;) Advanced Biology is also doing a major ecology project and they've done most of it so only have to do write-ups and presentations. I'm not a biology person so good thing I don't have to teach that class!
All classes are an hour and a half, wow, I never realized how hard that was as a teacher!

Second school news: I have an interview on Tuesday for a 7/8 science job at the middle school just around the corner from our apartment. The principal is a Christian and the school seems pretty good. There were 20 applicants and he's only interviewing 4. It's exciting and scary at the same time! Subbing, you don't have much responsibility...

Finally, Brian's one math class is just causing him a lot of trouble. He wants to be able to help them, but they don't want to be helped. Kind of hard to force that. He's really frustrated and the school really hasn't supported him all year. Needless to say I would never consider nor recommend a job in that school to anyone.

And here I thought the school year was almost over...