back to school

It's official. Last night at about 6:30pm, my teacher stood up from the chair next to me, held out her hand to shake mine, and congratulated me on a completed and approved professional eportfolio. The last step in obtaining my teaching credential. Yay! She promised to post the grade this morning so that I can apply for my teaching credential tomorrow and be certificated for my first contract date on Monday. What that means?

• I'll be credentialled to teach in the state of CA.
• That certification is good in almost every state, so I could easily move and teach somewhere else.
• I have no more school, until I decide to take the last four classes I need to finish my masters degree.
• I could possibly have tenure at the end of this school year, since I've already taught for four years in the district.
• A nice little pay raise.
• Did I mention no more school? :-)

So I'm pretty excited about that...

Speaking of school...it starts in only three more days. Well, technically we don't have students until next Thursday. So one week until I get my kids. :-) But we have to go back for staff development starting Monday. I'm heading to the mountains this weekend as a last fun road trip before going back to work; first to explore Yosemite tomorrow with a friend, then to the cabin Saturday for an overnight with a bunch of people in the singles group. There is supposed to be a pretty amazing meteor shower Saturday night, so I'm hoping we can stay up late and watch it...shouldn't be too hard with that group!

That's it for now...need to head over to my classroom and set it all up for next week!