Today was day 1 of teacher inservices...I woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed but with a bit of apprehension. The apprehension was there because today was our district wide inservice. From past experiences they always seem to drag and turn out to be crazy cheering events. Hmmm....What was I in for this afternoon? What would the bus ride out to the Plaza Theatre Downtown be like?? Would it be the same type of event? Would the speaker be motivating enough or only the first 5 minutes of their speech? Well....
The morning started out very nice! We all met in the cafeteria at 7:30 to say our hello's and give our hugs. Our administrators and office staff had pan dulce (Mexican Sweet Bread) for us, coffee, and orange juice. I grabbed the biggest and best chocolate donut ever!! If you have never had a Mexican donut...you're missing out! Yummers! None of this wimpy Krispy Kreme puff of air, but a delicious, thick, huge donut. I should have taken a picture of it but I ate it so fast it was gone! heehee! No coffee or orange juice for me...yucky!
The office staff decorated the cafeteria and tables with a Race Car theme. Our new Superintendent's district theme is Racing to Excellence. The cafeteria was covered with fun checkered flags and goodies everywhere. We even got a cute little racing goody bag! Once our breakfast goody time was over we got down to some business...going over our district handbook. Boy oh boy, there were so many "what not to do's." Once our review was over we were given some time to work in our rooms until lunch came. It was more like brunch I guess because we were eating at 10:30...but I wasn't hungry I had that huge donut! We were in our rooms for about 20 minutes until we were called back to eat. Our school provided lunch from The Lunch Box...Mexican food. I still wasn't hungry but I knew I wouldn't be eating anything until we got back after 3:30...ugh! I only ate part of my food and loaded up on the fresh homemade tortillas...haha!
We all left for the area middle school where we were to be picked up and bused. We acted just like the kids on the bus. Loud and noisy, giggling and singing! We were early so that helped tremendously. The Plaza filled up with all the elementary schools in the district. Wow!
Now this is when we were given a nice surprise...our Superintendent, Dr. Michael Zolkoski, and district personnel had put together an awesome band. Dr. Z is such a talented musician, as well as, the others or as they called themselves, Ysleta Power. Dr. Z sings, plays the trumpet, the sax, the bongos, and tamborine! They had a horn section which included a great college friend of mine, Marty Olivas, a keyboardist, Ruben Gutierrez, drummers, guitarist, bassist, and singers! Whew! What a show! We were singing and dancing in our seats and had a great time. They played some Santana, sang Love Train, All I Need Is a Miracle, I Will Survive and I think they sang Brown Eyed Girl to ME!!! heehee It was a great way to start off the afternoon!
Dr. Zolkoski spoke to us for a bit and he was a great speaker. The best part of his talk was to see a huge picture of one of my babies I had for three years on the screen and he referred to it as one of his favorite pictures!!! Yay! Gyzel!! We all cheered and I acted like a proud mama and took pictures of the screen to show her real mom. That was the picture that ended his speech and I wanted to cry!!
The guest speaker was Dr. Crystal Kuykendall, http://www.crystalkuykendall.com/biography.asp She has been a teacher in many different levels, a lawyer and a motivational speaker. She called us "Merchant's of Hope." Awww...I loved that! What an outstanding and motivating speaker! One of the best speakers I've heard so far in education! She had us laughing and almost crying, but had some very empowering words for us all. We left ready and eager to touch the lives and hearts of our munchkins!!!
Tomorrow is day 2...Teacher Job Alike...stay turned for that!
XOXO!
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