Two new awards

I would like to thank Jingle (http://itistimetothinkformyself.blogspot.com/ for giving me these two awards: Thank You for Being My Friend and one Lovely Blog Award. While I am deeply honored to receive them, I honestly blog because I LOVE to write and take photographs! In fact, my husband's laptop had so many of my photos on it last weekend that I couldn't upload any more! He spent over 5 hours last night transferring all of them onto an external hard drive and cleaned off the photos folder and desktop, where we had many of them stored. For me, blogging and posting photos is a way to decompress after a day with third graders! Last year I had 20 students. This year I will have 32 AND my district wants to give us teachers a 6% pay cut, which would include 5 furlough days. This is extremely sad. I just spent over $200 of my own money on back to school supplies for my students, including white 3 ring notebooks, crayons, colored pencils, erasers, math journals, and spiral notebooks. I bought 4 plants for my classroom and need to stock up on kleenex, hand sanitizer, and Clorox wipes (for their desks). And, in return, I'll be getting a 6% pay cut? And, an additional 12 students? (We are going from 20 to 32 students this year in the primary grades.) Gee, thanks! It is sad that the general public supports teachers, but our administration has increased class size and is insisting on a pay cut AND furlough days. NO other district in the state of California is making these demands...sigh...MOST teachers at my school are hard-working and responsible individuals who, like me, spend a lot of their own money on their students and it saddens me to see how we are treated by our district office. But, enough of that! I am so happy to receive these awards! I would like to pass them on to the following people: Barb D of World Lens:
http://worldlensphotography.blogspot.com/, Thank you for being my mentor and giving me photography tips AND for becoming a good friend! Barb and I live in the same town and we get together on some weekends and away we go with our cameras! I'd also like to pass it on to: Carolyn of Ford Family Photos: http://carolyn1209.blogspot.com/ We sometimes photograph the same spots and I'm hoping to meet Carolyn someday!