An Update on Reading the Directions

If you have not read the Reading the Directions post I posted earlier, go read that first.

Update:

Yesterday we revieved for a columns and tables test in BCIS. They had a handout with instructions and when they were finished they had to raise their hands so I could check their work and give them immediate feedback on what they did right and wrong.

OH MY FREAKING GOODNESS!!! Apparently threat to their lives for not reading directions had worn off. It was ridiculous.

So by 6th period I finally came up with a great idea. Bribery.

I told my 6th period that whoever raised their hand, and I checked their work and they had it perfect the FIRST time, would get a cupcake next week. They were ecstatic.

Student: "So is it like the first one who gets it done gets a cupcake?"
Me: "No! The whole class could get cupcakes. Its not a race, so take your time and make sure you READ and FOLLOW ALL of the DIRECTIONS!"

Student: "Okay, so Mrs. Wilcox, if we ask you a question, will that disqualify us from the cupcake?"
Me: "Absolutely not. As long as you are still working and if you have a question, that's great. But once you raise your hand and say you are done and that you want me to check it, that's it."

They all eagerly went about their assignment. And pretty soon hands starting going up for me to check it. It was actually quite comical because its like they were all feeling suspense...will I get a cupcake...did I do everything right?

So when I checked a student's work and got it right I would yell out "(Insert student's name here) is getting a cupcake!" I was nice enough not to yell out the kids who didn't get a cupcake.

We'll see how long this lasts.

Read the Directions

Reading the directions. It is such a simple thing really. You need to know how to put something together or how to bake a cake, all sorts of things require directions. And being able to read and follow the directions is such an important skill.

A skill in which, my dear students, have yet to learn. If my students leave my class at the end of the year, and know nothing about computers, but are perfect at reading and following directions, I will feel like I have succeeded as a teacher.

Okay, not really, but you get my point. Reading and following directions is important!

Knock on wood, but I have really good BCIS (Business Computer Information Systems -we're talking Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc) classes this year. Haven't had any major discipline issues, a couple dumbasses that shall remain nameless, but really, besides those two nameless students, my classes are great. They are fun kids, they get their work done (most of the time) and they don't talk when I am talking.

But there is one thing that they are really, REALLY bad at. Reading and following directions. Oh you could verbally tell them "Insert a section break before the paragraph and format the paragraph into two columns" and they could do it right then. But there must be something with putting it on a piece of paper, in a nice, concise, numbered list, that totally throws them off. It truly boggles my mind.

In reality, my students should all get 100's on their daily assignments, because if they aren't sure how to do something, they know that they just have to raise their hand and I'll come bounding over to help them with whatever problem they are having. And 9 times out of 10, the directions tell them EXACTLY where to go and what to do.

This is a conversation that I typically have daily:

Student raises hand.
Me: Yes (insert name of student here) what do you need help with?
Student: I don't know what to do here (gestures at the handout)
Me: What do you mean by 'here' (as I gesture at the handout)
Student: Well, just all this (and gestures at the paper again)
Me: Have you read the directions?
Student: Well...no...but...
Me: READ the DIRECTIONS

Some days, its not so bad. But the past week, I don't know if its been a full moon or what, but they have been terrible!

We started columns and section breaks on Monday. I showed them on their computers how to do it, then as a class we all practiced it, and then they started the assignment. Their assignment included detailed directions and even a picture of what the document should look like when they are finished.

20 minutes later I have 6 or 7 hands in the air. I start making the rounds and these kids have got the assignment totally screwed up. Its like they just pick and choose what directions they feel like following. Regardless, it is probably one of the most annoying things about teaching.

This proceeded throughout the end of the day. During our practice time, while I was verbally giving them instructions, they were great. They open the book, and it all goes to crap.

I have 4 BCIS classes in a row, my conference period, and then my last BCIS class. You can imagine how frustrated and exhausted I was by the end of the day.

So Wednesday rolls around and I decide to give my students a "Come to Jesus" talk (as my mom would put it) about reading the directions. This is exactly what I said, in my super serious teacher voice (those of you that know me better, yes, believe it or not, I do have a super serious teacher voice).

"You need to READ and FOLLOW ALL of the DIRECTIONS in the order that they are given. Some of ya'll, if your lives depended upon reading AND following ALL of the directions in the correct order, half of you would be DEAD where you sit."

They all kinda looked at eachother and giggled, but I think they got the point, because they all did really well on that day's assignment. Now some of them still didn't read the directions, so when they raised their hand, and I saw that they were confused because they skipped a step, I said "(Insert name of student here) you'd be dead right now. And I would never get to see you again and that would be sad!" They laughed at me.

So there you go, threaten the kids with their lives and the will read the directions.

Top 10 Things I Learned at the Rodeo

In honor of the Rodeo coming to town soon, I thought I would repost my blog "Top 10 Things I Learned at the Rodeo". I originally wrote this blog on March 15, 2006. We had gone to rodeo with our dear friends James and Christie (James is Nathan's best friend since he was THREE years old, and James lived down the street from my family in Alaska...yes, I do have some stinkin' cool history, not gonna lie.). We saw Corey Morrow and Larry the Cable Guy. Never heard of the Corey Morrow guy before, but Christie was nice enough to lend me a few of his CD's before the concert so I could fake it while we there. Ha!

So anways, without further ado, here was list of things I learned that night.

Top Ten Things I Learned at the Rodeo Last Night

10. You can wear crotchless denim underwear in public and not
get arrested (aka super super short denim mini skirts)

9. If you are female under the age of 18, the required rodeo
uniform is crotchless denim underwear, a barely there top,
and cowboy boots. Bras and underwear are optional.

8. Body weight and the size of your gut does not disqualify you
from wearing crotchless denim underwear.

7. Parents probably have no idea their daughters are wearing
crotchless denim underwear.

6. If you are a female under the age of 18, wearing crotchless
denim underwear and cowboy boots does not make you look
older, more sophisticated or like Jessica Simpson. It makes
you look like a prostitot. No, that is not a typo, I said prostiTOT
– aka a 10 year old hooker.

5. Wearing crotchless denim underwear will get you extra koozies
at the Ford tent.

4. When I was in high school, our Rocky Mountain jeans may have
been suck tight, but at least our ass was covered.

3. Prostitots wearing crotchless denim underwear always travel in
groups, never solo.

2. Our daughters (should we have any) will not be allowed to wear
crotchless denim underwear if they want to have a social life.

1. I've seen enough crotchless denim underwear to last me a
lifetime...and longer.

Time to Brag

I am a big stickler for customer service. I've worked in the customer service industry since I was 15 years old.

It started with Chic-fil-A. My very first job. My mom wanted all of us to have a job in fast food at least once in our lives so that we would know we didn't want to do that for the rest of our lives. It worked. Although truly, Chic-fil-A was a pretty good place to work. Nice managers, flexible schedules and NO SUNDAYS!! But after about 9 months, and when I turned 16 it was time to move on to bigger and better things...RANDALLS!!

Oh how I loved worked at Randalls. Seriously, it was just a fun job. And I was dang good at it too. I was super fast at checking, and very polite to all of the customers, my managers loved, LOVED me! Even the very cranky polish manager, Ms. Wieladek, who hated everyone but I softened her up. And I actually see the beloved Mr. Foligino at the HEB by our house every so often. Its always fun to see him.

Then came a couple teller jobs at credit unions, the motorsport job, where you had to please even the most ridiculous of sales reps, and Total/1 where my title was "Customer Service Rep". Wasn't totally crazy about the job, but I absolutely loved the people I worked with there.

And now I'm teaching. One wouldn't think of teaching as "customer service" but in some ways it is. You have to please a lot of people. Students, you have to come up with something interesting so they'll learn it, parents, well they want to make sure their kids learn, and the administration, enough said.

With that incredibly long introduction, I'm going to brag about a couple experience in customer service that I have had. Like I said, always big on customer service, so when someone goes out of their way to help me, I like to let people know.

Continental Airlines. It seems like people either love them or hate them. And their have been times I have hated them. Like the time we were supposed to leave at 8am to go to Pappaw's funeral, and our flight didn't leave until 4pm. But that is all in the past. In the last couple weeks Continental has done some things that have made me VERY happy.

Take a couple weeks ago. I was trying to book our flights for our Bahamas trip (YAY BAHAMAS!!). We were planning on using our miles and I had found a good deal on some flights. The departing flight was for half of the mileage that it normally takes to take a trip, and the return flight had the First Class seats as less mileage than the Coach seats! Made no sense to me, but hey, who am I to argue right?

So I'm going along, picking the flights, and it keeps giving me an error when I try to fully complete the process. So I get on the phone with Continental, tell the guy what's going on and he starts to research it. He tells me that the return flight is a little plane (he used more professional terminology, I'm paraphrasing here) and that there is no first class, so it was not possible to book that mileage fare.

I explained told him that I really didn't care if I was in first class, I just wanted the cheaper mileage. He told me he would see what he could do to book the flight. He put me on hold for a few minutes, came back on, and had booked the flight for me, and for even LESS mileage that we had planned. The flights I was trying to book would have cost us 90,000 miles, and he booked us for 70,000 miles! I was so pumped and he was so nice through the whole conversation.

So there is the first thing that really made me happy. Now here's the second thing.

Nathan and I have different spring breaks this year, bummer, I know. And for those of you that really know me, know I can't just sit around and do nothing. I get bored off my butt. So I thought I would go visit my Grandma. She's 92 years old, still living BY HERSELF, and she's truly amazing. We still had credit on Continental for a trip we had to cancel last summer, this would all be perfect.

So I call her Grandma to make sure its okay that I drop in. I didn't think she would turn me down, but I didn't want to book a flight only to find out she would be visiting someone in another state that week. She's ecstatic, even told me that I "made her day". Awesome! This will be fun!

I hop onto continental.com and it won't let me change my old ticket. So I call to figure out what's going on. I thought I had a year from the departure date to use our tickets, apparently, as I so learned last night, you have a year from the date you BOUGHT the tickets, which was January 20, 2008. DOH!!!!!!

Now I'm really freaking out, because I did NOT want to call my Grandma back and tell her I couldn't come. She would've totally been bummed out.

So after talking to 3 other customer service people, some woman was kind enough to give the number for their customer care line.

I was connected to a very nice man and pleaded my story. Not going to lie, I did totally play the 92 year old Grandma card. But I was being honest, its not like I played the grandma card and then booked a flight to Cancun.

He was a little hesitant but said he would see what he could do. He came back on the line and said he could reissue my credit, less the $150 change fee. YOU ARE AWESOME MR. CONTINENTAL MAN!!! It wasn't the same amount as we originally paid, but it was enough to cover my ticket to Grandmas, AND it was certainly more than I had 30 minutes prior.

So anyways, maybe those two things don't seem like much to you, but they were a big deal to me. And airlines always seem to be getting a bad rap, (not that they are entirely innocent however), and I thought I would throw Continental a bone. So here's to you Continental, thanks for making my day! And please don't delay my flights this time.

Get to know Nathan and I!

I swiped this off of Leslie and Danielle's blogs. It was a cute survey, so I thought I would do it to. "Real" blogs to come later, I promise.

What are your middle names? Marie and Thomas.

How long have you been together? We started dating the summer of 1999, but we have known each other for literally our WHOLE lives. Our dad's worked for the same oil company, our parents started a church together, I'm quite positive Nathan's mom changed my diaper on more than one occasion. We had always just been friends, despite my mom telling me on a regular basis "YOU are going to marry Nathan Wilcox because I want beautiful grandchildren!" At the time she was saying that Nathan had this weird hair thing going on, and I said "Gross. He's like my brother". Well, he came to visit us the summer we started dating. He was about to start his junior year at JBU and cut his hair because he was in ROTC. Not gonna lie, when he walked off that plane I was smitten...he was hot. (And still is of course). We flirted shamelessly the entire time he was there. We kissed. I knew I was going to marry him. He proposed in the fall of 2000, I'm a little ashamed to say I can't remember the exact day...doh! And then we married June 9, 2001 during Tropical Storm Alison. It was nuts, but ask anyone who was there, it was also a blast. So that's been almost 10 years that we've been together as a couple.

How long did you know each other before you started dating? Wow...I totally just answered this question in the one above. Yes, our entire lives.

Who asked who out? We were talking one night while he was visiting that fateful summer (lol). There was a lull in the conversation. He asked me what I was thinking, I tried to get him to tell me what he was thinking, he wouldn't budge. So I told him I wish he didn't call me 'sis' all the time. And then he told me he was thinking about kissing me. WHAT?!?! So I said what any girl would say when the prospect of kissing a totally hot guy presents itself..."Uh...you could sleep on it?" We still laugh about that to this day. You could sleep on it? What the heck Angela? Thankfully, he didn't sleep on it, he kissed me.

How old were each of you when you met? I was probably about 6 weeks old, he was 3 years old.

How old are each of you now? I'm 27 and Nathan is an old man at 30.

How long did you date before becoming engaged? It was a little over a year. But like I said, I knew I was going to marry him that first night he kissed me.

How tall are each of you? I'm 5' 3" on a good day, I think he's like 5' 9", just kidding, he's 5"10, I just asked him.

Whose siblings do you see the most? Nathan is an only child, so that would be mine.

Do you have any children together? Not yet. Although random people seem to like to tell me that I need to have a baby. We probably will sooner than later.

What about pets? Camo, she's a black/lab boxer mix. We got her a year after we were married. She is hands down, the coolest dog...EVER! And then Recon we got 2 years ago. He's a yellow lab/shar pei mix. He's very cute and very sweet, but he is NOT smart. Bless his heart...

Did you go to the same school? When we lived in Alaska we both went to Grace Christian School and even had the same first grade teacher, Mr. Morgan.

Are you from the same hometown? We're both from all over, and of course lived in Alaska at the same time. But his family is originally from Oklahoma, and mine is from the Northeast, although I've never been there. So I claim my hometown as Houston and consider myself a true southerner. Drives my mom nuts.

Who is the smartest? Nathan would definitely say I'm more book smart, but that he is more street smart.

Who is the most sensitive? That would be me, hands down. Which is just fine with me, because I don't really do sensitive men. The real sappy ones get on my nerves. But that's me...

Where do you eat out most as a couple? We LOVE to eat out...but probably Texas Roadhouse.

Where is the furthest you two have traveled together as a couple? We went to Kauai, Hawaii on our honeymoon. AMAZING!!!

Who does the cooking? That would be me. Thankfully Nathan is really easy to please when it comes to the kitchen. I love that some of his favorite dishes are the ones that are easiest to make.

Who is more social? It used to be me, but since all of my really good girl friends are all scattered about the country, it is more Nathan. He's become quite the social butterfly these past couple years.

Who is the neat-freak? Me. Although Nathan has his moments. Like the other day, the clutter in our closet was driving him nuts, so he CLEANED THE CLOSET!!! I was standing there wondering who the man in my closet was and what he did with my husband. It was a nice surprise.

Who hogs the bed? That would also be me. I'm really bad about it.

Who wakes up earlier? Once again, Me! My school is a good 40 minute drive from the house, he only has a 15 minute drive. I used to get up at 5am, last year when I was a first year teacher and thought I needed to get to school an hour early. I have since grown out of that phase and now wake up at 5:40.

Who has the bigger family? Me. He's an only child.

How do you spend the holidays? We usually go to Nathan's parents for 4th of July, and at Thanksgiving because we don't have as much time and we can take the dogs up there. And then we trade off at Christmas. Except this year we will be in the BAHAMAS!!!! for the 4th of July.

Who is more jealous? Definitely Nathan. He's not the overly jealous type. I've got some close guy friends that he's totally cool with. He's just very big on being proper when it comes to that kind of stuff. And he is very protective of me.

Do you have little pet names for each other? I usually call him Babe, and he switches from Babe and Hottie for me. Although if someone were to ask him "Is your wife hot" he would tell you I'm "cute" because it really annoys him when people say "Oh man, my wife is REALLY hot" and then they really aren't that hot. So Nathan would rather say I'm cute, and let other people decide if I'm hot on their own. He's funny like that!

How long did it take to get serious? I knew right away that I was going to marry him. It really is a "you just know" feeling. I told God before Nathan came to visit, that if He wanted me to marry Nathan, He had to make something happen that weekend. He kissed me. That's all the writing on the wall that I needed.

Who eats more? Nathan. It doesn't take much to fill me up.

Who sings better? It is definitely NOT me.

Who’s older? NATHAN!!! By 3 years, which is cool because when I was little, I always said I wanted to marry a guy who was 3 years older than me. Not sure why I picked 3.

Who does the dishes? ME! Every so often Nathan will help, its kinda like Vince Vaughn's line in the Break-Up "Why would I WANT to do the dishes".

Who snores? Neither of us snore. Maybe once in a blue moon if we are really sick or something, but not very often.

Who’s better with the computer? Me, hands down...I mean, I teach a computer class every day. Although he can perform all sorts of magic when it comes to World of Warcraft. He's got a Level 80 paladin or something like that. I have no idea what it all means, but apparently that's really good.

Who drives? I do. Because we will always get their faster if I drive.

Who kissed who first? Nathan kissed me first.

Who eats more sweets? I...LOVE...CHOCOLATE!!! I don't know, we're probably about the same when it comes to this.

Why Not?

So, a lot of my friends have one of these nifty blogspot blogs. Especially my married friends. I've decided its now time for Nathan and I to have one. So here it is.

This is going to be a boring first post because I'm still trying to figure everything out. I'm a quick learner, so bear with me.