Aaron’s Blog

So, Dad totally blew this whole thing out of proportion…

Anyhow, my really “big” news is: I received my 5 year teachers license a week ago!

I am an officially licensed professional!!!!! Go me!!!!1!!!111!!!!

Family first?

For anyone that does not know teachers have to attend these workshops called inservices every few months. The students love them because they don’t have school and the teachers “love” them because the students don’t have school.

Anyhow, I attended one last Friday and its theme was technology in the classroom. One of the sessions I went to was an introduction to Photoshop. Thinking to myself, “I love Photoshop Phriday!” I was eager to go. I learned a bit about making posters and stuff, but the greatest thing I learned about was….

LIQUIFY!!!!! This tool allows you to mess with the photos and stretch them out…naturally I found immediate utility in this skill and started mutating our wedding pictures.

My best work however is a picture of our third twin Adrumb…

Gods above…is that creepy or what?

Hello loyal readers…

It’s been a long time since I posted last in February. I am not entriely sure why I did not find the time to update for such a long time…I just didn’t. Anyhow as you can probably imagine a lot of things have happened since that cold month long ago. Though my memory of a few of these events has become a bit hazy I will try my best to recount our adventures.

So lets begin and what better place to begin with then the end, the end of my formal education.

As most of you know I had begun my student teaching in January. This was the final step in any college level educational program and a lot of things were riding on my successful completion(important things like: the rest of my life). I was assinged to an 8th grade social studies class at Westridge Middle School. It was a fairly good experience however I did have my shair of bumps and hiccups. It was a fairly tough time for me but in the end I did triumph, with a couple positive letters of recommendation to boot.

So…I graduated.

I figured it was about time. It wasn’t just a great day for me but it was also graduation day for Amber. We spent some time with our families in celebration and then the next day we pack up and left. It was certainly strange to leave KSU and Manhattan for the last official time. I know we will see the place again but it will never have the same feeling. Amber and I had a lot of invested emotion in place (seeing as how it is where we met and all). We spent many nights walking campus which is certainly something we both miss greatly.

Woo hoo, we graduated! Lets put that college degree to work…..

Things didn’t go so well after graduation. Regardless of our attempts to seek employment there simply were no employers biting and we were getting a bit antsy. I had applied to a dozen schools around the Kansas City area and Amber applied to as many Park jobs as she could find. Amber got a bunch of no’s…I didn’t get anything. At this point I came to the conculsion I would have to move to plan B: get a job anywhere I could, and that is how I began my short stint as a Costco Major Sales Assistant. This was literally the very first time I had ever had a job in retail and I didn’t even apply for it. I originally applied to be a stocker in the early morning, a simplistic but grueling job, however they decided I was good with people (huh?) and put me in the sales department. It was actually a really good experience (anyone notice a pattern with my experiences) and I learned quite a bit. Plus I had probably the best supervisor on the face of the planet.

Great News from the Great Plains!

But the job simply wasn’t going to cut it. Too little money, not enough hours, we were in a bit of a bind. However one day when we were eating a delicious meal at one of the numerous Chinese buffets around Overland Park my cell phone started ringing. I didn’t recognize the number and it had a 785 area code, which is outside of Kansas City. I was certainly perplexed. I answer it and to my suprise it was the principle of a High School out in Colby Kansas that had recieved my application was interested in having me come out for a interview for a position teaching American History. YES!!!!!! Amber and I decided to drive out the following weekend in order to seek our collective destinies. A six hour drive later I had pretty much secured myself a career, (weird huh? the baby of the family finally doing something.)

That certainly put some skip in my step at Costco. Too bad I left as quickly as I came. Things were looking up for us, which sort of paved a path our most important event.

Marwage!

It all seems like a blur now but did we have fun or what?
1. A rockin Bachelor Party. Transformers and a Wii all in the same night: Good!

2. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows coming out: better!

3. Getting our apartment in Colby and moving in before we got married: Great!
4. Getting Married at Powell and it working out totally awesome…: AWESOME!

We both had a great time and our wedding went exactly as planned. It was nice seeing everyone again. We spent some time with both sides of the family before heading out on our journey. But soon it was on to destination: Colby Kansas and then Colorado for a short but sweet Honeymoon.

Which pretty much brings us to now.

We have settle in and unpacked most of our stuff. I have obtained access to my room at the High School and I am currently in freak out mode, but I am sure I will endure (I just think back to all of my previous experiences). We are both still coping with the fact we have become a single unit, I still call her Amber Gurtner, hahaha… Yet it feels natural and I am proud to introduce her as my wife whenever we meet some one new. Time will tell on how all of this crazymess will play out but I am sure it will be fairly positive.

Besides, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King was just announced…Life is complete.

Much love, excelsior!

I just recieved my scores for that nasty licensure test I had to take last month.

I passed both sections, well above the acceptable score.

Now to the hard stuff…

So my semester of student teaching has begun.

So far I have not had a lot of interaction with the students, mostly I have just been grading papers and observing my cooperating teacher.

Speaking of grading…I never thought that it would be so time consuming to process all of the student’s work. I literally sat down for three hours on Friday grading written newspaper articles.

I did have a chance to takeover for about 15 minutes of one of the classes while my teacher went to the office. Luckily for me the students were silently reading their text books.

I officially take over the classroom on January the 25th. It’s a little early for my tastes, but I guess the sooner I plunge in the sooner I will get the hang of it.

Tomorrow I will be going with my cooperating teacher to a technology training session. I am hoping that everything goes well, I have pretty high spirits regardless of how much I worry about it all.

Here is a picture of Amber, I hope she is blushing in embarrassment right now.

I finally recieved my Student Teaching placement. (I had to make them give it to me.) I have been placed in the Shawnee Mission school district.

My school is Westridge Middle. I have been assigned to an 8th grade Social Studies classroom. For anyone who is familiar with KC, the school is over by Oak Park mall.

I start on January 3rd, however I have a mandatory meeting at K-State on the 2nd it’s going to be a barrel of fun to drive down there for a one hour meeting and then drive all the way back.

Any one that is a fan of Deadwood will most likely find this funny.

I have to warn you though, if you are not familiar with the show, you will most likely find the video fairly offensive to the ears. (and not think it is funny) This also follows with a disclaimer of NOT watching this in public or at work.

Steve Irwin is dead…he was stung in the chest by a stingray while shooting a documentary. I actual got kind of upset about this…I mean, he was such a happy guy.

I made my very first Ebay buy! I bought Battlestar Galactica season 2.

I only cost me 26 dollars! However it is coming from Britain of all places, so it might not get here for awhile.