This group puts on annual conferences which gather together top teachers from schools all over the state. Not sure why I had to go.
No seriously, I was an afterthought. I was asked literally days before the event.
Anyway, this year's conference was held at Punahou Chase Middle School. It's on a different island from me. Which means I had to wake up at around 4:30 AM to get there on time. I woke up before the cocks get excited at the crack of dawn.
There were 10 of us all together. For some, Starbucks was a God-send. I'm glad I avoided it. I swear the employee that was in the bathroom with me did not wash his hands.
Our second order of business was to get our rental cars and head on over to the school. I was the errr... lucky one to get stuck in a car with Shara and Audrey.
Audrey went through each channel on the radio twice and still couldn't find a station she liked. She made me cower when she mentioned Tim McGraw.
As we passed the others, at incredible rates of speed, I looked out the window and prayed for salvation.
Shara: I bet Nate [teacher] wish he was in this car with the cool people.
Me: Who said you're cool?
Shara & Audrey: We did!
Me: ok. . . (meekly)
Shara: Dale Earnhardt Jr is a sissy.
She then proceeded to floor it. We passed 74 cars on the freeway, averaged 183 kmh, and placed 3rd at Charlotte.
When we arrived, they receptionists gave us funny hats and sheriff badges. Way to improve teacher morale! The keynote speaker was awesome though. She had a lot to say and yet was extremely entertaining. She spoke for about an hour and yet we wanted more.
After the speeches, we broke off into different sessions for training, tours, etc. I took the tour. When else would I ever be on a campus like Chase Middle? I'm not rich, and I'm not good enough to work here.
They say that Washington DC was designed to impress and awe visiting heads of state. They haven't seen Chase Middle. This is just the 6th grade entryway.
And their hallways.
And the students' common meeting area.
OK, We get it. I'm in frikking awe. Now stop rubbing it in. I mean I know I will never get this thing here:
air conditioning.
Anyway, after another session about technology in the classroom, something our tech coordinator already explained to us, it was lunch time. Audrey loves hats!
And food!
In this pic, from left to right: teachers.
For our viewing pleasure, a bunch of the students were forced to sing and dance. Dance you puppets, dance! HAHAHA! (they actually were really talented)
What followed was a really boring and useless session where the presenter had no useful information. Luckily my last session had a wonderful presenter who had great information about effective teaming. After that it was time for us to escape.
This is the teacher's parking. A gated, underground garage. I thought I was lucky we had painted lines in our parking lot.
On the way back we caught up with Nate. He had snuck out to a bar in Tijuana for a few drinks. He mentioned something about 12 year olds not being able to handle more than 2 shots of tequila before passing out. This shot came out blurry since he was too drunk for my camera to stay still.
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