YEAR IN REVIEW 2006
After the winter holidays, during which I visited mom in New Jersey for Christmas, I returned to Virginia Beach and a full-time teaching position, although on a "temporary" contract. I taught sixth graders, US History to 1877 at Larkspur Middle School in Virginia Beach. It was a difficult class that the original teacher walked out on and a number of long-term substitutes could not effectively manage. I managed to establish classroom discipline and went on to finish the year with them. The end-of-the-year standards test proved that the students and I were successful in making up for lost time and the experience gained was valuable. However, my contract being temporary, at the end of the year it was time to move on.
During the April spring break, I took a road trip to Florida. I visited a number of the McGuires, friends forever from my high school, New Jersey days, and my semi-retired cousin Bob, whose lifestyle includes spending weeks at a time sailing to the West Indies and of whom I am quite envious. My Florida excursion included a solo trip to the Everglades where, on the advice of a park ranger, I rented a kayak and went on a paddle to observe the alligators and other wild life of the Everglades. The course I was on eventually ran out of water deep enough to paddle through so I, brilliant as I can be, continued by portaging my kayak through the mud. The portage ended up being a little longer than I anticipated and became quite an ordeal during which I ran out of drinking water. Fighting cramps and contemplating settling in until some rangers discovered my abandoned car in the parking lot might decide to come looking for me the size of many of the alligators i encountered gave me the extra motivation needed to continue.. I decided to drudge on and eventually found deeper water and paddled myself back to the road and my waiting car with its extra bottle of Gatorade... After this drudge, the rather large and spooky alligators, of which there are plenty in the park, were no longer my main concern and I paddled right by them, but in the end, I decided not to go tell the ranger who recommended this course what I really thought of him.
I took a summer school position during the first half of the summer with the neighboring school system in Chesapeake, Virginia with the plan of getting myself known to a few principles in that system. I again taught sixth grade, US history. However, as luck would have it, I received a job offer back in Virginia Beach teaching eighth graders civics and economics.
Toward the end of July, after having finished teaching at summer school, I drove down to Corolla, NC where friends Drew and Sue had rented a beach house for Drew's family reunion. They were good enough to invite me for a day and I took advantage. I arrived late one afternoon and took some of the kids onto the beach fishing. Everyone caught some fish and it was a great experience for the kids. The next day was spent swimming and lounging. It happened to be the hottest day of the summer well over one hundred degrees, so a lot of time was spent in the water, which is where I prefer to be anyway. The water along the Outer Banks was a seemingly frigid 75 degrees compared to the 100+ heat and felt so refreshing.
Fate presented me the opportunity to move back into my old apartment two doors down from my good friends Don & Brooke. This keeps me within a short bike ride of the boardwalk and only a few minutes drive to my favorite kayak-fishing spot, Rudee Inlet. I haven't fished as much as I had hope due to my involvement with summer school, but I do get out about once a week. I have once again taken up bowling and have joined a league once a night to make myself more social, as long as it doesn't interfere with any of the televised WVU football games!