A very eventful year for me

I've been working on a photobook with pictures of everything that I has occurred in my life this year. There has literally been something going on every month of this year, hence why it has flown by.

Here is a look at 2011 from my perspective:

January 2011:

I started a new adventure of living in Salt Lake for a few months while I student taught. From January to February, I student taught for a 6th grade class and absolutely loved it. Those kids taught me so many things and most of them truly touched my heart.

February 2011:
I ended my teaching with my 6th graders in February and began the 2nd half of my student teaching experience with my 4th graders. I completely loved that experience too. Those 4th graders were so much fun and I was able to connect with all of them.

Another thing that happened in February- I had retaken the PLT in January (for the third time) and because I was in the midst of my student teaching, I nailed the test and passed it with flying colors.

March 2011:
I finished up my student teaching at the end of March. What a huge accomplishment for me!

April 2011:
I graduated from college with my bachelor's in Elementary Education. After 6 years of fighting through college to make sure I pass, I made it!


After I graduated, I auditioned for TVT's production of "Oliver!" and then went to Disneyland the next week with some friends. While we were there, I celebrated my 25th birthday and my graduation by buying this cute graduation Duffy bear and this Belle barbie doll.




May 2011:
I celebrated my 25th birthday with my best friend Jessica, whose 25th birthday was 2 days before mine.


June 2011:
The cast of Oliver! performed at the beginning of June.


I had a roommate reunion with my roommates from Fall 2010 in June because my roommate Karen had her bridal shower at the end of the month.


July 2011:
My immediate family had a rendevous in Park City at a condo. We spent a weekend of hanging out together and then finished it off with watching the Demolition Derby together... minus Jenn and J.J. (while at the derby, I randomly had a seat that ended up being right by one of my friends from work, Rachael Kohler)


August 2011:

I choreographed a clogging dance to "Loser Like Me" for the Talent Find.

I also started dating a guy named Stephen Burnham at the end of August after we met at auditions for Timpanogos Valley Theatre shows.





I also got my first job teaching in the local school district as a Resource Aide this past August.

September 2011:
I performed in "Bull in a China Shop" with Stephen.


October 2011:
I performed in the Unsinkable Molly Brown



I was called to help organize the activities in my singles ward

November 2011:
I went to see Disney on Ice with my friend Melissa


December 2011:
December is always a busy month. Between organizing FHE's for my ward, working at Day's and at the school, family parties, and getting ready for Christmas in general, I have stayed pretty busy the entire month.

As the year is wrapping up, I've been reflecting on how a year ago at the end of December, I was preparing myself for my student teaching experience. It's a continuous cycle that never ends!

Here's hoping that 2012 will be very beneficial for me and that I will hopefully get my own classroom teaching somewhere locally.

Busy Fall!

Whew, it's been a while since I've posted, hasn't it? There have been A LOT of things that have happened in my life since I posted last. Let's see, where should I start?


Well, for starters, in August I got a new job as a Resource Aide at one of the schools in the local school district. I've now been in school for 2 1/2 months and I love it. It can be pretty challenging, but I have made some strides with a few of my students. :) I recently was able to attend a training that was being run by a company called Kagan Publishing, which was on Cooperative Learning in the classroom. It was awesome and it made get really excited and motivated to start preparing structures for my future classroom (hopefully I will get my own classroom next year).

So that's one thing that's happened. I also just recently finished performing in this show this past weekend.


The Unsinkable Molly Brown

It was a great show, but I'm glad to be done. It was quite exhausting, especially considering I played four (4) people in the show. Talk about your costume changes! I almost had as many costume changes as the lady who played Molly!

One other update for anyone who knows me personally is that I met a guy when I was auditioning for "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" and we started dating in August. :)


Unfortunately, however, we discovered that we seem to be on different levels of being in a relationship, so we ended up breaking up after a month and a half of dating.



At first it hurt a lot, but after a couple weeks of it settling in, I am doing much better now.

And since "Molly Brown" is over now and I am single again, my schedule has become very open. This coming Thursday, I am going with a friend to see this show


That's right! I get to go on a mini-trip to Disneyland for a night and see all my favorite Disney characters!!! Am I excited? YOU BET I AM!!!!!

I'm also preparing to retake the dreaded Praxis exam again. I have already passed the PLT according to both Utah and Idaho, but unfortunately for me, the passing score in Idaho is a smidge lower than Utah's passing score and I scored right between them. So this coming Saturday, I am retaking the Content Knowledge Praxis exam for Elementary Education majors. :P Am I excited for it? Not in the least. But it's a necessary hoop I need to jump through if I want to be certified to teach in Utah. And I am determined to get my own classroom ASAP. Being an aide has been really beneficial for me because I get to work with grade levels K-4, so I get to see all the different learning levels the kids are on and what classroom management strategies I like and so forth.

Once I get this test passed, I can breathe more easily and start looking around for possible job openings on the horizon come the end of school next year. :)

I've decided I want one of these sometime in the future...

An adorable little labrador puppy! I've been missing my dog Hobbes lately and I've decided that I want to get a dog someday. Hobbes, our family dog that we put down 5 years ago, was a mutt and I'm pretty sure she was a cross between a golden lab and a cocker spaniel. :) She was so cute!

That is all.

I Enjoy Being a Girl!

Today I went from being a blonde to a brunette and I have to tell you that I feel right at home with this haircolor. I'll post pictures of my new color shortly, but I just wanted to talk about my fun day off today. I've worked Monday through Wednesday so far this week and every single one of those days I had to be at the store by either 6am or 6:30am. Let me tell ya, by Wednesday afternoon, I was completely pooped and that's why I was looking fully forward to my day off today.

I got my hair done, met up with a friend to reconnect for a little while, did some visiting teaching and then went shopping with another friend. If I'd had more money, I definitely would have splurged a little more than I did at the outlet mall. But can I just tell you how much I love Claire's (www.claires.com)? Ever since I was a tween, I've always been completely obsessed with accessories. I thought that as I got older, I would grow out of my love of jewelry, hair accessories and makeup. Nope. That's not the case at all. I used some serious self control on myself today, but I did buy a few headbands and earrings just because they were an awesome deal and they were adorable.

I love having days where I can truly indulge in some girly stuff like shopping and going to the hair salon. :)

Glee Finale, Latest TVT production, and getting sick

Okey doke, we'll start with the most recent happening in my life- I watched the finale of Glee tonight. Just a warning, I will be talking about what happens in it, so there are going to be some spoilers below.


I liked it for the most part. There were a few things I wasn't too crazy about, like Jesse being a jerk (but what else is new?) and Finn and Rachel being together. I was all for Rachel choosing her career over Finn because frankly, I just do not like the idea of Finn and Rachel being together. But it's like Finn said, "Graduation is a year away." So I suppose I can live with them being together for another year.

I also wish that Artie and Brittany would get back together. I like them together so much more than Brittany and Santana. I felt bad for Quinn, though. I feel for her. It's nice to have someone who loves and cares for you. And the whole Mercedes/Sam thing- SO saw it coming!!! And I love it!!

It will be interesting to see what happens for the next season.

Alrighty, on to the next item of business: TVT's latest production. I am going to be in "Oliver!" which will be opening in less than two weeks. This should be interesting, considering most of us adults (there's kids and adults in this show) don't have our costumes. I'm not sure about whether the kids have their costumes or not, but I doubt it. Oliver! is a really cute show, but it's also kind of depressing. It's got really fun music, but it can get stuck in one's head very easily and it's really annoying to have the same song in your head for about 12 hours. I'm really excited for the show, though. I think it will be way fun.

Lastly and most depressing is that I have developed a cold over the past few days. I had a headache all day on Friday (it made watching Pirates 4 really hard to do but I still enjoyed it for the 2nd time within a 24 hour period), I had a sore throat on Saturday and Sunday and I was starting to get congested on Monday, along with having my energy shot. I'm trying to cram in as much Vitamin C that I can to push out the cold germs as soon as possible. Yesterday, I picked up some Mucinex at the store and that's definitely helped a lot. The only problem is that I can only take a dose once every 12 hours. It is doing the job pretty well, though. If I'm consistent with my doses, I should be back to normal by this weekend (at least, that's what I'm hoping for).

Here's some happy news on the homefront for me, though. I got my diploma from BYU-Idaho in the mail a couple days ago! So I am now a legit college graduate!!! It's a great feeling, can I just tell you that? Now I get to continue to do some job hunting. I've had two interviews at two different schools here in the valley, but I was shot down by both of them. :( But not to worry, I've been informed that there is at least one teacher that will be retiring this year at my elementary school that I went at, which is where I've been dreaming of teaching since I was little. So I'm going to make sure to keep my ears open for any opportunities to interview and apply there.

"Heather Moss, you've just graduated from college at BYU-Idaho. What are you going to do now?"

I'm going to Disneyland!!



.... No really, I am. But not for a couple weeks. In the meantime, I'm going to work a little bit so I can earn money to go play in Disneyland for a few days with some friends.

So this is what its like to be graduated from college, huh? This past weekend, I graduated (for real this time) from BYU-Idaho.


I was able to attend commencement as a graduate in the new BYU-I Center that was dedicated at the end of the Fall 2010 semester. That was pretty cool, considering I got to sit four rows from the front. That was such a great day for me. I thought I was going to be really emotional, but I realized my emotions had kind of died down for me over the past couple weeks. I mean, yeah I got a little teary-eyed, but the real waterfall of tears that I was expecting came at last semester's commencement when I had accomplished my goal of passing both my math classes. I had two of my really good friends graduating this past Fall semester and so I was able to attend their commencement. It was the weirdest thing- the person giving the invocation wasn't even
finished with giving the prayer and I was already crying my eyes out. And as President Clark was telling all the graduates that they had worked very hard to get to this day of accomplishment, I was really having to suppress my sobs. I wasn't necessarily crying out of joy for my friends (although I was very proud of them both), I was crying out of joy for myself because I HAD worked hard to get to that day. I probably could have walked with my friends last semester, but I wanted to make sure I was REALLY done with everything before I graduated.

But yeah, commencement lasted an hour and I'm positive I was crying for a good 20 minutes of it. It was all settling in for me that, yes, I had accomplished my goal of passing every.single.class that I was required to in order to get to student teach. I had so much emotion built up from how hard I'd been working over the past year and so once I realized that I had finally passed my two math classes that I'd been struggling with for so long, I just let all the tears fall.

Another reason I wasn't walking yet is because I hadn't passed the PLT (the Principles of Learning and Teaching Praxis exam) yet and I wouldn't be taking it until about 2 weeks into my student teaching. I'm glad I waited until I'd been student teaching a little while to take the test, though, because those two weeks of me being in the classroom prepared me better than probably the entire "How to Pass the Praxis" book I'd been studying did. I was really surprised with how much I learned during those two weeks of being in the classroom. Heck, one of the parents of a student came in literally the day before I was going to take the Praxis and I am positive that her visit alone taught me so much and gave me the information I needed to nail the test. I am so grateful to this mom that came in because she really probably is the reason why I was able to pass the test with the high score that I received. I'm going to have to send her a thank you card to tell her how much she helped me.

So yes, this past weekend was more of a relieved/happy weekend rather than an emotional weekend. It was so nice because my parents and I were able to go at a leisurely pace and do stuff that I wanted to do. We walked all around campus and got pictures of all the places I spent the most time in or had significant memories for me. We went to lunch at the Olive Garden and then came home. After we finished lunch, I just heaved a contented sigh and said "I'm just so happy that I'm done!"

It's such a great feeling to be done with college and not have to worry about finals or classes or anything like that. I mean, yeah I will probably be taking classes/workshops inn the future to get endorsements and whatnot for my teaching, but as for the college life, I am REALLY done this time.

Now I get to start the process of getting certified and applying for a job. Yay! Let the job-hunting process commence!

College Graduation!

Top Five Blue Graduation Announcement

Shutterfly graduation announcements and gifts.

View the entire collection of cards.

Just in case you can't read the text in the announcement, this is what it says:

Top 5 moments of College
5. Receiving my State Literacy Test Certificate
4. Receiving a passing score for my first Praxis test
3. Finally getting passing grades in ALL of my math classes
2. Finally receiving a passing score for the PLT (2nd Praxis test)
1. Finishing my student teaching

Heather Anne Moss
Brigham Young University-Idaho - Class of 2011