{"id":824,"date":"2010-04-11T13:49:49","date_gmt":"2010-04-11T20:49:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/?p=824"},"modified":"2010-04-12T06:51:24","modified_gmt":"2010-04-12T13:51:24","slug":"minnesota-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/2010\/04\/11\/minnesota-progress\/","title":{"rendered":"Minnesota Progress"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A lot has happened in the past four days:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>On Wednesday we flew to Minnesota, duly <a title=\"SFO-&gt;MSP\" href=\"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/2010\/04\/07\/sfo-msp\/\">documented<\/a> via iPhone.<\/li>\n<li>On Thursday morning I met with the principal of the <a title=\"St. Paul Open School\" href=\"http:\/\/open.spps.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">St. Paul Open School<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Then we had lunch with Maddy and Zoe and I visited <a title=\"Laura Jeffrey Academy\" href=\"http:\/\/www.laurajeffreyacademy.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Laura Jeffrey Academy<\/a>, an all-girls middle school in St. Paul.\u00c2\u00a0 I toured the school with some prospective parents and then had a great meeting with the educational director (their equivalent of a principal).<\/li>\n<li>Somehow in the midst of all this Sarah and I drove around various neighborhoods in St. Paul and Minneapolis to start thinking about where we might want to live.<\/li>\n<li>On Thursday evening we celebrated Griffin&#8217;s <a title=\"Happy Birthday Griffin!\" href=\"..\/2010\/04\/08\/happy-birthday-griffin\/\">first birthday<\/a> in Courtland with a whole passel of Stocco family friends.\u00c2\u00a0 It was fun and festive, and the cake was delicious.<\/li>\n<li>Friday morning began with a somewhat strange meeting with the principal of a progressive <a title=\"The New City School\" href=\"http:\/\/newcitycharterschool.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">charter school<\/a> in Minneapolis.\u00c2\u00a0 Sarah and I participated in their &#8220;morning meeting&#8221; and then chatted briefly (and awkwardly) with the principal who basically said he doesn&#8217;t have any job openings and has no ideas about where one should look for teaching jobs.\u00c2\u00a0 Weird.<\/li>\n<li>Then we raced over to <a title=\"Crosswinds East Metro Arts &amp; Science School\" href=\"http:\/\/www.emid6067.net\/crosswinds\/\" target=\"_blank\">Crosswinds Middle School<\/a> in Woodbury (east of St. Paul) and met with a friend of a friend who has been teaching there for a bunch of years.\u00c2\u00a0 She was great and introduced us to her principal who was similarly great.<\/li>\n<li>The sum of all the meetings was that budget cuts will make the job search very challenging. On the bright side, I got many useful tips on how to best market myself and where to focus my efforts most productively.\u00c2\u00a0 At this point I&#8217;m focusing on charter schools and will start checking out possible private school options.<\/li>\n<li>On Friday afternoon Sarah and I met with a realtor and started looking at houses and exploring various neighborhoods in St. Paul.\u00c2\u00a0 Our first foray was a bit underwhelming (but things got better later).<\/li>\n<li>On our drive back to Courtland that evening we realized that we were utterly exhausted.\u00c2\u00a0 We called the realtor to reschedule our Saturday tour to Sunday morning.<\/li>\n<li>Saturday was our spring break!\u00c2\u00a0 We had a leisurely breakfast, napped, took long hot baths, and walked to the local park where Griffin loved the slide.\u00c2\u00a0 (First time he has ever been really into it &#8212; he just kept diving down this one, head first!\u00c2\u00a0 Pictures will be forthcoming.)\u00c2\u00a0 I also wrote thank you cards to the various people I had met with during the week.<\/li>\n<li>This morning (seriously, I can&#8217;t believe this was today) we raced back up to the Cities to meet with our realtor.\u00c2\u00a0 Today&#8217;s tour focused mostly on Minneapolis and was much more positive.\u00c2\u00a0 We saw a fabulous house in the Bryn Mawr neighborhood and a couple of other cool contenders in Southwest and near Lake Nokomis.<\/li>\n<li>Then a picnic lunch by the lake with Pam and Jeff who had just picked up uncle Bob at the airport.\u00c2\u00a0 Fun in the sun, and great to overlap with Bob for an hour.<\/li>\n<li>Then back to the airport to fly back to SFO.\u00c2\u00a0 Griffin had a harder time on this flight.\u00c2\u00a0 He&#8217;s got a molar coming in and was tired but couldn&#8217;t fall into a comfortable sleep.\u00c2\u00a0 Still, he handled it pretty well and is a pro at airplane bathroom diaper changes.<\/li>\n<li>When Ed picked us up at the BART station he handed us a bag with three English muffins from our favorite bakery.\u00c2\u00a0 He figured we might not have breakfast organized for tomorrow.\u00c2\u00a0 Is that not the sweetest thing?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Whew.\u00c2\u00a0 We would never have been able to get this much done if Pam and Jeff and Alli hadn&#8217;t handled Griffin during most of our trips to the Cities.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a win-win for everybody: we got a lot done and Griffin got to bond with his grandparents and auntie!<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s what Griffin thought about all of this on the BART ride home:<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_826\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-826\" style=\"width: 450px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/20100411_Griffin_BART.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-826 \" title=\"20100411_Griffin_BART\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/20100411_Griffin_BART.jpg?w=450&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\"  srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/20100411_Griffin_BART.jpg?w=600&amp;ssl=1 600w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/20100411_Griffin_BART.jpg?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 474px) 100vw, 474px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-826\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Worn out after house hunting and job hunting and birthday partying... what a spring break!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>I can&#8217;t believe I have to work tomorrow!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A lot has happened in the past four days: On Wednesday we flew to Minnesota, duly documented via iPhone. On Thursday morning I met with the principal of the St. Paul Open School. Then we had lunch with Maddy and Zoe and I visited Laura Jeffrey Academy, an all-girls middle school in St. Paul.\u00c2\u00a0 I &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/2010\/04\/11\/minnesota-progress\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Minnesota Progress<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[79,36],"class_list":["post-824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-griffin","category-uncategorized","tag-griffin","tag-moving"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=824"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":825,"href":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824\/revisions\/825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}