Working up to the new school year…

I’m working up to a couple of new ideas for the school year which is beginning to loom on my horizon. (I know, more than just my horizon.) As soon as I have something more than this fuzzy shot to share I will. In the meantime I think I’m on hiatus from [...]

Read Full Post »

What will we treasure enough to keep?

I was asked today how many more years I have to go until I can retire. I’ve not thought about it a lot, so had to do some calculating. After doing some advanced math, I realized that I will be eligible for retirement (25 years) in 2017. WHAT??? That sounds like Orwell’s [...]

Read Full Post »

Glory, glory hallelujah!

That’s it. I’ve finished my first year of teaching middle school. Even though it was my seventeenth year of teaching, it felt more like the very first one. I’ve learned a lot and have lots of ideas for how to make it better next year, I think. At least I have [...]

Read Full Post »

The last week of school

This photo is a big, messy jumble of sunflower faces. It’s not at all the best one I took at the sunflower field on Saturday, not by a long shot. But I chose it because that is exactly how my classroom is this week. Some kids are happily, diligently working on the [...]

Read Full Post »

Next to the last week: Sex Ed for the seventh graders

Oh my. This week the seventh graders had sex ed in their science classes. Even though they were warned not to ask questions about the subject outside of the science classroom, a few questions leaked out. In my colleague’s class, Rosie’s tutorial question for AVID was, “What is oral sex?” Marty [...]

Read Full Post »

Almost the last week…how time creeps by.

Oh, only five days left. Grades are due tomorrow which should make the last four days a little dodgy. We’ve been asked not to show movies the last days, to keep on teaching despite grades having been submitted already. The reason for all that evades me. I get turning in the [...]

Read Full Post »