Feb 11

Tuesday is a day of excitement. While I am trying to focus on teaching today, I am wondering how my youngest is doing. All. Day. She is spending the day with a friend of a friend. She has never been there. Yikes. She is a sweet girl, but VERRRRRRY feisty.  This could be a bit disastrous.

In other news, we continue to plod ahead with Poems. In order to inspire my students we wrote six word summaries. Then we performed them. 6th,7th, 8th graders all got into it. These students love to perform. You gotta love seeing them laugh and enjoy class, even if the six word summaries do not seem like much. I took away the intimidation from their writing and encouraged them to go with their gut. It was successful. I knew it might work- it had worked well in my other classes- but you never can predict these things completely.

In history news...
  We are learning about the Caribbean and Central America and words that were used in a text (Circa 2003) that are no longer appropriate. Yikes. While trying to explain all of this, I find myself going back and relearning, multiple times. No easy task. Still, this is what we sign up for as teachers.
  I am also teaching US History- I find I do enjoy this new task and there are definitely parts of history I find enjoyable. I am trying to both cover the material and welcome other dimensions as well. We are watching videos, looking at art, listening to music, creating discussion and writing about it. What else? If only I had a time machine....

Feb 10

Monday, Monday...
 Back to class and students are assigned a creative poem. We are sharing the poem, performing really, on Friday. I am beyond excited about this. We will be at the Old Worthen House Cafe where Kerouac and Poe and Ginsberg and more sat and thought and imbibed. It is a beautiful, old space with Prohibition stories as well as turn-of-the-20th-Century ghost stories. There is a fan system that is legendary and I hear the food is pretty good too.
   The thing I am most excited about is that instead of focusing on Valentine's Day, which thankfully Middle Schoolers are too cool for, we are focused on POETRY!!! I have really pushed my students to be honest, to be open and to say what they mean. I know this is tough and I see my students struggling a bit. However, when they push themselves and write honestly, what they find is how strong their write can be.
   4 Days to go! I cannot wait!

Feb. 7, 2014

Home again... 

  Today, I am home with my youngest who is STILL ill. We went to the pediatrician AGAIN and she has pneumonia. At least we can treat this. I was able to get many things done and enjoy the girls. Not a total loss. :) 

  I have to admit I am doing a bit of writing on a new story. It is a zygote of a story so no announcements yet but I did get my wix website up and mostly running. Exciting stuff!

  Of course I also spent time getting ready to come back on Monday to teach like my hair's on fire! Working on better reference materials for sixth grade social studies ( Maps, maps, maps!!!) more interesting ways to tell history (YouTube fave crash course and more mixed media) to seventh and eighth. And of course, more fun ways to explore poetry! Just wait... Our big Poetry reading is Friday, February 14 at the historic Worthen House! So excited!

 Have a great weekend, all!