The Usual Chaos

It's been an odd week. A short week. A sometimes frustrating week. It's that time of the year - the conclusion of the first grading period when I question if I've done enough and worry that I haven't. Doubt crept in. The to-do list of grading and planning lengthened. The boss came to observe. Let's just say that Friday was a more-than-usual welcome! In such a week, all of my insecurities floated to the top. The voices questioning the rigor in my class and the philosophy of my style shouted louder than my students and my heart. I let it get to me. I felt down, bummed, like I do when the fall days get shorter and the darkness stretches. Oh, wait. Guess the universe and my brain are in cahoots. Rats. Thus, the personal pep talk was summoned. See Friday morning's tweet. And then, something cool happened. First period made me laugh - A LOT! Second period wrote strong, insightful thesis statements. Third period brought an academic and strategic conver...

I've been asking my English three students to blog about their reading. In fact, if you are here, then you can see their blogs to the right! --> I'm feeling rather proud of them! They are risking public reaction (and possible teen-age humiliation) to write their thoughts about their reading choices, and they are getting into it! Our goal is to write every Friday about our reads. We've focused on narrators and the ideas we learn from our reading. We'll keep pondering various parts of our reading choices each week in hopes of improving our writing skills and advertising our reading choices! It's a fun new challenge. Because I asked them to do this, then I should play along as well, right? It's only fair! The book I'm currently in is called The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time  by Mark Haddon. It's been on my list for a long while now, and then Mr. Thompson, our theater director, approached me with an exciting opportunity. You see, we ma...