Fourth Day of School

This has been a tough week.

I have had to hold the hands of 20 or so middle schoolers who have never written an email, or had an account before (on very slow, cranky computers). I guess I should be proud to be with them during this very important rite of passage into being a 21st century citizen. Last year all the students signed up for gmail accounts, but this year, gmail blocked us so I switched to yahoo. I had a yahoo account for five minutes in 1998, and that was the last time I used it. I discovered the yahoo spam machine is so hair-trigger that it sent about half my kids emails into the spam folder. So then I was hounding the poor dears for email and they kept insisting the sent one and it wasn't until I discovered this that they were vindicated.

I had a personal tutorial from a English Learner student about how to use yahoo's "stationary." Something ol' gmail doesn't have. I always try to find non-English ways of connecting with the EL students, so this was an unexpected blessing on two levels.

At least a dozen of my students have dropped my class for band. (I am not taking it personally).

I lost my wallet for a little while yesterday. It was AWOL while I was trying to buy groceries. They wouldn't take my check without an ID! (imagine that!) The hardest thing was coming home and thinking I had a bag of lemons when I actually didn't (they were in my hand! I remember taking them to the check out line!). Removing a whole grocery bag of phantom supplies from my mental inventories is much harder than I thought.

I tried to go swimming, but the pool is closed for repairs. We are entering into the Sunny-Warm season right now in the city, and I was disappointed to not be able to cool off in the pool. A cold shower after a time in the sauna is the next best thing (oh how I love the Y!).

I am finally caught up enough with things that I can think about revamping the seventh grade curriculum. I have a bunch of students who have take the course before and need something new to do. I was hoping they'd all be amnesiacs, but, unfortunately, they remember the stuff we did last year. I got to start tackling new curriculum this morning.