A Wonderful Monday

I want to give you a taste of Sunflower life to quick recap of the day

6:30 roll out of bed when Erin yells at me.  Stumble to bathroom, get dressed in my all beige ensemble (monday is beige shirt day, which just looks splendid with my khaki pants). Eat breakfast and pack lunch.  Realize that once again we are out of almost everything even though we just went to Super Walmart 3 days ago.  Wonder where it all goes.

7:15 Matt comes to pick us up.  Pile into his car and watch soybeans, corn, rice and catfish ponds go by as we drive

7:50 Pull into Sunflower.  Print all the quizzes, homework and lesson plans for the day

8:15 Morning meeting.  Freedom songs (videos to come), announcements, and we introduce the grammar challenge of the week.  This week are students are not allowed to say "real".  As in "It was real bad"  Or "it was real hard" or "it was real cool"  or any other circumstance where it is not only grammatically incorrect, but also the least descriptive word for the situation. Also today I had the quote of the day which was a little Bob Marley action "None but ourselves can free our mind".   

8:45-12:30 Reading Class

• 2nd year reading class.  After editing their essay we have a lesson on the slave trade.  I somehow manage to fit triangle slave trade, the middle passage, slave auctions and run away slaves into 30 minutes,  I hope they actually got some of it.  I even had them them lie down and imagine what the trip middle passage would be like while I read a description.
  
• 3rd years- we began to explore symbolism in A Raisin in the Sun.  I'm going to brag a little about my students and let you know that all of the 3rd years got 4/4 on their reading quizzes today!  I also got the chance to expose them to a little Ben Harper while they worked on their character mapping.

13:30-1:15  I was in silent lunch today, and unfortunately two kids had it as well, but I have to say it was actually quite nice.  It brought me back to my Quaker education roots.

1:20-2:20 Public Speaking.  All of the students impressed me.  They gave self-written speeches about a trip they once took, and all of them improved from last week, taking our specific advice to heart, and also doing a great job of encouraging and supporting one another.

2:20-3:20.  PLANNING PERIOD!!!  I was only so excited because I got to make poster that we will use tomorrow to introduce.... GRAMMAR GRANNY!!!  She is an old but firm granny who watches out for your grammar because "Good Grammar is the key to success".  In reality she is any one of the staff dressed in a granny outfit, and last night we had a photo shoot, so we now have posters with great angry granny faces.  Now anywhere the students look they will see those faces constantly pointing a finger to correct their grammar.

3:20-4:30- Study session.  the kids study, I help and when they don't need me I print an plan.  But today, continuing on my artistic streak I created the "Reader LEADers" poster that posts all the students averages on their reading quizzes and creates a competition between the years.  Just to let you know, the 3rd years won last week, I know you were wondering with anticipation.

4:30 Afternoon meeting, which is great.  More pump up freedom songs.  the video that I will put up later is of an epic dance party that exploded during afternoon meeting today.

And then we drive home.  Now last week we drove home only to collapse, possible nap, but more likely plan lessons until very late, but I think we have discovered one of the first upward moving spirals (as opposed to the many downward spirals that exist in my life).  After last week, during which we worked 18 hr days and lesson planned constantly, we decided to spend the entire weekend planning for next week.  After two full days of reading, creating quizzes, reading guides and trying to figure out the difference between mood and tone so I could teach it (i'm still confused, so if anyone would like to enlighten me that would be terrific) I successfully completed a weeks worth of lesson plans.  I have to add that I did all of this with out my own computer because I managed to crack the screen earlier and it is currently in Durham being repaired by the wonderful people at Duke Computer Repair.

Anyways, the point is, that now I can actually use my planning period to get ahead, so tonight instead of stress, I had no lesson planning to do!  Kimi, Erin and I were able to have a wondering reminiscing conversation about our very different high school experiences, eat half a pan of brownies, go swim laps as delta state and then hang out at the other scholar apartment.

All in all a wonderful start to the week.  Now I just have to get to bed so I can continue these good feelings.