Hello from Study Hall

It has once again been a while since I blogged. Day by day, we are getting through, with not much time for anything except keeping my head above water. I am actually writing this in study hall because the servers are down and I have nothing else with me to do.

Some things I’ve been noticing:

- Weeks with early dismissals or days off are complete nightmares. The kids are bouncing off the walls and nothing gets accomplished. It’s like they have to have their structure in order to even feel like they’re in school. Any time that structure is broken, it’s play time to them.

- The more I work with High School students who are involved in sports and activities, the more I realize that certain types of students are drawn to certain activities. For example, my students who are on the Golf Team are absolute dream-students. I guess maybe because Golf requires a serious, individual mindset, those are the types of students who play it. My two best, most thoughtful, considerate and conscientious students are both on the Golf Team, and it’s just interesting because I never thought of it that way before. I say we should have more Golfers in the world!

- I had the experience of prepping sub plans for the first time last week. My grandmother passed away and I had to take a day off for the funeral. It was hard to leave my kids in the charge of someone else for the day. I was first concerned that I gave her detailed enough instructions and probably went a bit overboard on that part. All day, though, I was stressed out wondering what was going on at school, how my students were treating the sub, etc. It all worked out okay, but you know me, worry worry worry.

- I had a really, really good experience connecting with my 10^th graders last week. We were reading Of Mice and Men and we were just at the part where Candy’s dog is getting killer and so it was the logical time to discuss the theme of euthanasia. It was an interesting coincidence that my grandmother died at the same time because she had been sick for a very long time. When the students came in that day, I asked them to journal their thoughts on “mercy killing” and we talked about some of them for a few minutes. The mood was somber from the minute they entered the classroom and saw the topic. As our discussion progressed, I brought up my story of how I was seeing the theme applied to my real life: when someone is suffering, is it better to just let them go? You could have heard a pin drop in the room. I’m not sure what it was, but me and my classes connected that day. They opened up and talked on an entirely different level. It was really amazing, I wish someone had been observing that day! One of my students actually came up to me later in the afternoon and said it was the best class we had all year. I asked the students the next day what it was that went so well. They were all really positive and said they think just having personal stories and opinions helped to open us all up to each other. I had tried to get them to talk that way before, but it hadn’t worked as well. I wish I could bottle that up and use it on a daily basis!

- Speaking of observations, I have my first formal one next week! One of our assistant principals (there’s 5 of them!) is coming in during my 10^th period class to observe our intro activity to “Death of a Salesman” (convenient, I know). I’m relieved that I’m doing yet another unit with which I’m already familiar. But dreading the day when I’m going to have to move on to material which I don’t know as well!