*Science Fair was a trip. We definitely didn't have one of those at Franklin back in the day. A couple of funny things...that morning, I got a call from one of my fellow teachers. I was awake, but in the middle of my snoozebar fandango. She called because she realized that no one told me that we weren't wearing our school t-shirts, that we were wearing our big boy clothes that day. Well, I haven't worn my big boy clothes in a while and didn't realize that none of them fit me anymore. So I found the one pair of pants that I could use a belt so that they wouldn't fall to my ankles (a bad thing in education). The science fair actually went OK. The kids fooled the judges into thinking that they knew what they were talking about. Later that night we had the parents come into school to see the projects and have the awards ceremony...my boss pulled a couple of us aside. He was laughing as he told us that he was just out in the hall and heard a couple of the Moms comparing how hard each of them worked on their kids' projects. It made me laugh for two reasons...one, neither of the kids' moms' projects won awards and two, I remember my Mom's long house when I was in 7th grade.
*The trip to Lahaina was pretty cool. It was a 2 hour walking tour. The first day started OK, then it started to rain, but we were pretty stuck as we would have had to walk back to the vans in the rain anyway, so we decided to just finish the tour. It went fine. The second day, the weather was beautiful, but the kids were horrendous. Six of them ended up with extra writing assignments on their behavior. Here's a few pictures:
So, a few changes at school. We had to scrap the one-to-one advisory sessions. We just weren't finding the time to get to them. Everyone liked the idea, it just wasn't working. Maybe we'll try it again down the road. We changed the kids' groups. I'm glad because we had ended up doing de facto tracking - putting the kids into groups based on so-called ability. Sign language and the Recognition Committee idea are doing well.
Monday & Tuesday, I'm teaching a lesson on the missionaries who came to Hawaii in the 19th century. I'm going to have to make a concentrated effort not to call them a bunch of religious fascists and piss off the fundamentalist parents we have. One of the people I work with (whose son is also a student) let me borrow her copy of the movie Hawaii - to see if I wanted to use it with the kids. This is a movie from the 60's with Julie Andrews and Max Van Sydow. At least 2/5ths of the movie has really hot Hawaiian chicks running around half-naked. The sad thing is, it still didn't make the movie interesting. Well, I'm not going to show the entire 2 hr 40 min movie, but I did find a couple of scenes (sans boobies) to use.
*The other day was the first anniversary of our podcast, The Stuart Bedasso Show. My goal was to have 10,000 downloads the first year. To be honest, I didn't think we'd have a shot at it. But we did manage 9,700 - and we're already over 9,800. I'm going for 20,000 for this year. Listen to the podcast, dammit! (I'm going to scare people into listening)
*The new apartment is cool so far. Now I guess I can actually buy some furniture. I was sleeping on that bed roll all week. Tonight will be my first night back in a regular bed.
In fact, I think I hear it calling me, now. G'night, y'all.
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