quick update:

This week was pretty good. I had this great feeling of belonging and being a part of the school. Not that I didn't before, but for some reason, this week it was really there and really strong.
We had the first meeting of Legasy (Leading Education of Gay and Straight Youth) on Thursday, it went really, really well and next week should be even better. I hope to bring younger kids there because it's mostly 11th/12th graders. I told a few of my 10th graders who will (hopefully) make it next week and Jerilyn is going to mention it to some of her 9th graders. I think it would be interesting and beneficial for those 9th/10th graders to see older students who are out and also the opposite--older students helping younger students.
Last night we went to Pints and Pipes. I was really impressed, David and I agreed it's definitely a bar we would hang out in. Plus, they have a Canadian flag in one of their rooms-- so, I'm obligated to like them. They were also playing hockey games along with the basketball game on, which is not something I've seen down here.
Big news hit Williamsburg today: Pres. Bush visited. Apparently, as NPR reported, the Democrats chose WBG as their retreat and Bush came down to address them. It wasn't open to the public and it's probably already happened, but it would have been funny to see all those cars come through the small streets of downtown WBG.
Later today or this weekend, I'll probably post pictures of the "Poetry Is..." quilt/collage that my students made and also some imitation/response poems they wrote the past two days--some of them are hilarious! I'm really glad a majority of my students enjoy or tolerate poetry. I only have a few that hate it. One of the poetry haters admitted to me he thinks he hates it because the poems they put in the textbooks are boring/not very interesting to him, I told him he's probably right and one day he would find the poetry that suited him. So far, most of them seem to be enjoying the poetry packet I made, since I didn't find much to work with in their textbooks. I wish I could teach poetry for longer than only 3 weeks. I'm probably just dreading what's coming after it: Julius Caesar and a research paper... ugh.