catching some butterflies

I'm baking breakfast bars and they take an hour, so I figured I'd update the ol' blog. I didn't realize that it'd been a while.

The biggest news is that David is now a Master of Public Policy.

I made him try on his stuff the day before.

There's a (semi-blurry) picture of him doing the walk across the stage.

Beyond that, not much has happened. My students are finishing up plays and research papers, getting ready to start The Great Gatsby and Lord of the Flies to wrap up the year. My 11th graders take their last English SOL (if they pass both of them) on Monday and Tuesday; it'll be nice to have them over with and get the scores back. Keep your fingers crossed.
Also keep your fingers crossed for me. I've applied to two different places and this is about the time of the year when they start hiring people outside of the district. I'd love to find a job sooner rather than later, and the two districts I've applied to I've already met with (the job fairs I went to in February) and they seemed to consider me a good possibility. They're pretty large districts, so hopefully I hear from them soon. We're also starting to seriously look and set up appointments for housing, so there's another thing. I asked everyone to keep their fingers crossed/pray for me to find a good job and great place to live and it turned out fantastic, so keep that positive thinking going for us.

And, for your viewing pleasure, here are 2 videos I took of some of my 5th bell kids presenting the first part of their play.

Raisin in the Sun
(I wanted to tape more of this, but Kenny was making the whole class laugh with his hand going out into the air every time he had to say a line. I think you can hear Stephanie in the background go, "Mrs. P-- watch his hand!!" before giggling. I had to stop the video because I was starting to shake the camera so much.)

The Piano Lesson

These were the best of the 2 groups. My battery in my camera was dying, so it was difficult to film more than a few seconds. This week, since the groups are finishing reading, they're to come up with a talk show modeled after "Oprah", "Maury", or "Jerry Springer" using their characters and the conflict(s) in their plays. They were really excited about it and were totally into the idea. They did great using just the script, so I'm really looking forward to seeing what they come up with! I'll be sure to tape some of it.