Life Goes On

So first of all, how is school? Yesterday was fantastic, today dragged. The funny thing is, I changed my plans for yesterday (the first day of school) at almost the last minute, while my plans for today had been sitting around for weeks. Anyway, we've discussed What It Takes To Be Good At Math, which was amazing--out of 25 groups of four (100 students), only one group shared something like "knowing your basic skills and being able to do problems fast." Most groups said things like "work hard," "listen," "work as a team," "determination," "patience," and my favorite: "Don't be embarrassed when you don't know stuff. Ask questions." Wow! I'm looking forward to referring to that for the rest of the year. Another big thing I'll get to pull on is group roles. I'm using Team Captain, Facilitator, Recorder/Reporter, and Resource Manager, and I got the whole middle school (six or seven teachers) on board! The other teachers are great, and I can already tell that they're doing fantastic things to make these roles really useful across our classes.

Um, what else. We played a Silent Board Game, where I make up rules for the game and the students have to figure out what they are. Without talking. Hahaha. I was very impressed by them as risk-takers; I had hardly any trouble getting people to come up and guess the outputs for my inputs. This is such a huge asset for students to have, that willingness to just put themselves out there. One girl even brought Green Eggs and Ham into my START class (a fun reading class at the beginning of each day, stands for Students and Teachers Reading Together). She read a well-selected passage to connect the story to the risk-taking we discussed in math. (The Cat in the Hat or somebody keeps refusing to even try green eggs and ham--will not eat them in a box, will not eat them with a fox--but in the end, Sam (I am) convinces him to have a taste, and he likes them a lot.)

Right. That's enough for school. Oh, the photo is from Capture the Flag, one of the many activities enjoyed by all at the overnight retreat for all middle schoolers last week.

Here's a photo of Chinatown, where Patrick and I went last Sunday. Picked up some cheap slippers, a cute jar with a panda climbing into it to put my pens in, and some groceries. And lucky bamboo, which Patrick loves and which doesn't need much sun. Had a huge lunch, too. I discovered that the cold thing I love, the round slices made of soy sheets with mushrooms in the middle, that's the only vegetarian part of the dish with the jellyfish and the ham and stuff, is called "Vegetarian Shanghai Chicken." Strange.

Chinatown is also host to a small museum of the history of Chinese in the Midwest. Maybe one day we'll go there.