Can I get a prescription for caffeine?

This week has been a whirlwind. And I'm awfully glad it's a three day weekend. I have a lot of things to accomplish in a very short period of time.

Thursday and Friday proved to be long, but good, days at school. I am learning so much about my students, and it breaks my heart. I started to work on some reader response type questions in a whole group setting this week. In regular person talk, that means that I find moments in the text and I ask them to relate them to their own lives and experiences and share with the class. It's a good way to get kids to start talking/thinking about what they are reading. And through that, I am learning so much about their lives. Things that they aren't even saying...but showing in the way they respond to questions. And it is so, so sad. I suspect that very few of my students have a family like I have, and like Andy has. I suspect that very few of them ever feel the love and support and care that I did growing up. There certainly are some, but probably not more than a handful in each class.

Anyway...I have also decided to scrap my lesson plans for the end of this six weeks. I talked to my department chair (who is in the room next to me...making her my only neighbor in my lonely hallway...and used to teach 9th grade) and we both agreed that this bunch is not ready for Romeo and Juliet yet. So I'm going back to the textbook and figuring out some things this weekend. Because basically after this week, I have no idea what I am doing. It's a good thing Andy gave me a fun present of these.

I also picked up two Extra-Curricular Activities this week. I will be the freshman class sponsor and the English coach for the Academic Super Bowl. I'm not really sure how I picked them up, but I did. I'm excited, though.

At some point, though, I may need one of these.

Last night, though, was pretty low key. I made dinner for some friends from church who had a new baby a few weeks ago. My poor pot pies were not very pretty, but the one we had tasted pretty yummy. The crusts were fallling apart. It turns out I'm not very good at using store bought crust, because I don't have "feel" for it. So I'm better off making my own because I can work it. Then we just relaxed. And I rearranged the living room bookshelf again. I'll post a picture later when I get it all together. Today we are going to a nearby town to do some shopping. We need a wedding gift for next weekend, new gym shoes for both of us, and I could use a few more outfits for school. And then we'll also run to Hobby Lobby, so who knows what I'll get there. And hopefully we'll have dinner out! At a real restaurant!