On Reserve

Well, I have just finished my first full week of the second semester, and there have been some interesting occurences. First (I know, this will be TOTALLY SHOCKING for those of you who know me), it's great to be back in the classroom. The brek was wonderful, but even with the planning that goes into it, I really just enjoy teaching and the interaction with students. Okay, now here are the REAL interesting things. Creative writing got cancelled. If any of you know the story behind how I got to teach creative writing in the first place, I'm sure you can feel my pain at the moment. Being an English teacher at heart, I was so excited, but it didn't make with enough kids to be able to have a class. They offered a ton of new electives near the end of last semester, and a bunch of kids had already had creative writing and/or wanted to take other courses, so there weren't enough. There's the part of me who wonders if people didn't want to take creative writing from the science teacher, but that doesn't overwhelm me too much. So there's a love-hate relationship here. I hate the fact that I didn't get to teach it, because I was really excited, but I now have an extra period free this semester that I didn't think I was going to have. Considering the fact that on Tuesdays and Thursdays I would have gone straight through my day without any free periods, I'm trying to view this as a good thing :) ALso, newspaper just went under as well. At Atlee, you were pulling from way over 1000 kids to form one newspaper class that could run efficiently. Here, there are just under a hundred 7-12 graders, so getting a solid commitment was not happening, and we couldn't rely on the four really dedicated individuals to put out the newpaper by themselves. So those are both gone now. Sadness, but I'm at peace with it.

I've been trying ot come up with some interesting stuff with my students, though. One of my students yesterday brought in his reptile/amphibian collection, and it was SO COOL! He had a boa constrictor and iguanas and chameleons and geckos and all sorts of stuff. My favorite, though, was one of the frogs. I'm sure everyone has seen pics for National Geographic or the like witht he bright green, red-bug-eyed frog with partially blue legs sitting on a stick? The rainforest frog? (I don't remember the exact scientific name right now...) Well, he had two of those, and they were awesome! It climbed up my whiteboard and up a cord with its legs stretched out and jumped onto my arm and actually jumped onto one girls forehead and held onto her bangs and she was great about it and thought it was wonderful. It was just a fun time, even though it didn't necessarily have to do with what we were studying at the moment. Enrichment, right?

ALso, my physics kids are doing an egg-drop project, the one where they have to drop an egg from a certain height and get it not to break. I put a whole bunch if stipulations on it, like you can't simply cushion the fall by wrapping it in bubble wrap, and you can't use liquid, so they can't just put the egg into a big bottle of water or something. They are totally into the project, and all of them keep coming up to me, whispering so that other groups can't hear them, "Can we use ... parachutes? Can we use... peanut butter?" And I have about six groups who just KNOW they are going to win. It's exciting when they are excited about what we're doing, and it's lab, which is supposed to be fun anyway and has been fairly bland so far.

Nicaragua is also good. Jason is driving now, which is great, and he loves it. It's also the dry season here, so we are on water reserve. This means that every day from 1-3 and 6-11, we don't have water and are on a reserve tank, which runs out very quickly. So we have to work around that. Sometimes it changes, though. FOr example, I just discovered that we don't have water, and it's 7:00 in the morning. The biggest change, though, is that we actually invested in what is commonly called a widowmaker. The name is a lot worse than the actual item, however. The name comes from when they first started coming out and they weren't all that safe. People got electrocuted in the showers sometimes. But we're good. The only thing that happens is if we try to move between the three heat settings while the water is on, you'll get shocked. So we now have hot water, which is AMAZING and makes me love life. :)

I think that's enough of an update for now. I love you all and miss you!