"Miss Loooooove, can we go to the gym?" and other catchphrases from the dorm.

I was just looking through my photos to look for one that would be a good representative of the last few months, and I thought this one would work well.  These are four of my dorm students (and Mary on the left, another dorm parent).  We had a good time trying out all the different options on PhotoBooth one evening.  Actually, here's another one I liked from that session:

It's hard to believe it's already April!  I got quite a shock during Spring Break when I realized that there were only nine weeks of school left.  Although nine weeks might seem like ample time for several units, I have discovered as a teacher that very little can get done in a week.  Plus, you take that nine weeks and subtract one for the end-of-school craziness, another for the trips we take in the spring (two weeks for 8th grade), and another for the few vacation days we have and activities like Earth Week, and all of a sudden there's hardly any time at all!  

By the way, I find adding lots of pictures to the blog rather tedious, but I do have several albums on Facebook, which you should be able to access even if you don't have an account.

Pictures from the winter

Pictures from early spring

We had school off today for Good Friday.  When we have long weekends, the international dorm students are divided amongst homestay families, which both gives them a window into the lives of American families and gives the dorm staff a break.  That means that I have had the rare opportunity today to not only spend time at home, but to spend it in quietude, without constantly getting distracted by eight students who easily command attention.  I find that even when I'm not on duty, if kids are present, I am working.  "Miss Love, can you get the password [to the computer]?"  "Miss Love, can I get my cell phone?"  "Miss Love, what was the Language Arts homework?"  "Miss Love, can I have ramen?"

I tend to hear the students talking even when they're not here.  After hearing "Miss Loooooove" enough times, it seems to have been imprinted in my brain.  If such a thing can happen.  There are 12 kids in the dorm this year, but four of them are five-day boarders, so only 8 are here on the weekend.  Because I am only technically on duty during the weekend, I have gotten to know these students the best.  They are all Korean, and they are here to improve their English and get into good American high schools.  Each is very unique.  I probably shouldn't broadcast their names, but let me introduce them to you.  Let's start with the girls.

Of the four girls, one stands out as a leader.  She is extremely smart, and she has had great offers for high school.(I could write an entirely separate post about the high school application process.)  Her room is a total mess, and there doesn't seem to be anything I can to fix that.  I constantly ask her to clean up.  After one such request yesterday, she moved her suitcase to the side of the room and hid the junk on her desk under a poster that had fallen off the wall.  It's no wonder she couldn't find her wallet when she went off this weekend!  This girl is in love with everything CSI, and her CSI t-shirt is one of the most beloved elements of her wardrobe.  When I asked 8th grade to write short stories a couple of months ago, this girl wrote a 20-page story about an "extreme second government" and a brilliant young woman who was being recruited to it.  Writing out her fantasy, perhaps?  I expect to see this student at the head of the CIA someday.

Another one of the girls is quieter, but she can be so giggly sometimes, and it's contagious.  She used to be a ballerina, and recently I walked in her room to find her sitting on the floor, talking to a couple other girls while stretching in a really weird position.  I've joined her in this stretching ritual several times, and I can tell you, I don't make it look nearly as graceful as she does.  Another time when I checked in on her, she had laid out her clean laundry of shirts and jeans to dry on the floor, which gave the impression that a group of teenage girls had recently melted into the carpet.  This girl has a strong love for a Korean boy band called Big Bang (actually, all the girls in the dorm share this passion), and she has their pictures plastered all over the walls.  She burned me a CD of Big Bang hits, so now random Korean pop music comes around occasionally when I have my iTunes on shuffle.  It's definitely raising my cool quotient.

The two other girls are sisters, one in eighth grade and one in seventh.  They were both frighteningly quiet when they arrived in August (new this year), but they have slowly come out of their shells.  Both play the flute, and they actually practice by choice!  It's so refreshing to hear them play after literally dragging the boys out of their rooms for music practice.  The eighth grader LOVES cats.  I took her to Barnes and Noble several months ago to buy an SSAT prep book (that's the test they take for high school admission), and after finding the 50-pound book, the girl rushed over to the pet section and plopped down in front of the cat shelf.  Her eyes lit up as she perused the books, and she finally settled on one that is filled with page after page of random felines.  She tells me she has a growing collection of cat books.  Her sister still doesn't talk in English much unless forced, but I've discovered that she has a fiery personality when she gets upset.  When issues with roommates or chores arise, suddenly she is outspoken and fierce - I hope I never get on her wrong side!

Upstairs, there are four Korean boys who are equally entertaining to observe.  In Korean culture, the oldest boy is the natural leader in a group; without saying a word, the others will look to him as an example and for direction.  This year, that boy is one who could easily be a model for J. Crew (although he prefers Dolce and Gabbana).  His style is impeccable, and he definitely takes his wardrobe seriously.  Early in the year, he told me that he had lost one of his ties.  (He wears a tie and jacket to school almost every day.)  I asked him how that happened, and he told me that he was counting them one day and realized one was missing.  "Counting your ties?" I asked, incredulously.  "How many do you have?"  "At least 60," he replied.  60 ties.  He's fifteen.  He also has a passion for 007, and he either wants to be a secret service agent or an architect when he grows up.  I would love to see what he ends up doing; he doesn't really settle for less than he sets out to achieve.

Then there's the next oldest, a boy who has one of the most expressive faces I've seen (I know, that's saying something, coming from me!).  He's a natural actor, even when it comes to protesting having his electronics taken away for not doing his chore.  It's really hard to keep a straight face when disciplining this kid because he has such a wide range of angry, shocked, and offended facial expressions.  I had this student for Secret Santa this year, and I decided to give him something small each day of the week leading up to our Christmas party (where I gave him Hulk boxing gloves that make noise when you hit something - they're pretty sweet).  One of the things I got was a funny little stuffed dinosaur thing from IKEA.  I saw it on his desk when he was packing to go home for Christmas break, and I made a joke about him taking it with him.  To my surprise, he packed it, and then showed me again right before Spring Break that it was again accompanying him to Korea.  That little thing has been around the world more times than I have!  

The other eighth grade boy is my flute student, and it's with him that I have had many interesting discussions about life.  He is really bright - another one whose future I am very curious about.  He played the king in our school's production of "The King and I" this year, and the week of the performance, he asked if I would help him rehearse lines.  I was concerned to see that he was still stumbling over lines (he is a classic procrastinator and only started working on them several weeks before the show), but I was really impressed to see how well he got into the character of the king when show time came.  I have realized that I need to be really careful what I say around this kid, because he is a sponge and remembers even the smallest things I say.  I've noticed him repeating ideas word for word - so if I give a wrong date or name, it will stick with him.  It's a good reason to make sure I have the fine details down when I teach!  No chance to correct what I do and try to pass it off later as what I had been saying all along; he would notice the difference.

Lastly, there's the one seventh grade boy.  He has a hard time sometimes, being at the bottom of the Korean pecking order in the dorm, but he holds it well.  He is careful about what he does, and he wants affirmation a lot.  Earlier in the year, we were at a store together with the 007 boy, and I saw some ties that have musical instruments on them.  The 007 boy plays the clarinet, so I was trying to convince him to buy a clarinet tie.  He wasn't going for it.  The seventh grader noticed them, though, and he started looking at the guitar ties.  (He plays the guitar.)  I successfully convinced him to buy one of these ties, and I am still waiting for him to wear it.  It's pretty hip, I must say.  This boy is also very particular about his desk chair; whereas all the others use the  basic plastic ones provided by the dorm, this kid somehow bought a full executive leather chair.  It's easily the nicest in the dorm... unfortunately, it's used much more as a clothes bin than a seat.

These kids can be so crazy at times, but I have the highest respect for each of them and immensely enjoy hanging out with them.  The bright spots in my days are the little things like listening to the girls explain what makes Big Bang and - let me make sure I get this right - Lee Min Ho (a famous actor) so AMMAAAAZZZZING and gorgeous, or having intense pillow fights with the boys that range all over the top floor of the dorm.  It's those moments that let you get past the constant reminders to turn off their lights and to put their dishes in the dishwasher and to leave for Chimes on time and to clean up after themselves in the bathroom and to turn in their phones at 9:15 and to take out the recycling and to wear a coat when it's cold, etc. etc.  

That's probably enough for now.  I could go on and on about the dorm for hours, but it's hard to put these moments into words.  Here are two pictures from the play, though - and then I'll stop waxing lyrical about my kiddos.  :)

Two of the girls acted, while the other two (in black) helped with the set changes.

Three seven-day boarders and one of the five-day boarders, holding up Mike, who is the guy I work with when I'm on weekend dorm duty.

Day in the Life of Love

Good morning.  It's 0:01 on my computer clock.  I have much more to say than I currently have time to write, but I have been thinking a lot recently about the fact that I haven't updated this blog since Thanksgiving, and tonight I thought I would write a quick word about why that is so.  I'm going to explain by way of taking you through my day today.

6:00.  My clock alarm goes off.  It has to be set to the obnoxious beeping rather than the radio, because I don't wake up to the radio.

6:05.  My cell phone alarm goes off.  Even with these two alarms set, I still occasionally don't wake up.  (maybe it has to do with staying up for stuff like this?  but hey, as a student continuously reminds me, "we only live once.")

6:11.  Get out of bed, shower.

6:30.  Wake up the four girls who leave for school early on Tuesdays and Thursdays to participate in the middle school hand chimes ensemble.  This group achieved a top rank in a competition last week - they only got one point taken off!  Unfortunately, that point was lost for style, because four of the girls were chewing gum.  :(

6:35.  Breakfast of yogurt, a bagel with cream cheese, and orange juice.  Read the lesson.

7:00.  Wake up the other two girls who aren't in chimes.  Check on the chimes girls to make sure they're eating breakfast.

7:35.   Leave for the classroom.  I spend the 40 minutes before students start to arrive by drawing the date on the board (I'm doing a theme of games this week, and today was Parcheesi.  Turns out students don't know that game anymore), cleaning up my desk, and grading Gulliver's Travels essays from my eighth grade class.

8:15.  Students start to arrive.  The next 20 minutes involves keeping the mayhem to a dull roar as students relax during homeroom.  This group of seventh graders is particularly social and energetic, so they need some time in the morning to let it all out.  Unfortunately, even with this time, they need to let even more out every couple of minutes during the 80 minutes we spend together for Language Arts and Social Studies.

8:50.  Class starts.  Today I switch LA and SS time to make use of the computer lab first thing.  We head over, where the students start making charts of the stocks they are investing in with their "OakBuilder" accounts.  More on our class economic system, Oak Bucks, in another installment.  Even though the students told me they have graphed on the computer multiple times already, they still don't remember how to enter data or format graphs.  *sigh*

9:30.  5-minute break in between classes.  I spend the time drawing a map of the new seating arrangement on the board.  We are reading A Midsummer Night's Dream in LA, and the students are having a difficult time acclimating themselves to Shakespeare, so I assigned parts for the play and we'll be acting it out in class.  The seats are arranged in a sort of semi-circle (if you know Tenacre, it looks like the shape of the old logo), with space by the white board for a stage.  

9:35.  When class starts, I hand out a list of the assigned roles and the students rearrange their desks based on their characters.  I outline the stage in duct tape at the front of the room.  After giving the students more time to let it all out, we act out the first half of Act III, scene ii.  There's only minor chaos, and the visualization seems to help the class understand what's going on.

10:15.  The students pack up and head off to their next class.  I get a call that there are "various breads" in the teacher's lounge to celebrate my half birthday (which is actually February 29).  The lounge is all the way up the hill, so I postpone a visit and grade more essays instead.  I also start replying to the daily onslaught of e-mails and check in with other staff members about dorm issues.

11:30.  I head up to lunch at the Dining Hall, which today is teriyaki chicken, rice, and green beans.  I'm not on lunch duty, so I have the privilege of eating with people who don't act out a fainting spell every time I ask them to eat one small head of broccoli.  

12:00.  Middle School core teachers' meeting.  We discuss weekly detention location options, homework issues, curriculum, and other daily logistics.  Accompanied by Thin Mints, this meeting is a good one.  I also partake in my half birthday banana bread.

12:40.  Back to the classroom for my last planning period, where I finish grading essays and answer more e-mails.  

1:25.  The sound of small rolling wheels alerts me that eighth grade is on its way.  They come into the classroom, wheeling those odd crossovers between suitcases and backpacks behind them; they remark on the date and the new desk arrangement and generally goof off for the 5 minutes before class starts.  One of the boys puts my frog cushion outside on the window ledge, which he later justifies by telling me that the frog was hot.  Yes, my classroom has a regular (and uncontrollable) flow of heat, but I don't think it affects inflatable frogs.

1:30.  Eighth grade spends LA finishing up illustrations for the satirical fairy tales they have been writing (to culminate our study of Gulliver's Travels) and adding assignments from Winter Term to their portfolios.  Even though they are working independently, the room is relatively calm, with an air of productivity.  What a change from seventh grade.  I collect miniature replicas of the Globe Theatre that students were given the opportunity to create for extra credit.  Pretty neat model I found on the internet: www.papertoys.com/globe.htm

2:10.  5-minute break between classes.  Some students continue working on portfolios, others go to ask the Admissions Director for chocolate, others lounge about in the reading corner and attempt a power nap.  I check e-mails.

2:15.  Social Studies begins.  Eighth grade happens to have two projects going on at a time; as they finished their satires in LA, they have been finishing a research project on the colonies in SS.  This is a working period, where students have time to add facts to their colony-shaped posters, print out pictures, and conclude their research.  Each was assigned one of the original colonies to study, looking for facts on the colony's history, geography, and culture.  

2:55.  Class ends, and the longest 10 minutes of the eighth graders' lives begins: nutrition break.  Because PE is the final period of the day, our schedule allows for a 10-minute break for students to eat something that should give them the energy required to make it through sports.  Most middle schoolers have eaten their snack before 9:30, though, so this break amounts to 10 minutes of trying to escape from my classroom.

3:05.  Eighth grade is set free, and seventh grade descends upon the classroom to complete their Oak Bucks classroom tasks; they put chairs up on desks, pick up bits of debris from the floor, straighten bags and coats in the hallway, and clean up the couch corner.  Five minutes later, they are gone, leaving me in peace to decompress from the day.  I answer even more e-mails and print out a selection of propaganda posters from WWII.  We are beginning our unit on the war tomorrow in seventh grade, so I will decorate the room accordingly.

4:15.  The students return from PE.  Instead of returning to the dorm, as we usually do at this time, I stay with the eighth grade dorm students for a meeting about the upcoming trip to Costa Rica.  Each grade in Middle School takes a trip in the spring, but the trips are in jeopardy this year because of the economic situation.  Today's meeting was an opportunity for students and parents in eighth grade to suggest fundraising ideas.  Various bake sale and service project ideas are tossed around, with the promise of more discussion to come.

5:45.  I head up to dinner with the dorm kids.  On the menu: BBQ ribs, roast potatoes, cooked zucchini, and baked beans.  The ribs go first, followed by the potatoes, followed by the beans.  Each student dutifully takes two slices of zucchini, leaves the rest for the staff, and gapes as we adults scarf down the delicious vegetable.  Conversation is sparse as students fill their empty bellies.

6:30.  I return to the dorm with the students who have passed up the opportunity for free computer lab time.  I quickly realize my time would be better spent in my classroom, so I return with high hopes of getting settled for tomorrow.  Instead, I find a dorm student frantically searching my room for a poster in the shape of South Carolina.  I have no idea where it went, which is unfortunate because the project is due tomorrow.  We hope my dutiful hallway monitors didn't take it for recycling.  :/  Ready to get down to business, I instead find an e-mail from a parent that needs attending to.  By the time I finish, I need to rush back for...

8:00.  Flute lesson with a dorm student.  The student complains about not being able to play a low G, which I take to be procrastination or excuses.  He tends to avoid actually playing (although he is opening up to the idea more as our lessons progress).  In an attempt to prove him wrong, I try out the flute, and discover that there's a problem with the keys.  I give him my flute to play instead, which he takes a liking to.  We manage to finish up the lesson - he on my flute, me playing the old flute I learned on back in fifth grade.  As usual, our playing is interspersed with questions about life and Christian Science.  This student is not a CSer, but his interest in it has grown over the past few months.  After the lesson finishes at 9:00, he stays to continue talking about prayer and healing - a fascinating discussion.

9:30.  Suddenly remembering that one of my students has a birthday tomorrow, I run out to the grocery store to pick up butter and chocolate chips.  The student is a dorm student, so I also arrange for one of the other dorm staff to make cupcakes for breakfast (our traditional birthday celebration; for some reason it makes the most sense to celebrate at breakfast.  I'm not sure why, come to think of it, rather than doing something in the evening.  Not everything in the dorm is backed by logic).  

10:30.  Cookie preparation begins.  As the cookies are baking, I continue answering e-mails and planning for classes tomorrow.  Eighth grade is easy - we'll be eating cookies and reading satirical fairy tales.  Seventh grade LA will involve a continuation of A Midsummer Night's Dream (acted out, as I described to the class, over the course of midwinter mornings. Some of them appreciated the humor).  SS will be a discussion in response to the questions, "what are the causes of war?  Is war ever just?" along with an introductory PowerPoint I found online.  It's not cheating, it's being resourceful.

0:01.  Accompanied by fresh cookies and cold milk, I am inspired to update my life on the internet.

0:45.  With the kitchen still, sadly, a mess, I will brush my teeth and fall into bed.  And this is why my blog goes for several months without an update.  :)

Giving Thanks

In the spirit of the holiday, I have decided to write in the context of what I am grateful for. This month has certainly been exciting! Where to start?

1. Snow. I'm grateful for snow! I know a crazy intense Chicago winter is upon me, but I still get excited when I see the little white flakes falling outside my classroom windows. Our first snowfall this year came mid October! I pulled out my camera and got a couple of shots of the boys' soccer team practicing in the snow - in shorts, of course.

2. Scaring children. Well, that's not entirely true, but I did have an entertaining Halloween this year. The evening started with trick-or-treating, where I accompanied a cat, Spongebob Squarepants, a leopard, some sort of angel, a vampire, and George Bush trick-or-treating (and later met up with a road, Princess Leah, and Sharpay from "High School Musical"). Then I had the pleasure of chaperoning the middle school dance, which actually turned out to be one of the less awkward middle school dances I have been to. The kids actually danced! A refreshing change from the wallflower dances typical to this age group.

The best part, though, was probably the scary night hike that I participated in; the dorm students went on a hike in the school woods, and another teacher and I hid in the woods to spice things up a little. I started following them halfway through the walk, making small noises to set them on edge, while the other teacher waited in a tree and swung down on a rope as the group approached. Ah, the thrill of hearing kids scream. Wait, that doesn't sound good... These students love being scared, though, and have been begging to watch "The Blair Witch Project" ever since. Nope.


3. Real-time learning. It was quite an experience to study the election with the middle school students this year! We watched the debates - and some SNL clips, learned about the important issues, tracked the major candidates, and tried to sort out the electoral college.

After weaving election topics throughout social studies for the month of October, we wrapped it all together with an evening event on Election Day. The students stayed after school for an election "convention" that included pizza, cow tag, presentations, and live election results. Each grade focused on a different area - sixth grade studied local elections and candidates, seventh grade studied swing states, and eighth grade suffered through the electoral college - for which they created informational posters and explained their material to the other grades. Because of school the next day, we couldn't keep the students all night, but they got to watch results come in from the East Coast and some Midwest states.

We also did a mock election, which Barack won by 68%. McCain got 30% of the vote, and Nadar earned an impressive 3% (one vote). Being from Illinois, it was an easy win for Barack! I was glad to see, though, that the students were able to speak intelligently abou both candidates, the VP hopefuls, and the major issues. My goal was that the students would internatlize enough to look back in 20 years and remember that they learned about Barack and McCain in middle school, and I think that goal was achieved!

All in all, my classes are going well; we have finished To Kill a Mockingbird in seventh grade and did a quick poetry unit before moving on to Avi's Nothing But the Truth. Having watched Romeo and Juliet kick their buckets, we will be moving on to Gulliver's Travels in eighth grade. We took a quick hiatus from literature to write short stories, though, and I was impressed with the creativity and variety of subjects that the students have explored. In social studies, we are in the midst of studying World War I (much to the students' dark delight) in seventh grade, and in eighth grade we are learning about Charles I - learning about the British politics that would later prompt the colonies to search out a more democratic form of government.

4. Playing with the dorm. Up until recently, I have been working one weekend a month in the dorm. Just a week ago, however, the dorm director left, so from now on I will be working every other week. Yes, more work, but the kids make it worthwhile! I worked a couple of weekends ago, and other dorm parent I was working with (Mike) and I decided to get the kids cooking. We made pizza and Jessica's Marshmallow Clouds - some of you should know those cookies, the chocolate ones with marshmallows baked inside. Flour, sugar, and pepperoni ended up everywhere, but it was definitely worth it. Korean boys and girls typically keep to themselves, and it can be a struggle to get them to interact. But they all got into the mixing, the kneading, the stuffing, and the baking (not to mention the eating).

Although I would enjoy having my evenings and weekends free, I have found working in the dorm to be really rewarding. There are eleven students total, eight of which stay on the weekend. These eight are all Korean students, sent across land and sea to learn English well enough to be accepted to a good American high school (so that after that, they can get into a good American university). These students are all bright, hard working, and ambitious. And crazy, good-natured kids. By seeing them both in the classroom and in the dorm, I have the opportunity to see them write impressive short stories and ask intelligent questions about the execution of Charles I during the day, and then chase each other around the living room with pillows and giggle in unnaturally high pitches after drinking helium out of a balloon at night.

5. Mango. This past month has been characterized by a few other random events, including buying a new gas tank (mice somehow ate through some element of my original one) and almost losing my cat. As you all probably know, Mango is a stray cat that found her way to me last November. She was found on Principia's campus. After posting a flier and asking around without receiving any response, I kept her. I took her to the vet, had her all checked out, and assumed things were fine - although I did always wonder where she had appeared from. Well, a few weeks ago, I had occasion to take her to a vet in Elgin, and when the vet found out she was a stray, she offered to look for a microchip (a tiny chip that is implanted to be able to track lost animals). She found one! The short version of the story is that they discovered Mango's original owner, who does live at Principia. This owner was contacted and told what happened. She was actually happy to hear that Mango (Annie, as she knows the cat) is alive an in a good home; she thought the cat had been eaten by a coyote, but she is thinking the cat may have run away because she didn't get along well with the family's other animals. So now Mango (no longer Annie) is now officially officially mine! I am very grateful.

6. Unexpected entertainment. As a final note, I thought I would mention that I went to a body-building competition last weekend. James King (friend from Prin and fellow Admissions Counselor last year) was in the area for a wedding, and his brother just happened to be in a body-building competition nearby, so we stopped in to watch. For clarification's sake, the picture here is not James' brother. This guy was one of the most memorable contestants; he was frighteningly chipper, and his hair was, oddly, the same tone as the fake tan he probably sprayed on that morning. James and I dubbed him Rocket Man because in some of his stances, he looked like he might take off for the moon at any moment. It was a very weird experience to sit there and watch men and women flex in skimpy swimsuits, and I was grateful to see that, while James' brother is impressively built, he still looks (well, except for the obligatory sprayed tan) fairly normal.

Well, that's my update for now! Thanks to a newly-updated firewall at school, I can't access my blog on campus, which makes updating it difficult to do spontaneously. So, to my short list of gratitude, I should also add the library's free internet. I'm also grateful for my co-workers at FRCDS, who keep life entertaining and bright through "The Office," Carcassonne, coffee breaks, prairies, and meaningful conversations.

Fall in full swing

Sunday afternoon: I am sitting in the living room of the dorm, typing away as the dorm boys run around the hallway after each other.  The slightly off-key notes of a piano waft up the stairwell from the girls' rec room downstairs, where one of the girls practices the same song that she plays every day.  I have no idea what the song is, but I know it very well by now.  In the kitchen to my left, the dorm parents are stocking the cupboards full of Goldfish, Oreos, and Sun Chips - the fruits of a recent Costco trip.  It's a typical afternoon in the dorm.  :)

It's been what, six weeks since I wrote last?  I am continually amazed at how quickly time can escape without notice.  These past weeks have been very rich and entertaining, not to mention educational.  As I mentioned in my last post, the first week of school for the middle schoolers involves a trip to LOC, a camp up in Michigan.  This week provided an excellent foundation for the year, and at the same time gave me a great avenue for getting to know the kids better.  We spent the three days climbing (and jumping off) dunes, canoeing (and being dumped out of canoes), walking across ropes suspended 30 feet in the air, singing songs about alligators and moose and bananas, and exploring the woods.  

The pictures in this post are from the LOC trip.  The one above is from a game we played where the students were asked to find a partner and come up with a unique frog call.  We then blindfolded everyone, mixed them up, and asked them to find their partner by using the frog call.  Hilarious.  

Above, you see one of my favorite shots from our afternoon on the beach of Lake Michigan.  It looks so mystical and ritualistic... and perhaps it is.  I'm not sure what they were up to.  

I took over 300 pictures at LOC, and you can see a few more of them in an album on Facebook; this link should work even if you don't have a Facebook account:  http://www.facebook.com/album.php?air=2008567&l=b894aid=113100487.

So let's see.  My classes are going pretty well so far.  We are reading To Kill a Mockingbird in seventh grade Language Arts, and we're just now reading about Tom Robinson's trial.  This group is pretty good about debating and getting into issues, so I am looking forward to some lively discussions.  In social studies, we are learning about the Industrial Revolution.  This class is a good challenge for me, because the textbook is rather strange and random, so I have to provide the overarching structure of the class myself.  I am familiar with everything we are studying, but I'm not experienced with putting it all together in a learning form.  (by the way, the picture above is a random shot I got when we were visiting the dunes... there isn't anything important about it, I just like how it looks like these students were washed ashore recently from a shipwreck.  In reality, I have no idea what they were doing.)

With the election nearing, I am also dedicating a day each week to the election in both seventh and eighth grade social studies.  We'll be talking about the candidates, the issues, and the swing states, culminating in an evening election day something-or-other.  I'm still working out the details.  :)  I asked the students to watch at least 30 minutes of Thursday's vice presidential election, though, and it was pretty interesting to have a discussion about the issues afterwards.  

(This picture was the beginning of an hour of canoeing/canoe tipping/river wading - more pictures on Facebook.)  In eighth grade language arts, we are reading Romeo and Juliet, and (spoiler alert) we're getting close to the death of the star-crossed lovers!  This bunch is pretty bright, and they seem to be digesting Shakespeare pretty well - although they grumble as we go.  :)  I am looking forward to a debate at the end of the play to determine who is ultimately responsible for the deaths, as the students have already been making connections about who is to blame and which characters are doing the right thing.  For example, was it selfish for Juliet to run off with Romeo?  At the end of Act III (right after Romeo is banished and Juliet decides to fake her death) I asked the students to write "Dear Abby" advice letters to Juliet about what she should do next, and while most of them advised her to follow her heart and go after Romeo, there were a few students who cautioned her and suggested that she marry Paris, which would be a more sensible choice and would take into consideration the wishes of her family.  After all, Juliet is only 13, and can you really be sure of your heart at this age?  

Romeo and Juliet ties in nicely with eighth grade social studies, where we are studying Shakespeare's biggest supporter: Elizabeth I.  The curriculum for this class makes use of a lot of primary documents, which adds a unique dynamic to the class.  We recently studied some of the sea explorations that took place during Elizabeth's time.  The students were given a prospectus sheet for each of the four expeditions - outlining the captain's experience and expectations, projected wins and foreseeable dangers.  They then had to invest money in one or more of these expeditions based on how successful they thought each trip would be.  Then we read accounts of each expedition and found out how much money they won or lost.  It was very interesting to watch the outcome!  Only one expedition - that of Sir Francis Drake - was really successful, and his earnings were 4700%!  The only other expedition that was successful gained 6%; the other two lost everything.  So the students got to learn about these expeditions from an investor's perspective.  

Classes take up a good chunk of my time, but I feel like they are just the tip of my life iceberg.  I'm the seventh grade advisor, which means I have them for homeroom and for one extra advisory period a week.  I am also in charge of a newsletter class once a week, and I'm pulling together the semi-regular middle school newsletter.  When we have home volleyball games, I am in charge of the scoreboard - very exciting stuff!  

I'm also enjoying living in the dorm and getting to know some of the students that way.  There are 41 kids in the middle school and eleven of them are in the dorm, most of whom are from South Korea.  They are really fun students - they have a good mixture of intelligence and goofiness.  We played lazar tag as a group last weekend, and I now have an idea of who to avoid becoming enemies with!  

Although I spend most of my time in buildings, I am coming to see that the Elgin area has a lot to offer outside!  The school sits right next to the Fox River (from which it got its name), and there is a great bike trail that runs the entire length of the river - 33 miles total.  I haven't done the entire thing yet, but maybe this spring... :)  We are also surrounded by forest preserves and prairies, and I have gone out seed picking a couple of times - once at a nearby prairie and once right on campus!  I didn't know seed picking was such an established art form, but I am becoming wise; there is a group of people who goes out three times a week to prairies in the area to collect seeds from local prairie plants, which they then spread around to other local prairies.  I am learning that this is an important aspect of prairie restoration.  

OK - in the next several hours I need to buy butter, look for an audio recording of To Kill a Mockingbird at the library, bake cookies (rewards for vocabulary/grammar bingo), plan out the next month of election study, figure out what I'm doing in my classes tomorrow (if not for the rest of the week), rearrange the desks in my classroom, wash dishes, and take out the trash.  I should probably get started on that.

Raining acorns

I have survived the first day!  I figured I should post something now, because if I don't do it right away, who knows when it will happen.  :)  I would consider today a success - no one cried, no one threw tomatoes at me, no one asked their parents to switch to another school.  That's a good thing, right?

Tomorrow, the entire middle school (40 students, plus six teachers) drive seven hours to Leelanau Outdoor Center (LOC), which is a week-long leadership camp put on by the Leelanau/Kohahna camp (which is for Christian Scientists during the summer, but they open it up to area schools during the year).  It's a great way for the students to bond, and I know by the end of the four days I will know them well, too!  So before I go, here are some pictures of the classroom.

It really is a beautiful room!  There are a lot of oak trees on campus, and one happens to be right outside my room.  Whenever there is a breeze, a hoard of acorns falls on the roof of the building, sounding like an intense - and quick - hail storm.  It adds a fun dynamic to the tree-house room!

I teach seventh and eighth grade.  Seventh grade has 15 students, and I have them for homeroom/advisory, language arts, social studies, and study skills.  Study skills happens to be on Monday (it's once a week), so today we were together from 8:50 to 11:20!  I will have to find ways to switch things up for them so it doesn't feel like an interminable time in my room.

Eighth grade has 14 students in it, and I have them for language arts and social studies.  The small class sizes are great!  What a luxury in today's school world, no?

This is my favorite area of the room - the sitting/reading area.  This room used to be split in two, so it's a large space now!  I like having the flexibility to be able to create different sections - even having the round table you see below for working with smaller groups or conferencing.  I brought some books from home and have created a lending library, which hopefully some students will take advantage of.  I also went to IKEA and picked up a few things - the green chair, the rug, and (my favorite) the frog cushion.  That was quite a hit with the students!

I have to share this picture with you.  Last weekend I was at a friend's house, and I saw the "chat noir" poster in a storage closet.  I had just been looking for some posters to make the classroom look more interesting, and I asked this friend - jokingly, of course - if she was using this poster.  She took me seriously, though, and gave it to me!  I have to admit, I can't complain.  I love the poster itself, and it fits Mango so well!  I couldn't resist trying to get her picture with it.  Posing animals is next to impossible, of course, but after a few tries to get her to walk across the poster (holding my free hand above it for her to play with), she sat in this position and I 

got the picture.  

Lastly, I put together a bulletin board outside the room to give the students a sense of what they will be studying this year in social studies.  It ended up being rather complicated, but the idea is that what you see is a combination of what the seventh and eighth graders will be learning this year in social studies (yellow cards), set in the context of transportation advances that were happening at the same time.  Here's an idea of what it looks like: 

And that's about it for now!  Now I get to change into comfortable clothes... and pack for a four-day camping trip with 40 middle-schoolers.

Elgin apartment

The move has officially happened!  I am mostly unpacked and settled into the dorm at Fox River (FRCDS).  I'm living in two rooms off the resident director's apartment - but I have full use of the kitchen in that apartment, so it's pretty much a regular apartment.  Except that it's in the downstairs of a middle school dorm.

Cindy and Aaron (mom and brother) graciously flew out to help with the move this past weekend, and I am eternally grateful to them.  A 10' truck seems like it would be plenty of room for one person to move, but it was tight!  Picture a life-size 3D jigsaw puzzle, and you will have a good picture of what it was like loading up that truck.  We were successful, though, and we smoothly made the six-hour drive to Elgin.

Here's a taste of the unloading process:

      

Karen, my new boss, drove me around the area on Sunday to introduce me to the Elgin/Dundee area.  She felt badly that there isn't a grocery store "close;" there are three in the area, but they are each about 15 minutes away.  15 minutes?  I could only laugh.  After spending the past six years in Elsah, where the closest anything is 20 minutes away, I feel like everything here is right around the corner.  Grocery store, Panera, train station, library, park, mall, Dunkin' Donuts, climbing wall, IKEA - all within a 15 minute drive!

OK, now to the real reason you all are reading this: PICTURES.  Here's the new place!

Living room - 

This alcove is meant to be a closet (since the room is technically a bedroom), but I turned it into an office area - 

the cozy desk area :) -

closet/shelves in between the living room and bedroom (and the door on the left is to the bathroom) - 

bedroom - 

view from the door leading into the kitchen - 

the kitchen (the room on the other side of the cabinets is the dorm director's living room) - 

I got the idea for the frames from a friend at Principia... simple, but better than a blank wall!

I'm also excited about the entertainment set-up

there, where I have both my stereo set up and 

extra speakers that can connect to my laptop for

watching movies while I cook  :)