hey all,
Last week on Wednesday we had the graduation ceremony for my class. It was really touching, and emotional, and it went pretty well. The odd thing of course is that everyone came to school the next day and we tried to have regular class. The students were all afflicted with a severe case of "senioritis," which seems like it will continue until March 27th, the last day of class for the school year.
On Friday last week I asked my teachers to complete some worksheets from a curriculum design book to help them think about the big ideas, skills, goals and concepts we wanted our students to walk away from class with. The more books I read about curriculum design, classroom instruction, school management, and classroom discipline, the more books that get added to my "to read" shelf over at Good Reads.
My hope is to get some teacher development started, and maybe change the school for the better. We'll see. I stayed late at the school yesterday to have a conference with the boss and the father of one of our graduating students. He gave us some wonderful comments and some things that he thought we might want to focus our attention on in the future. And one of his best points was not whether or not we listened to him, or were thankful for his advice, but whether we actually did anything about it. Reading all those books will be interesting, I'm sure (as one of the proverbs in the "Kushiel" fantasy series goes, "All knowledge is worth having"), but what really matters is whether anything changes at the school.
I've got my trip to the US coming up, with all the attendant worries, concerns, plans, intentions, etc that go with an international trip. Also coming up is the second season of Game of Thrones on HBO, which I'm highly looking forward to catching. The new season of South Park has already started, with their first episode being a satirical take on the TSA (Transportation Security Administration), or Toilet Safety Administration in the episode. Speaking of which, it just occurred to me to check my visa status and I realized that my re-entry permit expired last year and I need to go to the immigration bureau and renew it. Luckily, this can be done in one day, and I have two days off before I leave for the US. I could probably even go to the bureau early on the morning that I leave and get it done in time, but there's no reason to push it so far.
Today was a national holiday, so Michi and I went to see Star Wars: Episode 1 in 3D. Not bad, but not great either. Michi can't stop saying "May the Force be with you" and talking about how cute the young Anikin was.
Cheers,
