Wuz UP?

The ceiling. That's my usual response to my students when they come into my classroom and greet me like this!

I have been really busy lately with the "beginning of the end of the year" stuff, spring stuff, personal stuff, and some church stuff.

Friday night was a 6th dance - the first dance just for the sixth grade, and the first dance they were allowed to go to. In my middle school dances are just for the 7th and 8th graders, although usually there's a "Beach Dance" at the end of the year to which the 6th graders are invited. This year, as part of our Positive Behavior Support" program, we offered a dance just for the 6th graders so that we could "teach" them our behavior expectations for school dances. They will next be allowed to attend the traditional Beach Dance in June. About 2/3 of the kids showed up for an hour and half of loud, pulsing music (all pre-vetted by us for language appropriateness!) They really had a lot of fun "chicken-dancing," doing the macarena, and some line dances in addition to the usual jumping up and down that constitutes dancing today!



Last weekend I was away at a retreat, part of a series, called the "Small Church Vitality Project", offered by the NH Conference of the United Church of Christ. It was really interesting and worthwhile, but it was also exhausting! It was also DH's birthday and Mother's Day! Lots of stuff packed into a short amount of time.

I've been knitting too! I'm working on this:



I also went to the WEBS Tent sale and stocked up on some yarn: Berocco Pure Merino for the Nantucket Jacket from Interweave Knits, Valley Yarns Berkshire Bulky for a cardigan jacket, and some Classic Elite Alpaca Sox for Spirogyra fingerless mitts from Knitty.com

And I've been reading:

1. Hold Tight by Harlen Coben - a thriller that held my attention well while I read it, but have already gotten mixed up in my head with others he's written.

2.Plum Lucky by Janet Evanovich. Very inconsequential, but a very relaxing way to spend a sunny afternoon on a screen porch.

3. Black Ships by Jo Graham. This was really interesting historical fiction. The story follows Gull, a slave from Wilusa (Troy) who becomes Pythias, the guardian priestess of the goddess of Death. The book follows her as she becomes Aeneas' chief advisor as he sets out to find a new home after his life is destroyed. The book is a retelling of Virgil's Aeneid, from a female perspective. Since I've just finished teaching ancient Greece and we are now studying ancient Rome, the timing couldn't have been better. This was a totally serendiptious choice from the public library; it was featured as one of the new books.

4. Miracle at Speedy Motors by Alexander McCall Smith. This is the newest novel in the Ladies' No. 1 Detective Agency. I thoroughly enjoy this series. While this wasn't the strongest novel in the series as far as I'm concerned, I never regret spending time with Mma Ramotswe, Mma Makutsi, and their lives in Botswana. The gentleness of the storytelling, and Mma Ramotswe's view on life never fail to reassure me that life is good.

So it's been a busy May and will continue that way, if not more so. This week we have Parent Information Night for the parents of next year's 6th graders. They are always nervous as their children move into the middle school from our 2 elementary schools. We spend a lot of time reassuring them and making them feel like we're not a big bad scary place. So we provide lots of opportunities for them to come in and get to know us, and as a result, they realize we're a nice school too!