the rain in spain

...stays mainly on the plain...

in new york, in the summertime, however, it goes all over the place. today has been a day full of thunderstorms and weather drama, culminating in a great sideways wind, which while it thankfully has dropped the temperature outside a good 15 degrees, has also blown some of the rain in my open window.

oh well, like i said, at least its cool.

school has been going well. i gave my first test last thursday and it went over about as expected-- the kids that show up and participate in class did well, the kids who don't, didn't. tomorrow begins our last unit of summer school, astronomy, which the kids voted on as what they wanted to cover in class. i am hoping that since they got to choose, they'll have a little more ownership over the material. plus, there are lots of cool photos in the slide show. who doesn't think that galaxies are beautiful?

i am trying to come up with more creative/fun assessments to do in class besides the typical quiz format and for this unit i have conceived of a MySpace profile for each planet, which the students will create and then share, and a classification game where i have them sort profiles of "space junk" into categories based on the new definition of a planet by the IAU. this is the offending development which kicked pluto out of our solar system, but its a fun exercise.

outside of teaching, school has been going well, though my classmates and i are all obviously in the place where we are ready to be done for a bit. we have stopped listening to each other when we speak in class and there is so much eye-rolling that happens when we're talking, its amazing that we ever get anything done. one of my classmates, mike, said after a particularly frustrating day, "i have kind of had it with this class for a while. i mean no offense, but i see you guys more than i see my wife."

i am lucky to not have that problem. not the wife problem, because for many reasons that is not possible, but the not-seeing-your-significant-other problem. having jac in class with me is a great help, not only because we reinforce our resources and our learning by being in the same boat, but its built-in face time. the bad part is that i sometimes feel like we spend all day together, but don't really get to see each other, if that makes any sense. still, we've been doing a good job of spending time together when we can, but still managing to get work done.

rugby has been going well, though since i have been teaching and having to prepare class materials, etc, its been harder to want to practice until 9:30 at night after having been in school all day, and to still think about preparing for the next day in class. as we speak i am taking a break from making my lessons, which will hopefully catch me up until wednesday. we'll see how that goes.

here, for your consideration, is a very funny picture that i included in a recent slide show. enjoy.