Sunday, August 24, 2008

Week One

With the first week under my belt, I'm feeling pretty good. There is still some acclimatization to occur no doubt, but overall the ball has been set in motion. I always feel better when the class is underway. I always compare the start of school to pushing a boulder over the precipice of a large hill. It takes a tremendous amount of effort and planning to get it moving in the direction you want it to go, but once you've got it going, you can almost let it roll.

There are times when the boulder gets stuck on a root or wedged between trees and you have to adjust and work to get it back on track again, but there's nothing like that moment when the boulder is rolling like you had hoped!

This week we focused on some procedural things but mostly on our "Cheese." I assigned our first "quiz" which is the About Me Project. I've heard from other teachers that a lot of the kids have gotten a good start on it already. I really can't wait to see what they come up with to show me who they are.

The "Cheese" we talked about comes from the book Who Moved My Cheese by Dr. Spencer Johnson. The book is about four characters stuck in a maze and they are in search of cheese. The Cheese with the capital C represents the things that make us happy and feel successful. It's a very popular book in the business sector and deals primarily with change and how we respond to that change.

We were able to talk about our personal Cheese and the local Cheese as well as national Cheeses. I was really excited about the fact that we've had a chance to talk and discuss some pretty big ideas. All four classes are doing a great job with it so far.

I hope to finish up our work with that book later this week, but before we do, we'll be getting online to set up our accounts and start our first blog on Imbee.com. My previous students really enjoyed using Imbee to blog and communicate with each other.

Friday was our Olympic games. We had Water Olympics in the morning and Metric Olympics and Cricket in the afternoon. I'm in the process of putting together a compilation video of our day.

I'm looking forward to another fun week at school, the Crawdads game on Monday, and maybe a trip to ASU on Thursday to hear Jeannette Walls, author of The Glass Castle, speak. Looking like a good week from here!

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