10 more days of teaching!
Very exciting for all of us here... We had a wonderful Thanksgiving, with probably about 70 people attending. Everyone pitched in and cooked something, so we had a kind of random meal- staples like turkey and stuffing next to rice and beans and empinadas, and then really random stuff like pumpkin pudding contributed by a creative teacher. After, it started pouring, but that didn't stop the football game, which ended up being more of a "see who can dive most spectacularly into to massive puddles" game. I also have had a teaching epiphany- last Wednesday, it was miserably hot; the kids didn't want to be there and neither did I. I discovered to awesome power of bribing, which got me through the day. I told my classes that if they behaved and were silent, then we could go outside for the last part of class. Then, in a stroke of genius, I told my kids that they were allowed to punch anyone who wanted to ruin the plan by talking. Yes, I know, potential for disaster and not PC and all, but it worked fantastically, and no one actually got punched. They were near angelic, and quickly shushed any boy who forgot the plan for a second (or, as I suspect is the case for some of my kids, didn't actually realize that they were talking out loud). So now I'm brainstorming for other ways to bribe my classes. In other news, the kitten has taken to biting really hard, which is not very endearing. I think it is his revenge for keeping him in a pen all day while we are at school. Anyways, I'm off to do some last-minute lesson planning!