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24 may 2002

new review! i know...it's about time. i'll get on it.

road trip down I-40

head...still...spinning

Wow. I totally flaked this past week. Not in the lazy way, but the feeling a little overwhelmed way. Now that school is out, I can focus on planning for the upcoming school year a little more on my terms, and not on those of persistent last-minute testing/year-end/fill-in-for-so-and-so emergencies. Actually, operating in this mode has done me a great favor. It has reminded me that good planning is imperative to doing this job properly. When you get right down to it, teaching is a very small part of what I do each day. You have your plan, and your plan might execute if everyone is behaving that day. At least if the course to follow is well-documented, I have a starting point.

This summer, I've made it my goal to plan for at least the first two months of school, according to the curriculum guidelines I've got. Seems like a good start.

In the meantime, I will be back to updating more regularly, since I'm just teaching summer school half-days through June. Which rocks, because it prevents broke-ness while still leaving plenty of free time to plan and read in the nice little courtyard out back. Just me, some lemonade, and the laptop. Not bad. I've already started accumulating resources like mad, collecting lesson plans that look interesting, and trying to organize it into some manageable format.

Victor wrote in to ask how the Nobel Reading Project is doing, and how it might be affected by a redesign. (Like I'm totally getting around to all this, right?) The answer is, you better believe I'm keeping that up! In fact, I'm using it as incentive for my students to do some reading enrichment. While there's no way that I could realistically finish all those books by August 5, I don't really care anymore. I discuss this on the update page, but one of the things I've realized by this project is that all award-winning books (or artworks) aren't necessarily good or interesting. So I'm not beating myself up too much if I don't finish all of them, much less in a year. In fact, I'm holding onto it as an ongoing project, and will add to it with National Book Award and Pulitzer winners. Just having these lists will enrich my students a great deal, and always remind me to keep reading.

And so, here we are, Memorial Day Weekend. I'm on my way to Asheville for LEAF, and catching up with friends on what I hope will be a lovely weekend. Hopefully I won't get assaulted by a clogger during the swing dance this time. I guess we'll see.

This summer is going to be an interesting one. I can tell that already. It seems to be opening with a couple of unexpected surprises and good company. Those are the best kind.