I'm back!

Arrgh! Internet issues!! Finally resolved.

So, since the last entry:

SHS - Photography classes! Keeping an eye on a darkroom AND classroom with 35 squirrelly 10-12th graders is a challenge to say the least. Plus distributing materials, collecting money for replacement materials, and helping kids avoid major disasters like opening their film in the light.

SHS - Back to the digital media classes while Mr. U was ill. This time, working with faces in Photoshop - creating composite photos and altering their own faces into free-choice goofiness. At the end of one period I gave them the extra credit option to write a 5-page paper on the gender implications in the habit of the boys adding tons of facial hair to their own photos (one kid even made himself into a wolf-man-type-thing) and makeup to each others' photos. No one did it, but they thought it was funny that I asked them to.

OHS - Life Skills. This is a super-special ed classroom where we were pretty much self-contained for the whole day (3rd period they went to electives), working on things like drawing, numbers (via a game of Yahtzee), doing household chores (getting ready for lunch, cleaning up after, other duties), cursive, plus we went for a walk to the neighborhood park and read out a few chapters of "Percy Jackson." I had three aides but it was still exhausting!

SHS - Language Arts - super easy day of checking in homework and then popping in a movie - the juniors were watching "Guilty By Suspicion" in relation to "The Crucible" and "The Scarlet Letter," (I got to watch the emotional Senate hearing ending three times) and the seniors were watching "Good Morning Vietnam" in relation to "When Heaven and the Earth Switched Places," a Vietnam memoir.