Monday, November 05, 2007

Week X: fewer than 20 days left

Today was a district-wide teacher in-service training day. I got to sleep an extra hour, and went to the Professional Development Center at 8:00. The first-grade teachers sat through a presentation on math instruction. Some of the information was pretty useful, like labeling the thinking strategies with the appropriate mathematical symbols and/or the numbers from the problem.

After that, our grade team went out to lunch with two of the second-grade teachers. Both of these women have a reputation for being unlikeable (they don't even like each other, which is why they tagged along with our group). They're nice enough in social settings, but I can see that I'm very lucky to be in first grade with Ms. L and the other two team teachers. I would really be chafing at the bit if I'd been stuck in second grade with some mopey, negative, prissy teacher who didn't give me the freedom to shine like Ms. L does.

Before going back to Brown, Ms. L and Ms. W and I went to a dollar store to get a few trinkets for classroom use. We got some megaphones which amused us for many hours, imagining all the possibilities ("Perezoso! Get to work!!").

Finally, we had a presentation back at Brown about integrating physical movement into classroom lessons over the course of the day, because of the obesity epidemic in America and this state, which boasts three of the top fattest cities in the country.

Children are so fat these days! Can't we make money off of that?

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