Week One

Having finished our first week of school, all I can say is, "Phew". This response is not an exasperated one nor one of exhaustion. It is more a realization that these kids are far more capable than I had believed. Because of that, I'm realizing that I'm going to have to hustle to stay a few steps ahead of them.

I'm writing this update during my Friday morning block. My students are currently attending the first day of their internships. Today, we have students in the infant room at an area day care; a student studying at the Cathance River Educational Alliance; and one at a local veterinary hospital. We will reconvene at 1:00 back at the school for a "head's up" meeting about next week's schedule, and then we will depart for the Portland Public Library and an afternoon of research. Originally, I envisioned these Friday mornings to be leisurely chunks of time during which I would stroll the web for creative additions to our curriculum or quietly flip through student portfolios as I sipped coffee and congratulated myself for another successful week. Once again, the extent of my naivete shocks me. I better get moving; I've got a lot to do.

But we had a great first week, in my opinion. Just prior to writing class yesterday afternoon, I asked the kids to list some of the lessons they particularly enjoyed this past week so I could refer to them in this blog update. This was the list I was given:

• I liked the Life Skills class when we chose a career and got to make our own business cards.
• We learned about simple and compound interest and which is a better deal when we borrow money and which is better when we save money.
• During Ethics, I liked separating the arguments into Consequential [moral] reasoning and Categorical [moral] reasoning.
• The "amo" chant was fun. [Note: This is the 1st conjugation Latin verb for "I love". In fact, one student [on his own] applied this chant to another 1st conjugation verb "credo" [meaning "I believe"] and was rewarded with a Scholar Dollar!]
• The plant cell and animal cell experiments were AWESOME!
• I liked drawing for the time line. I also liked the flood stories from all around the world.

In addition to what was mentioned above, some of the less popular [but necessary] lessons we covered this past week included:

• Applying our plant and animal cell labs to a lesson on osmosis.
• Introduction to basic Logic.
• Receipt of our first spelling words.
• How to identify the subject, predicate, and finite verb in a sentence.
• The start of our writing projects. We have the beginnings of a comic book, a young adult mystery novel, and a prologue for a young adult horror story.
• Theories as to why our Australopithecus ancestors might have stood to become the first of the bipedal primates.

A pretty good week, I'd say.