...long enough to weary of my title schema

I always set rules for myself. And they're unreasonable and difficult to continue adhering to them. Either that or I'm just sick of limiting my titles with a once-clever (in my estimation) system that has become stale and stretched after 30-some . So look for more normal post titles in the future.

It's been a very busy week. Our exams and study guides for exams were due this afternoon, which kind of caught me off guard - we had about a week's notice (not counting the date noted on our year-long calendar that's been there from the get-go). So I've been busy procrastinating about that all week. I got little sleep last night and worked through all my free time during the school day, but I got both in within 15 minutes of the 4pm due date - it's like I'm in college again!

Procrastination and lack of sleep aside, today was a very good day for three main reasons. Okay, four. The fourth is that I actually was productive and got good work done. The first is that I had my first Spanish tutor meeting. The school provides free Spanish tutoring for all levels for the North American teachers, and the tutor is a fabulous Honduran lady who's live in New Orleans for 40 years before returning here. Because I'm pretty advanced at my Spanish, I wouldn't get too much out of her worksheets and things, but we'll probably just be doing a lot of talking and I'll get more conversationally fluent - that's what I'm really after. So that's a nice beginning.

The third (or is it second?) thing that made today a good day was playing soccer with my students. The school is built around a court called the inner cancha that is the venue for countless pick-up games of soccer, and some of the 11th graders are especially good. They've been trying to convince me to play for some time, and I finally brought some other shoes to play, and it was so much fun. I actually played pretty well and almost scored a goal! 15 minutes of fabulous. I have to do it again.

Finally (or is this one secondly? I have completely confused myself) I had something of a breakthrough with one of my classes. We do bellwork every day to just get the period underway, get everyone in the class mindset, and that goes over with varying success day-by-day, as well a varying participation, even though participation is figured into grades. Today I must have just had the right prompt for bell work, something about the value of teamwork with good leadership compared to focus on individual accomplishment in relation to our book, and my C section dug into it, every last one. I had been asking and summing up what people had to write all day anyway, but I knew these kids were going to have something to say. And boy did they. As soon as we began discussing, 4 hands shot up and these typically reserved (except when it comes to talking amongst themselves) kids just TURNED ON. It was all I could do to keep the train of discussion from jumping off the tracks. I think this must be what they'd waited for. When someone would make a good point, people would yell and applaud, but they were saying good things and making coherent arguments! It was absolutely awesome! And I was exhausted by the end of it (this was last period, to boot), but it was definitely the satisfied sort of exhaustion. Now I know what turns at least this class on.