Thursday Morning...

It is my prep period, which comes first thing in the morning, Monday through Thursday. Because Fridays are half-day sessions with students, I do not have a prep on those days.

There are a group of junior high girls sitting on the floor with three elders teaching them a project. It is funny to see the enthusiasm, patience and persistence...on the part of the elders. The girls are slowly awakening, which seems to be the pattern in the early mornings here. I still see the personalities of the girls emerge, although the conversations are in Yup'ik. The curious and investigative ones are the same here as in the rest of their classes. The ones that are content to sit on the sidelines and watch, for whatever reason, are the same as well.

I did have to laugh when one of the elders told the girls that the morning was the time to smile, and that they should not be going to bed late at night. I tend to see the opposite pattern on most mornings. I think that I am going to borrow that concept for myself tomorrow.

We are starting to get into the second semester maelstrom of testing. We can start either this week or next. There are at least three rounds of testing that I can think of between now and the end of the school year, and I am pretty sure that I am missing one. The big one in April essentially eats up most of a week. Even the minor ones take a big chunk of two or three days. They have a way of blasting very big holes in the schedule.

This is one of the reasons why continuity becomes a major challenge after the beginning of the New Year. We spend a lot of time running in multiple directions simultaneously...

Tomorrow is Friday. We have a long pair of inservices Friday night and Saturday, interspersed with basketball games happening here at the same time. Thank heaven for no distractions...