We Have Arrived

Winter Break. Christmas time. Just past Hanukah. Kwanzaa.
Yes, we have arrived. It is only a matter of hours now: 5 to be precise.

A small, and I do mean small, sheaf of papers is in my bag to travel home with me to Kentucky.
A little work over a long break usually helps smooth over any of the anxiety which invariably hangs just before the return. In this case the return means Thursday, January 2nd.

Meanwhile, a couple anecdotes from this week...

Wilis may not hate me anymore. This week my U.S. History classes began working in responsibility team formations. Wilis was paired as a team leader with Mahmudul, one of our most ambitious students (among many).
It was fascinating to watch the two of them truly working as a team, for 20-25 minutes at a time. With an atlas and review books before them, they discussed constitutional matters. At the end of class on Monday, Wilis came up to me:
"Mister, this (the team system) was much better. Everyone was working."

On Wednesday, Wilis shared his work time stories with the class after he and I conferenced.

Brayan, an evangelical Christian not shy about his proselytizing, wrote on a white board in class two days ago: "Go to hell."
I have no idea who that was directed toward but I told Brayan that is a horrible thing to say to someone. He seemed surprised. His English skills are still lacking but he has been known to tell his science teacher fairly recently, "Miss, Jesus doesn't like you."
But he then pulled out a Bible tract from his backpack and there was a graphic depiction of a soul caught between heaven and hell. A statement to the effect of don't go to hell was written.
Perhaps a "don't" was simply omitted from Brayan's white board message.
That would seem to soften the blow.
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"Happy holidays," from HSLI!

We should be like the whales

It is sad, this recent story in the news regarding a pod of pilot whales in Florida. Some inadvertently beached themselves, dying as humans we're trying to steer them back out to sea. But it seems that they did not want to leave their companions who were not able to move.

"Rescuers had difficulty on Wednesday trying to persuade the surviving whales to leave their dead podmates and head out to sea. In most cases, highly cohesive species such as pilot whales refuse to leave their kind, no matter the risk to themselves."

Lori Marino, a professor of neuroscience and behavioral biology at Emory University states: "They seem to feel for each other. Their whole sense of self is distributed across the group. They take social bonding to a new level. They don't abandon each other."

We need to learn to be more like these whales...

Student Anecdotes

A few things overheard or seen in the past few days...

1. Enroute to school yesterday morning, I passed two elementary school students. I overheard one telling the other in a very serious manner: "Even if I was dying, I'd still have to go to school."

2. Yesterday was my colleague Mr. Berk's birthday. He did not want people to know this. Everyone found out. He walked through my class to grab a folder and a student immediately began singing "happy birthday." I stopped her as we were all in our Unison Reading groups. I wanted all students to remain on task within their groups.
I told her: "Let's stay in Unison," meaning in the groups.
Instead, she then led the entire class in singing "happy birthday--" in complete and perfect unison.

3. An endearing thing: I checked my mailbox for work turned in this past Friday. We were out of the required checklists that day, which students staple to work that is handed in. Two Bengali girls, Naz. and Sum., had taken it upon themselves to create very nicely handwritten checklists in lieu of the printed ones. They modeled it after the ones we usually have available.
I told them later that I appreciated the extra effort.