First Week Back

This has been my first week back since the car accident. It has gone well.

Doctors were initially worried that I'd get tired during the day (especially since I have an overload this semester), but that hasn't been the issue. Well, I should say that hasn't been the issue during the day. A couple times this week I've hurried straight home after school and taken a good hour long nap.

Unfortunately, on Monday Cash began to get sick. Luckily, my niece Ashley was able to come to our early rescue and watch him for a few hours that morning until Grandma Gail could come back to our rescue yet again (she spent the better part of two weeks looking after the kids while I was in the hospital and covering).

Once Cash began to feel better, Kenzie, of course, began to get sick. Worse yet, our rock, Kristie came down with the bug yesterday too. And then Gail even began to get sick as well.

Fortunately, I am still plugging along. But it sure makes for long night when the little ones wake up coughing or crying ever few hours.

So while everyone else (besides KoKo and me) have been feeling under the weather, I've been able to plug away at work.

Now, I haven't begun to touch all the make up work from the two weeks when I was gone. I have two themes in College Comp that I have to grade this weekend. One will be easy. I had students writer 1,500 words on an intense situation for a rough draft. Then their final draft was to focus on the most intense moment of the situation and trim it down to just 150 words. That will be easy. But the second theme I have to grade is a braided essay on Sir Ken Robinson's The Element. There is just no easy way to grade a braided essay. Don't get me wrong. They're vastly rewarding to read, but they're a lot of work.

In College Comp II we were reading chapters from Steven Johnson's Where Good Ideas Come From. Then I asked four administrators if they'd be interested in taking one chapter from the book and working with a group of students to present a lesson plan on it to the class. So my students have been working on those all week and will begin presenting the lessons next week.

Finally, my freshmen. There's no way around this one. We have to read Romeo and Juliet. I feel terrible admitting this: as an English teacher I don't want to teach Shakespeare.

I know that's totally sacrilegious and all that, but it's true. We read it in 9th grade in high school, but I remember nothing of it. I re-read it again as a junior in my college Shakespeare class, but I didn't care for it then, despite it coinciding with the newest film version of the play (featuring Leonardo DeCaprio and Claire Daines). So far it's been going very well. The kids relate well to it. After all, many are living the same drama and strife that is inherent in the play.

I just tire of decoding all of the language for the kids. Give me King Lear or Hamlet or even Macbeth. If there are two plays I hope to never have to teach again (sorry Mrs. Mattison) they are Julius Caesar and Romeo and Juliet!