Happy Halloween!

Okay, even though I HATE Halloween because it has become WAY too much of a big deal, I have no choice but to dress up since I work with 8-10 year olds. The eight teachers on our team go all out. Every other year, we are substitute teachers. We tell the kids the night before that we are all going to a professional developement meeting and that they will have subs on Halloween. They are all disappointed and wonder HOW we could miss Halloween. When they come in on Halloween morning, here's who they see. (We are normally pretty trendy dressers, for elementary schoolteachers, that is.)

I was somewhat dorky and was Professor Mcgonagall from the Harry Potter series. This is me and my teaching partner, Tom. He went by the name of "Mr. Disco" and taught the kids the word groovy.
We taught until 1:00, the kids changed, and then we had a whole-school parade. About half of the parents come in. It's chaos.
At the very end of the day, my room parents threw the biggest, most extensive party I've yet seen in a classroom, with six stations worth of activities, including three food stations, two craft stations, and a game station. This is our engineering technology teacher, who was my next-door neighbor and teammate when I taught Spanish.

Gary's wore an orange polo shirt and black pants to work today. He said that he was in the minority today and got a lot of comments on his festive attire. I told him that his work makes me sad.

Gary and I are staying home tonight and passing out candy to the trick-or-treaters. It's the first time that we have ever done this together, since last year we went trick-or-treating with Emily, Pippin, and Frodo. Our cognitively impaired neighbor (he really is) just told Gary that we all have to pass out candy to kids "to keep them in line" so they don't "throw sh-- bombs at our house." We have never heard him swear before. He then suggested that we take our DOGS trick-or-treating. Ay.

I will be asleep by 9:30!

Somewhere to Dine!

Our kitchen and dining room are gorgeous! We finished painting this weekend and I tackled the curtains alone (without my mom). The sewing machine cooperated, once I figured out the "how to load the bobbin" diagram to figure out what was wrong! (Don't worry Mom, it's not broken--thanks again for your ungrounded faith in loaning me your sewing machine!) The rods are on order and should arrive before next weekend. Since we had done two coats in both the dining room and kitchen, including the ceilings, we hung the chandelier in the dining room (it was simply too dark without it). As nice as this room now looks, we still ate our frozen-pizza-dinner on the couch tonight. Next comes the floor--which we can't even describe how excited we are about that. Once we get the floor, it will be time for a dinner party.

My curtains are at least straight! These colors photographed terrible in the dark. We hardly ever take photos during daylight hours.

We even took some time to enjoy the gorgeous weather. We took the dogs on a really good walk on Saturday night after dark; our new favorite time for walks.

MEAP Scandal

Okay, every licensed educator in every district in the state reads hundreds of pages full of ethics rules every year for the MEAP.

This week, Jackson Public Schools allowed their students to be interviewed by the newspaper, and the reporter's story told what the kids wrote about on this year's MEAP. The prompts are TOP SECRET. Teachers aren't supposed to read them, and we are prohibited from talking about them. Our licenses are at stake.

Here's the "Media Breech" from the Jackson paper. (Yes, that's the MI Dept of Ed's term for what happened.)

Here's the Free Press story about the ramifications.

Here's the reporter's response to the scandal.

Wow--if the reporter is telling the truth and not just covering himself, that school screwed up. Big-time. I stopped counting how many details of that story were "against the MEAP law" as I say to my eight and nine year olds. That is NOT the tone in any building I have ever been in for testing. Now the "teachers don't take this test seriously" fire has been fanned.

If you're bored by this post or think "What a huge amount of bureaucracy" or "What a waste of money," welcome to the world of single-measures of accountability for schools. And these tests don't even represent what professional educators want for kids.

My opinion is that this district should face paying the cost for reprints, mailings, etc. (Not that any MI district has that kind of extra money.) This scandal will only hurt the kids. Thousands of children will be re-doing the Writing from Knowledge and Experience prompt, and I hope you all realize that a large number of children CRY while writing for MEAP. Now they will twice. High stakes testing--what a great idea.

(I think this is one of the first times in my life that I actually sound like a disgruntaled NEA member!)

A REAL Kitchen

We have been so busy with the kitchen, I haven't had much time to post the progress. It's nearly done. All that is left is: a second coat of paint on the walls, curtains, cabinet enhancements, moulding, floors. Gary will post if I forgot anything from the list. My mom came over last Sunday to help me sew the curtains. It was a lot more difficult than I anticipated. I have more hems to sew, and I am trying to be brave enough to do it on my own. I keep reminding myself that the worst that will happen is that I will have to remove a seam and start over. We LOVE having a usable, mostly-clean kitchen!!! The countertops are such a luxury--and I am not talking about the granite--I just mean a place where you can set stuff! We haven't had them in forever. Moving our stuff into the cabinets was pretty nice, too.

Some of the cabinet work includes building a pantry to the left of the fridge and building a small cabinet above the microwave.
Do you think we have enough bowls? Gary thought this cabinet was hilarious when he saw it filled!
I love the faucet, the extra big sink, and these cool organizers that Gary found at Lowe's. (Only $15 in case you want your own--the bins and the hinges come in a set.)On the 22nd we went to Canada for Gary's cousin Megan's wedding. It was a beautiful drive thanks to their fall colors--way ahead of us, not so much in this photo, though. We got to stop by and see his cousin Jordan's house that he and his wife are building--as someone who only remodeled a kitchen, the scale of their project awed me. All they had was a shell of a house. It will be gorgeous! Yes, they are drinking beer in the church parking lot (after the ceremony).

With all of our house work, we gave the dogs bones (an extra-special treat) one day while we were busy. Frodo finally figured out how to destroy a bone. This is one of my favorite photos of Pippin, ever.

School is going great--you would not believe the class I have this year. These kids are amazingly sweet and mellow. Math work time was so tranquil today that I almost fell asleep! I am not used to a group this calm.