night

My Holocaust introduction today went quite well. I feel, overall, like I did a good job introducing this very sensitive and tragic subject. My students were quite impressed with the paper clip movie and were better able to understand just how much 6 million really is. I was especially excited when I went the whole day without hearing any smart allecky remarks about the thick southern accents the students in the movie had.

I also gave my little book talk on the three books I had chosen as options to teach. It was interesting to hear the student's reaction to each book and how they asked questions about the stories. I had them choose one book, write the title on a piece of scratch paper and turn it in. I decided against letting each class choose one and instead, mixed all the paper in one pile and at the end of the day, tallied them up. I would have killed myself trying to plan for three different books each day instead of just one. The winner: Night by Elie Wiesel. I read it in high school and loved it. Some students seem very excited to read it and out of the other choices (Daniel's Story and The Diary of Anne Frank), it had the most votes (58). I will do a little deeper introduction of the Holocaust (some key terms, people, and background) tomorrow and then we'll start the 109 page novella. I'm thrilled.

I had a free lunch today, provided by one of the most popular financial adviser for the district. He brought the faculty lunch and promised to keep his presentation down to 7 minutes. It was great. He brought us Subway sandwiches and chips and Oreos. It saved me from having to make a lunch last night.


My job for tonight--re-read Night and figure out how to teach it. Also to watch American Idol.