hula hula

One more week down, just a few more to go. It's been a good week, it went by fast with having Monday off.

Today I gave a review quiz on some concepts we've learned over the last few weeks. I had several do very well and others whose scores make me wonder where they've been in class lately. They took the quiz today and we corrected it in class and they were still able to have a little bit of free time. I felt like they at least deserved that because I've worked them so hard this week. Next week I will review the 8th grade list of commonly confused words (they're, there, their, etc.) and re-teach the list of prefixes and suffixes that are on the CRT's.

Yesterday we had the big multi-cultural assembly. We are, hands down, the most diverse junior high in the Salt Lake Valley, with cultures ranging from various Polynesian, Hispanic, and European descents. The majority of the numbers in the assembly were Polynesian. There were lots of warrior dancing, tribal drums, and hip-shakin' hula dancing. I thought it was great to see so many of our students participate. There were also a few Hispanic dancing numbers and some singing. As kind of an intermission, they had all of the student dancers go out in the audience to pick teachers out to come up on stage to learn the hula. I was sitting near a bunch of my advisory students and they brought attention to me by standing up and pointing, so when one dancer walked by, they picked me to go up on stage. What ended up happening is some of the student's taught a bunch of teachers the Hawaiian Hula, then we were each paired up and competed against each other in the dance. I was paired with an older teacher who is retiring this year. He's a funny guy so I thought we'd do well and impress the kids. When is was our turn, I danced my butt off doing my best hula I could muster. When our turn was over we had lots and lots of cheers from the audience. I like to think that we did the best and most of my students said we did the best. We totally won. I had students coming up to me all day telling me that I was a good dancer and asking if I could show them the hula. I laughed. I have another opportunity to make a fool of myself on stage in a few weeks at the Faculty Follies assembly where the faculty are the ones performing and making the kids laugh. I am performing with all the young female teachers a cup routine...you pick a cup up on the beat and tap it with your hands. (really, it sounds silly, but when we practiced today it was pretty neat. And it's hard to explain here).

I stayed until about 4 today and got a lot of grading done. We had a long faculty meeting after school last lasted until about 2:30. We mostly went over CRT testing ethics codes (exciting!) and got yelled at by the principal. I feel quite overwhelmed with this high stakes standardized test that helps our school pass or fail AYP (adequate yearly progress....according to NCLB....No Child Left Behind). It just stresses me out, so until the first week of May, I'm trying not to think about it too much.

Tonight we're just watching movies and being lazy. I just woke up from a little siesta and Ben and Zeus are out playing with the neighbor's dog, Doska. Looking forward to a nice relaxing weekend. Happy Friday, everyone!