One Week Down

Well, the first week of the semester has ended for me, and Susan and the girls have completed their first week-and-two-days. We're all ready for some down time this weekend.

Susan worked the first couple days to get the library in order after an entire summer of its being used as a storage area for science supplies and equipment during a science pod remodeling project at the high school. This past week teachers have been bringing classes in to use the library, and students have been in on their own to use the computer lab and to check out books. Susan has created and implemented procedures for the students who work as library aides and enlisted her paraprofessional to help with other organizational tasks, including sorting and storing the astounding amount of craft supplies that were stockpiled through the decades by the previous librarian. There are now plants in the library, and Susan just ordered posters for the walls and is ready to place a huge book order to update the library's holdings. She has also tackled the task of organizing her office and feels better now that her surroundings are less chaotic.

Suzanna is very happy with her new teacher, Mrs. Manns, who happened to be Susan's occasional substitute teacher, too (and mom to one of Susan's good friends in high school). Mrs. Manns, thinking Suzanna looks so much like Susan, sometimes refers to Suzanna as "Suzie." Suzanna and all her classmates respond in unison, "It's 'Suzanna.'" Suzanna likes Mrs. Manns' sense of humor but also her ability to discuss serious topics with the students, like current events, and her willingness to change the subject if students have off-topic questions for her. Suzanna has loved being reunited with friends she hasn't seen in months and has been enjoying the outdoors: running around non-stop during recess and playing tennis and soccer outdoors for phy ed. (All this activity outdoors has exacerbated her complaints about the summer heat.) At the end of the day, Mrs. Manns sets aside time for the students to work on homework with her there to guide them, and it is during this time that, twice a week starting next week, Suzanna will leave the room with a couple other classmates (Chris, another trombonist, and Jaiden, who plays trumpet) for band sectional rehearsals (remember?).

Last year after school each day, the girls reported to the gymnasium for an after-school program in which they did their homework, worked on educational projects, and participated in games and physical activities until I was done with work and could go pick them up. (It's a regional after-school program that is a convenient and productive alternative to daycare for school-age kids.) This year, however, they join three other kids and walk together to the high school where Susan works and, after her work day ends, Susan walks them home. The other kids also have parents who work at the high school; one of the kids, Susan's friend Evan, is the son of a teacher who is now Susan's colleague but who was also her high school friend mumble-mumble years ago. Suzanna sees her own friendship with Evan, then, as "family tradition, I guess."

Abigail thinks her first days of the new school year were "just really crazy--there was so much to do." She thinks her teacher, Mrs. Bauer (who taught Suzanna last year), is "awesome--so fun and really energetic and so much fun to listen to," but she gave them a big assignment right off the bat: an insect collection. We don't necessarily have a lot of pesky bugs around here, so it was actually a bit of a challenge to find the ten different insects required. Abigail had us all on the alert for new bugs, and the alcohol-soaked cotton balls were ever at the ready. She mounted the bugs on a piece of foam board decorated to look like a flashlight with the bugs hovering in the beam of light. (Last year Suzanna decorated her board to look like a bug zapper with the bugs killed in the trap.) Abigail also enjoyed an art project requiring the kids to do what amounted to embroidery, stitching a yarn outline around a construction paper apple. It made her recall that Grandma Moberg once promised to show Abigail how to crochet, so I have the feeling that Abigail will be bringing up that topic the next time we're at the farm!

Here's Suzanna from a year ago.

After having missed the first day of school for her plastic surgery, Hillary quickly got into the swing of things with her new teacher, Mrs. Kadrmas (who was also Abigail's second grade teacher), whom she likes because of all the reading she does to the class and has the students do on their own. Hillary noted that she was the only one to "get all the words correct" on the Dibbles test, a test of reading fluency that Mrs. Kadrmas gave the class. Other highlights so far for Hillary have been the math lessons and the music classes, in which they've been learning Spanish and German songs. She also always comes home with stories about her recess activities. Even her sisters sometimes join her on the playground for games; it's a mix of being good sisters to one another, I think, and being monitors to see to it that Hillary doesn't do anything likely to rip out her stitches (like playing on the monkeybars).

I have had an overall good week, but I am exhausted. Not only am I teaching courses that I've never taught before, but I'm also trying to figure out the procedures and rhythms of a new work environment (remember?). The students are all great so far (knock on wood), but preparing for classes takes a long time because of having to create new materials for each lesson (never having taught the courses before, you see--and having been left precious few materials by the previous instructors). We've also been holding morning seminars each day for students getting ready to do their student-teaching this semester. It has been fun to observe their teaching sample lessons and to respond to their concerns (most all of which relate to classroom management and student behavior issues, things that I remember having been worried about myself before going out to student-teach), but those sessions cut into my class preparation time. Thus I've had very late nights all week, and Pensive? No, Just Thinking has been pretty quiet as a result.

Our busy-ness will increase next week when the girls' after-school activities get underway: piano lessons, gymnastics, ballet, and church choir. Area children in grades four and higher have been invited to audition for DSU's fall theatre production, Seussical, a musical based on the stories and characters of Dr. Seuss. Hillary was disappointed not to qualify, but she has been supportive of her sisters, both of whom plan to audition next week. We have a CD of the original cast recording of Seussical, and the girls already have every song memorized. We've had whole-family feedback sessions as each girl has performed her audition song at home. If they impress the director and don't scare him off with their weekly schedule conflicts, we may be adding "university theatre rehearsals" to our list of things to drive our daughters to and from.

So long as (1) we still get to eat supper nightly as a family and (2) the girls keep their grades up in school and their attitudes positive at home, we will be happy for the girls to have this opportunity. Come back, Dear Reader, to find out if the girls make it into the cast!