Children Will Listen

Here's the antithesis of my post from earlier this week:

I'm showing my classes "The Princess Bride" today while they work on identifying character objectives and motivations (Plus, the sub yesterday seemed unable to handle much more than a movie, and my cold's getting worse).

During the Miracle Max scene, one student raised his hand. "Didn't we read this story, Miss?"

"What?" I said, pausing the movie so I could hear him.

"I know this story! We read it!"

Other students nodded in agreement.

I suddenly recalled that I had, in fact, read them the Miracle Max scene last fall for a Reading Minute. Seriously, it was, like, early October, late September when I read it to them. And yet they remembered it enough to recognize the scene now, 8 months later.

Amazing.


While I'm posting, let me tell you about my day yesterday. I took a personal day and went to the dentist first thing in the morning. No caveties and the dentist was surprised that I hadn't worn braces. Yay for good teeth!

I headed home after that, started a load of laundry, and curled up in my reading chair with a book, a bowl of cereal, and the cat. As happens in that chair, I dozed off with Natasha curled up on my chest, perfectly content.

Around noon, I headed down to Castle Rock. Jill had also taken a personal day, and we decided to play a bit. We got lunch at Anthony's pizza, shopped at Este Lauder (Jill's other job - she very nicely let me use both her expertise and her discount to restock my make-up supplies. Rachel, I'll have to show you the eyeshadow colors I got - they're quiet fun!), and checked out this fun store there called The Barn. We raced back to her place, then, to change for the awards night at STMS.

The awards night was, by my standards, ridiculous. No lights; no sound; no one had informed the high school that we were coming to use the auditorium, so it wasn't ready and we (meaning the faculty, the students, and all of their parents) stood around the lobby for a good 20 minutes waiting for the janitors to finish cleaning it. I offered my help for the technical stuff, but was rebuffed by the two guys in charge with "Oh, silly woman!" looks. When they started the show in the dark by yelling from the stage, I handed my stuff to Jill and hunted down the door to the booth. I plugged in the spotlight and aimed it at the stage, then managed to get a microphone working. Annoying sexism.

Anyway, there were catcalls, rowdy students, kids playing in the aisles, little organization, and at least one parent who showed up in pajama bottoms and a tank top. Boy, did I miss the awards nights at DPJH!

Jill and I went to Dairy Queen afterwards to debrief. After that, we needed to.

Aside from that, yesterday was delightful and made this week much more bearable. Three days to go!