Week 23: Reading

Relaxing at Phil's on Team Day :-)

Good morning, Chicago!

Waiting at the bus stop in an almost-blizzard to go to the office and keep working.

The first official Art Club meeting was this week!

This week has been full of:  Starting to meet informally with three junior boys during lunch, eating lunch with a freshmen who asked voluntarily (who will sometimes not even say hi to me), a really long day at CTA entering data, spending another sick day reading, and a team day to relax at Phil's apartment!

L: I'm excited by a new way I'm trying to sneak in vocabulary: I pick a word that will appear in the Do Now sentences all week, so they naturally ask what it means (rather than having an unrelated lesson).  After discussing it a bit all week, Friday's assignment asks them to write a sentence using the word. 

Quotes of the week: 
"They shouldn't split us up like this.  We know we're in the dumb class.  Don't they know how that makes us feel?" - T, a junior

"....I mean, it's kind of hard right now... I just moved in with my mom, and she's been locked up almost my whole life, so we don't really know each other...." -  A junior, during informal lunch.  I'm rooting for him so much, he wants to be a DEA officer :-)

"Ms. Lewis, you forgot to get us for lunch!" - A junior, confused about which day it was... I was getting to know a group of three easily-distracted, mischief-making boys pretty well, then schedules changed so they are no longer my students.  I offered to start meeting with them once a week at lunch so we could continue to talk about goals and grades and life, but I wasn't sure how they would react (and they were really excited!)

Joys: I round up 5 freshmen after school to do the reading homework together (and a couple visitors); we ran into T, a junior, on the bus home and had a nice chat; J stayed after school for two hours and actually wrote a paper!