Basketball this week

Tuesday all three classes are testing, then we'll be projecting for the rest of the week in all three classes. 6th grade is making a Facebook profile for an historical figure that we've discussed, 7th grade is making a MySpace page for one of the countries that we've covered, and 8th grade will be making the front page of a newspaper from one of the eras that we've discussed. Haven't quite ironed out all the wrinkles, but I hope to tonight. Then I can concentrate on making finals for all the classes later in the week. Oh yeah, and planning basketball practices since we start with those on Wednesday. Our practice schedule is Wed and Thurs from 4-6. I want to try to make Mondays an "open gym" on our blacktop at school and Tuesdays a study hall until 6 in my classroom for the basketball team.

This past weekend was spent in Austin on December Retreat. All the ACE teachers from across the country were there - it was an executive retreat center called Balcones Springs Executive Retreat Center or something like that. It was really nice, but the meeting rooms were kept ridiculously hot and stuffy. The contrast between that and the cold outside (it snowed on Friday) got me feeling quite a bit under the weather. Luckily my 6th graders were nice enough to take it easy on my today. I conserved my energy for 8th grade. It was needed.

7th grade was a little wild today, which kind of annoyed me. I had spent all weekend talking about how much better they've gotten. I guess I spoke just too soon. I am also getting extremely annoyed with my principal. I asked her today about the possibility of a positive reward for my 7th graders. I thought she'd be all for it since she is apparently torpedoing our discipline system in favor of "something that focuses on the positive." She told me that class-wide positive rewards were not a good idea because some could behave all the time and others have occasional flare-ups of misbehavior. Sometimes I wish I were running the school.