Day 140: Through TFA, I was able to have a scientist visit my class Thursday to speak about his job. He is an electrophysiologist with Amgen, so he spoke about taking cells and measuring their electric potential, so he knows when the drugs he’s testing are working. Specifically, he’s working on a drug to treat major…

Day 139: First week back from a break, and I’m already a full day behind on these posts? Yeesh. Not a great sign. At this point, I actually can’t really remember what happened Wednesday. My kids either made their kingdoms posters, or did a gallery walk to learn from other groups’ posters. More memorable is the…

Day 138: I hope visitors learn something when they come to my classroom. Selfishly, though, I kind of like having visitors because it helps me reflect on what’s going on. Case in point: 6D enters the room 2nd period. After the Do Now, I debrief very quickly, and then put kids into groups. Each group reads…

Day 137: First day back, already up late. Oh well. I’m going to find the good in this. First, I was legitimately happy to see my kids. I put JP in a headlock and told him I’d missed him. I stook in front of my homeroom and told each kid, “Welcome back!” Coming into morning homeroom,…

Day 136:  Well, I know what I’ve been told You got to work to feed the soul But I can’t do this all on my own No I know, I’m no superman -          Lazlo Bane, “Superman” Friday was about what you’d expect for the day before you go on break. Nothing crazy happened, but it…

Day 135: I know I’m well beyond broken-record status, but yet again, insane Thursday. The last-week version of me was a moron, and somehow agreed to letting student council sell pizza today. You know, Thursday. Then day when I have zero free time, and then zoom off to grad school. The result: Recess and lunch, my…

Day 134: Honestly, next-to-nothing to report in actual school land. Kids took an ANet Math test, the last before their MCAS next month, and promptly departed the premises. I then spent most of the period of time between noon and 5 pm in parent-teacher conferences, exhorting my students to not lose focus, participate more in class,…

Day 133: Today, for the first time in what feels like forever, I was really, really happy at school. 6A was so calm cleaning out their binders that I was able to take a music request (Macklemore’s “Can’t Hold Us”). 6D was entirely on task during the classification lab, even my been-slipping-lately boys. The real pick-me-up…

Day 132: Ever-so-slightly stressful start to the week. In my mind, I’d asked for an extra day to finish my grades, since the health fair had set me back a little bit. I’m pretty sure this happened, although given how delirious I was by the end of last week, I might have been asking if dinosaurs…

Day 131: So, what happens the day after a huge project ends, when the kids have been working super hard and you need a break? Well, each class began something like this: “We’ve been working really hard on the health fair for weeks. And it went really, really well. So, we’re not going to start our…