The Worst Goalie In the World

Everyone at this school LOVES soccer (except me; I'm not the biggest fan).  But I've been putting my opinions aside since it is soccer season, and all my kids love playing it.  At recess we've been playing variations of the game- this week it's been mini-soccer.  The past few days I've been able to avoid playing, but today we were short one and it's already hard to play soccer with only six people.  So they put me as goalie.  Yeah.  Dress clothes + teacher shoes + no skill= a very interesting soccer game.  I actually did much better than I thought I would have, given the circumstances.  After a while, one of the boys on my team made me start kicking the ball after it went out of bounds by our goal.  I wasn't expecting too much, but the ball actually took off!  As this sixth grader chased the ball he yelled, "Nice kick, Miss H!"  It totally made my day.  Maybe I'm not the worst goalie in the world.

In reading, we're reading a story about the discovery of Machu Picchu, which is located in Peru.  I remembered that one of my friends from college lived in Peru for a summer and is currently teaching English in Chile.  I facebooked her to see if we could Skype during school.  Her schedule was open and today we Skyped with her for about a half an hour!  My sixth graders came up with a list of questions and took turns asking.  We found out about the food, clothes, climate, animals, and landscape of both Peru and Chile.  We had so much fun!  Our internet connection wasn't very strong, so we had to keep trying to call her back.  The video didn't work so well either, but we made the best of it and still learned a lot.

One of my students brought in some Native American artifacts borrowed from a family friend.  There were a few old buffalo bones along with some authentic glass trading beads.  Some of the beads were green (they looked like watermelons) and red.  Those ones were pretty rare and are the most valuable.  The other ones were blue or a grayish color.  There was even a beaded belt.  We didn't have very long to look at them, but the time we had was well spent.

After school I spent some time helping the preschool teacher figure out how to put pictures on the school website for her class.  I was also snagged to take pictures of the basketball uniforms so we could send them to the uniform company to make extras.  I guess I'm the go-to tech person at our school.  But I don't mind.