#12

Happy National Teacher Day!  (and also National School Nurse Day)  Coincidentally, it's my baptism birthday today as well, so I'm double celebrating. 


Someone (representing our PTL) dropped off apples and cupcakes in the office for the teachers.  There were little gift packets of teachery things like post-it notes and pencils.  I grabbed one of the pencil packs since my "sharp/not sharp" jars are running low on pencils.  At the end of the day, I found two letters in my school mailbox.  They were exactly the same size and the address was written in the same handwriting.  What a mystery!  The back of it read 1101 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20004.  I figured it was probably junk mail (especially since I got two), but I opened them anyway.  Hey, mail is mail right?  Both of them were cards expressing appreciation for me being a teacher and for nominating students for these special event things: one for the Junior National Young Leaders Conference and the other for the National Young Leaders State Conference.  Earlier this year I had gotten something in the mail asking me to nominate stellar students to participate in these conferences, so I did (I seem to recall being nominated for something like this when I was in grade school too). 


Well, the handwriting on the cards looked like it was actually written by hand and not duplicated by a computer, but I wanted to be sure.  I mean, what person is actually going to hand write cards for all the teachers across the US that nominate kids for this thing?  I seriously doubt I'm the only one.  One of the ways to test if it's real is to rub a little bit of rubbing alcohol across the ink and see if it smears.  No rubbing alcohol around, so I licked my thumb and then did it.  Both of the cards smeared!  So that means Marguerite Regan (or someone writing in her place) hand wrote all those cards.  Huh.  That's a lot of paperwork. 


My curiosity was piqued.  Who is Marguerite Regan?  According to Google, she's the Dean of Academic Affairs at Envision EMI, LLC (the organization that sponsors the Young Leader Conferences).  Some people were all up in arms about this being a hoax... I don't think it's fake.  You can actually go to these conferences; it's just not as elite as people are led to believe and it's pretty expensive.


In other news, it's really windy outside.  This afternoon, the 5th graders mixed it up by playing softball for 2nd recess.  I was all-time pitcher (though almost every single one of them tried to con me out of it!).  I didn't have a glove, so I borrowed from whoever was up to bat.  I really need to remember to bring mine.  It was really fun!  The wind made pitching kind of hard... I would expect it to take the ball and then the wind would die down right as I pitched. 


Balloon activity for tomorrow: play games during Word Work/Work on Writing.  My intent was that they could play any board games they wanted... the 5th graders automatically thought kickball, the state ID game, etc.  The state game was vetoed because the 5th graders get really in-to it and their voices go up a few decibels.  If we didn't have the 2nd graders coming in, it wouldn't be a problem.  But they have a hard time focusing as it is; four yelling 5th graders won't help the problem.


Speaking of the 2nd graders... We're working on triple-digit addition and subtraction.  I have two of them who don't borrow/regroup when they need to (or else they start on the wrong side of the problem and work left to right).  One kid made a mistake in her subtracting, so I tried to get her to see her mistake, "How far is 15 from 10?"  She thought for a bit, "I'd say, quite a ways." A little more thinking, "No wait, not that far!"  I rephrased my question, "How many numbers are between 10 and 15?"  "Ohhhhh...." Then she counted on her fingers to find the answer.