Watchers...

I got a text this morning from Mr. E saying the school board would be visiting classrooms today. Other teachers like to know ahead of time to make sure their rooms are spotless and they have fantastic lessons planned. While I too want my room spotless with kids well-behaved and fantastic lessons, I know from past experience that the school board members never come in right when you plan them to, so it's better to stick with the routines.

My class was one of the first ones visited since the other classrooms were at recess when the board members arrived. Two of them made the rounds today, and they spent quite a bit of time in my room. Both stayed about a half an hour each (at different times) while we did our Daily 5 rounds. One of them is a dad to one of my students, so he asked if he could come back later and eat lunch with us. Of course!

After lunch, the same dad/school board member asked if he could come back in and watch in the afternoon. Uh, okay, sure... slightly panicking internally... Most of the time they each stay for maybe 10 minutes to watch. Now they want to come in again? Either I'm doing a bad job or my class is really interesting...

Both men came back around 1:00 to see me lead bells. One of them said he wanted to see what all went into getting a song ready before we play the song in church. Afterwards he asked questions like 'how long have you been practicing this song?' 'when will you play it in church?' So, pretty mundane questions and I had nothing to worry about.

The dad of my student stuck around after bells too. I introduced him to my student teacher, who was teaching a lesson today. She did a Mystery Science lesson with the class, and it was so interesting, he stayed the whole half an hour instead of just 15 minutes like he'd originally planned. Mystery Science is a program I just was introduced to last week. They have interactive video lessons for the kids to watch and then do exploratory activities about particular topics. Normally you have to pay ~$100 for a year subscription, but they're giving away 1,000 free memberships, so I signed up! They're pretty neat! I look forward to using more in my class next year.