Yeah, but Idaho is much colder.

My poor sophomore students are going to be disappointed. We had a field trip to Mount Carmel for their annual carnival on Friday. We learned today the carnival was canceled so they have to be in classes! Poor sad kids.

As a result I have 5 classes left with my Monday-Wednesday-Friday blocks and 3 classes with my Tuesday-Thursday blocks. Then two days of final exams and we are done. Last class is on the 23rd and exams are on the 26th and 27th. Grades have to be in by the 30th. Payday is tomorrow and then another on June 1 and then 2 months without pay!

Of course that will give us time to work on getting this house in order.

My car is almost ready. They had a junker they could use to cut parts off of. The linkage is fixed and tomorrow the rest of the car should be done. There is only a small portion of the original car that has been replaced so far. I expect a lot more will need replacing in the future. I could wind up with my grandfather's ax after all.

I went to the university to check on summer courses that I could take to add to my master degree program but they aren't giving any. I'll have to wait until fall. Now I need to find the gang who are working to certify former teachers. I need to take a few courses to get re-certified. Actually I don't NEED to but I want to. The school claims all its teachers are certified and I don't like making liars out of them.

Here's something interesting that happened in my composition class (Junior Class). The kids were begging to watch a movie but I told them I didn't know of any movie that related to composition. They did. Freedom Writers. We watched the movie and then I told them we had to have a project to make it a fully educational experience. They came up with the anonymous journal entry. They would email a journal entry to me about something that had a profound affect on them. I would distribute the entries without names, only numbers, and the students would read them out loud.

It worked pretty good and we got some truly interesting entries. I was amazed at how emotionally traumatized some of these kids are. One girl was a pretty difficult child she admitted. The height of her foolishness was when she pretended to be sick so she could stay home. Her mother came home at lunchtime and caught her in bed with her boyfriend. What followed was a terrible scene. Now a year has passed and the mother hasn't spoken to her since. The kid insisted on reading this one herself. She was in tears about halfway through it.

Later I met with her in the library. There I can have quiet talks with the kids and still be seen in public. I explained to her that many mothers and daughters have difficulties but that time can cure the wounds. I also told her not to connect having sex with what her mother is doing. I told her they were separate issues and she should not feel bad about having sex. I did try to reinforce the idea that she should not get pregnant or get an STD. I suggested that she check out the Midwest Teen Sex Show for age appropriate sex education and help. She seemed to be a little happier after that.

This job is very interesting... and challenging.