So how did things work out in Maine? My 80 year old mother was disappointed in what they got in Aroostook County. She'd been hoping for some excitement. Did I mention that we are all nuts in my family?

This week has been fun. We had Monday off, of course, and started fresh(?) on Tuesday. I have invented a new way to teach a section. I put a homework assignment on the board and split the class into two groups. One group, we'll call them Green, has to do the homework which results in cheering from the other group (Blue). Next class the Greens have to teach the homework to the Blues. At the end there is a quiz for each of the students and there are two names on each quiz, the teacher and the person who took the quiz. Accountability is the name of the game.

The next homework assignment goes up on the board and we reverse the roles.

Mine is a student centered classroom. One class asked to be allowed to not do homework over the weekend. I asked if they were sure that was what they wanted. They did. I agreed. The following class I explained that we couldn't do the fun activity because they didn't do any homework over the weekend. Therefore they had to learn it by lecture followed by the same quiz the other classes had to take. About five minutes into the lecture heads were hitting the desks but I wouldn't let them nap. They had to do this.

Pore li'l chill'n.

I think they will choose weekend homework next time.

Our schedule is a little strange but it works. On Monday we have all seven classes for 45 minutes each. Tuesday and Thursday are our odd numbered classes: 1, 3, 5, & 7. Monday and Friday are for the even numbered classes: 2, 4, 6, & 8. The magical 8th block allows the school to schedule special events such as pep rallies without taking any time from the class time. Teacher development time is scheduled for that time on a Friday and the kids get out of school at 1:45 after a full day of classes.

Today I showed my Guam History kids a slide show of old pictures of Guam starting with those from the William Safford book Useful Plants of Guam. It was published in 1905 and all the photos are from that period between 1898 (when the USA took possession of Guam) to the publication year. I also found an old History of Guam published in 1964 which had some good pictures in it. I've been working my scanner pretty hard but now I have a PowerPoint presentation with almost 70 slides in it.

The kids were fascinated. Nobody had ever shown them pictures of the old days. They saw the picture of the old cathedral and asked =why it had been torn down. I explained that it had been bombed flat, along with the rest of Agana, by the Americans when they invaded the island in 1944. They asked if the Americans worried they might hit the people who lived there and I had to explain that they really didn't but that the Japanese moved them out of the way before the attack. The Japanese weren't being particularly merciful. They didn't want the local people helping the enemy.

This is not something that comes up in the popular history of Guam. In that history the evil Japanese sent the people on a forced march across the island. The idea of getting them out of the way of the fighting doesn't get much press time. People like to hold firmly to their hate.