Monday, November 29, 2010

Day #51

Not bad today, considering the kids had four days off. I thought they'd be nuts. They were no worse than usual.

I think the lesson we did today was the reason. In order to finish off our Pigtown expedition I had one more learning target to cover: "I can arrage chronologically the industries which impacted Pigtown settlement over time." Instead of standing in front of the class and teaching the industries, I typed them up with descriptions and dates and cut them out and had the kids make timelines onto which they pasted the industries. Can they put them in order? Easily assessed! And the kids like nothing better than cutting, arranging, and pasting shit. It's magical--you bust out the markers and glue sticks and safety scissors and the most reprobate bastards will stay in their chairs with tongues in the corner of their mouths, carefully piecing things together.

Tomorrow we'll use the findings today to make inferences: people used to flock from all over the world to work in Southwest Baltimore because of the B&O railroad. Now there are few jobs available. What happened? I'm curious to see what the kids come up with.

Man, I haven't been sick yet this fall, and I've felt so lucky. I had some minor sinus stuff which didn't even count back in September, but while the rest of the staff were hacking and snuffling I felt hale and hardy. But something caught up with me yesterday: weak, feverish, sneezy, achy. Seems better today but I can hardly breath. Screw it! I asked today for some of my accumulated sick time from the last few years to be paid out in cash. That will make for a nice bump.

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