Feb. 22 (Wed.)

I should always remember when I am having a really terrible day, usually the next day can only be better. B1 did great- their essays are exactly where they need to be. Every thing else they improve between now and March 7th will be extra. They are ready.

B2 surprised me. I read over their introduction homework while they took their break, and they actually seem to have gotten something out of our lesson yesterday (even though I thought they were clueless!). Their introductions were much better, and for most of them, this carried over to the introductions for their essays they wrote today. Alex still doesn’t seem to care without prodding. I read over his shoulder, and he had something along the lines of, “Hi, my name is Alex and I am going to tell you about…” When I asked him about it, he realized immediately what he should have done, and wrote a reasonable introduction on the back of his paper. Jerome is in ISS for something that happened in George’s room yesterday, but he understood the instructions I gave him this morning. Jarrelle has calmed down from his incident yesterday, but did not apologize, even though his dad assured me that he would. Jaime is still gone, but he might be back tomorrow. Mrs. Goodheart will be testing him for most of the day since he missed the testing last week, so maybe we’ll have one more Jaime-free day.

The best part of today is that B2 was so settled and so quickly into their practice test that I took the novice students (Joseph is absent, so just the girls) to the lab to work on mythology for tomorrow. I had words for Lynn to work on, but I really wanted the opportunity to clear up some tricky issues before class tomorrow. We had a great lesson. I knew that explaining gods and goddesses would be a tricky subject since all three of them are very devout Christians. Minah had a funny story back at Halloween. Her preacher had told her that Halloween was bad, but her father thought it would be fun, so he dressed her up like a witch, and they got lots of candy. She said they ate it all that night, just the two of them! Anyway, I know that Sumaya and Gabby go to the same church, and that their god and the Greek gods were going to cause some confusion. Plus, it would be a tricky situation to put Lynn in. We talked it all out, and we ended with all three of them clearly understanding the difference in what they believe and what the Greeks believed. It took a lot of negotiating and some translating for Sumaya, but we eventually worked it out. I had never thought about the similarity in pronunciation between the Spanish pronunciation of Jesus and the English pronunciation of Zeus. We made a list of the gods and the goddesses, along with the trait they are known for, which helped clear up some problems. We also read a story about Aphrodite’s birth (which was very amusing to them, since she was born naked, wouldn’t have read that story if Joseph had been here). Sumaya is the best thing that could have happened to my class. She has such a positive outlook, and she works so hard! She also gets Gabby to pay attention and work because she often asks Gabby a question that Gabby can’t answer, so Gabby has to figure things out before she can pass the information on to Sumaya. They are a fun bunch, and I’m really glad I got to spend some time alone with them.

It’s planning time right now, so I haven’t seen B3 yet, but everything seems more subdued today. Even just changing classes in the hall is quieter today. We will hope for the best!