...Hitting the wall

I am home early today. By early, I mean I didn't go to Cross Country practice, so I was home by 4:15 pm. The reason: I'm coming down with a cold that I've managed to fight off for a while... the battle was going my way but apparently, the cold brought in reinforcements at about noon today and took away my voice. I'm not sure if that analogy makes any sense... maybe I better check my temperature, too :P

Anyway, I need to sleep. Sleep and recover for wilderness camp. I missed out on wilderness camp a couple years ago because I was sick and know from experience how inconvenient it is for the groups to be re-shuffled and reorganized at the last minute. So, I'm dropping everything else and playing the recovery game.

Aside from getting sick, today was a good day. Here's what I hope my students learned:

2nd and 3rd period Humanities: While it's true that people may stereotype and make assumptions about us based on ethnicity, age, gender, appearance and other characteristics, it's also true that we stereotype and make assumptions about others, often without even realizing it.

4th and 5th period World History: Though ancient civilizations across the globe developed in radically different directions with unique cultures and languages, they often began in the same way (nomadic groups settled and practiced agriculture along rivers) and share common characteristics (cities, organized governments, laws, writing systems, etc.)

6th period English: We encounter rhetorical fallacies every single day in a variety of mediums, and even use fallacies ourselves.

It was a fun day--particular praise to my freshmen, who had an outstanding first day of presentations. Middle school teachers, pat yourselves on the back because this group has effective communication down. Not only effective communication but creative communication (hands down, the best skits that I've ever seen students do in my entire time at CAJ)!

I also enjoyed my 7th period prep-time, which I spent sitting with a bunch of Seniors in their senior lounge, quizzing them on rhetorical fallacies. They still remembered most of the fallacies, and it was a good opportunity to trouble-shoot the fallacies that they'd either forgotten or never felt comfortable with. Doing this helped me to feel even more comfortable with my own understanding of the fallacies so thanks, Seniors! I miss having you in class, but I treasure the chances that I get to still be a part of your school experience in an informal capacity.

Now, I'm home. I'm going to sleep. When I wake up, I hope I feel better. Till then...