Post date: Oct 29, 2011 5:43:22 AM
Good Evening Fantastic Families of DCS 25 and 26!
Friday night I experienced an interesting paradox -- after a packed week of conferences, I'm invigorated and ready to rock for next week. Strange, eh? Actually, when I consider the positive and productive tone of almost every meeting, it is not a surprise at all. I appreciated the students' maturity, the parents' support, and the variety of outcomes of each meeting. My thanks and adoration to all who participated and continue to prove just how amazing and effective this sort of school can be.
The academic progress for this week was not spectacular. Days were short (conferences), schedules/rooms jumbled (battle simulations), and distractions not uncommon. Nevertheless, we did accomplish noteworthy things. The recap of the week shows the day-to-day schedules. In English, the kids made progress on two writing assignments on Bridge to Terabithia. They've read the final four chapters of The Bridge to Terabithia, and then chose their own topics for the final chapters and got some brief feedback from me. I am very impressed by the whole list of proposals that they wrote and am eager to watch their essays form. After writing their proposal, they write initial ideas into their comp books, then begin writing their rough drafts. If you get a chance over the weekend, it might be a good idea to have them show you their work-in-progress, and get some suggestions from you about content, clarity, and/or mechanics. On Tuesday the students will be reading their essays to their groups and eliciting some final feedback before the essays are graded. Final drafts are due on Wednesday. In science we finished up unit 2 with a short test and a "Track" on air pressure (website list with questions to answer). Unit 3 will go back to chapters 2, 3, and 4 which cover properties of matter, as well as the initial explorations or elements, molecules, and compounds. The reading pace and test schedule is on the calendar of the assignments page of my site. I'm trying to combine chapter tests in order to decrease the amount of class time used for testing -- a bit of a waste of our valuable time together, in my opinion.
------------------------
Saturday afternoon during a family gathering in Berkeley (the topic of which was, ironically, the current version of my dad's latest book), we got a call from the hospital in Ashland where my dad is recovering from heart surgery. They explained that he was having a tough time, is very uncomfortable, and experiencing lots of atrial fibrillation. Nothing life threatening, but I decided to drive through the night and be here to offer whatever support and relief that I can. His wonderful wife and caretaker was glad to see me and let me take over the bedside vigil/duties, so that she could go home and sleep for a much-needed long duration. I'm thinking that I'll stay for a few days and hope for (likely) improvement. My sister will arrive Tuesday mid-day and after a bit of an overlap time, I'll head home that afternoon. So, for you, this all means that I won't be at school on Monday and (probably) Tuesday. Debbie Donlon was able to get Shaana Haag to sub tomorrow for the morning and Mr. Jones will be helping out with the woodshop class in the afternoon. Mrs. Stuart might even take my class outside for a bit of pumpkin combustion during science time tomorrow. The immediate and unwavering support of the DCS administration, staff, and community is heartening -- my dad and I appreciate it so very much!
Sorry for the delay in this week's newsletter and I'm looking forward to seeing you all again at the middle of the upcoming week.
Chris