Re-tired

Re-tired? What is the origin of that word- does it mean tired again or just like a retread on a tire? Makes you wonder.

This photo is a trail at Creamer's Field today. The trees are just starting to show leaves and there were moose tracks in the Spring mud.

I might have to change the name of this blog soon as I had my last official day as a mentor this week. I guess I should keep posting about mentoring since I have a gazillion stories from my travels and my teaching.

One year of my many interesting years of teaching was 1995-6. I was teaching at North Pole Middle School and Jeannie and I were piloting a two teacher team. That meant that we had about 56 students to share between us for every class. I taught math, science and reading and she taught English, social studies and reading. The teams at NPM at that time had color names and we had the unfortunate name of 7White, but in fact all the 7th graders of color were on our team. I'm not complaining- the diversity was great, but calling our team the "White" team seemed really inappropriate. When we started the team, the counselors put 28 kids in each class telling us that some would drop out during the year. No one did. Not one single kid. But, I digress.

This team of kids really bonded with us. We loved them and they loved us, but we were all a little non-mainstream. When we would go on field trips (which we did often), we picked up a suitcase of meds from the nurse so that everyone could get their pills on time. One time Stormy stuck a paperclip into an electrical outlet and got shocked and sparks flew everywhere. Lance tied his leg to a stool and we were tempted to leave it that way!

The principal came in and observed me one day. We were doing some exercises to measure and graph our heart rates. When we did the post observation conference, he said that he couldn't concentrate at all because of the ventilation blower and the buzz of the florescent lights. Also, he said he couldn't believe that I had that hyper group of kids up moving around so much..?? Go figure. As if they could sit still. And windows in the room would have been a big help to our morale.

One student showed up at noon for lunch and to pick a fight and get suspended almost every day. The admin intern spent so much time in the hall outside my room that I suspected he was trying to learn math and science.

We were also located in "the splatter zone". The hallway outside my room was directly under the railing from the upstairs hallway. Anything jettisoned off that balcony became a lethal weapon much to the delight of my ever playful students.

My dadgum SC card for my camera is malfunctioning. Pictures of Fairbanks hikes, bikes and yikes to come soon. Time to book your travels North...it's 65 degrees by afternoon and the trees are greening up. It's time to get your pliers and pull those studs out of your tires.