weeks 30-31: our own version of March Madness

Oh, folks. How unprepared I was for the onset of spring fever that came out of nowhere these 2 weeks and wreaked havoc on our school. Everyone is very thankful for the 2 days of spring break we'll all enjoy on the 28th and 29th.

The few days of brilliantly warm weather must have sparked some hysteria, because I feel like I've been kicking students out of my classes left and right.

I'm not the only one dealing with it. Our principal informed us that 4 kids actually left us this week. FOUR. As in: 3 were expelled for fighting and 1 withdrew (our sexual harassment ringleader from last semester).

Although it's terrible to have middle school students withdraw or be expelled, our school is already benefitting from the absence of these students. They were just causing us to expend way too much of our energy and taking our focus away from the rest of the students. I'm finding that while I agree with the fact that middle school students lack the brain development to make educated, mature decisions, they still definitely understand what they're doing (to some degree). This is especially true with repeat offenders.

Besides the bad news about our students, positive and interesting things are happening to get us ready for our next round of state testing. Students in each individual homeroom made T-shirts with slogans that they will wear when they take the test. My homeroom's slogan of choice is,"Failure is not an option." I'm a fan.

We had a poetry workshop last week, when a board member who is a police officer and a writer came to walk our students through writing a good poem about food. His humor and approachable introduction to poetry was received well by the students who attended. I purposely chose some talented writers as well as low ability students who I thought would benefit from the workshop. For the most part, students were into it, which is always neat to see.

On Friday the 25th we had the 2nd annual AVHS talent show and the first ever Battle of the Bands, which pitted the high school bands against our middle school band. I got asked to be a judge, which was CRAZY, because I barely read music and struggled to find different ways to say,"awesome!" or "not so good." The MS band came in 2nd behind one of the HS bands, but there wasn't much of a point difference there. Hopefully this means the HS bands will grow much stronger when our MS students, with their years of band experience, come to the high school!

Now we have April looming ahead, with zero days off, then May, then 2 weeks in June. We're rounding the corner toward the home stretch, with about 10 weeks left total. Here's to finding enough fun things to engage the students so we all don't succumb to spring fever!