Sometimes I feel really lucky

Some days, it is all I can do to get up and go to school without having a nervous breakdown. Every time I start a new lesson, I never know if it is going to "work." Frankly, as a first year teacher, they usually have plenty of room for improvement. That wouldn't be such a big deal if I weren't a perfectionist. But I am. *sigh* However, today as I took pictures of my 6th graders' work, I felt pretty dang good.

It had been a bit of a crazy day. The mascot and a rookie from the St. Louis Blues had come to visit the 6th grade, which ended up cutting my class in half. I got them AFTER the visit. Last period on a Friday afternoon...oh, the potential for chaos! However, the kids were fantastic (this is one of my favorite classes). Last class they performed shadow plays, complete with original puppets, props, scripts, and sound effects, and today was not going to be the day to start a new unit. So, I didn't have much planned, but they settled right in to a creative drawing exercise that I had given some of my sophomores earlier. No need to say that young'uns were more creative. While they worked on that, I set up the screen from the shadow plays, handed back the puppets, and took pictures. My students were so charming, holding their figures tight to the screen to be photographed and playing in the light.

Some of you may have poked around my profile and seen the link to the blog I set up for them. It's just a place to stick links for them to follow so that I don't have to have them type the addresses. Anyway, I've posted some of the pictures. Check it out and see why these kids are super.


This photograph is of the screen sitting on our dining room table. This is before I installed the cloth on which the shadows are viewed.