TIRED

Wednesday and I don't have any real breaks. All day my classes come at me one after the other, until lunch and then I only have fifteen minutes--not enough time.

No matter.

We begin the morning with vocabulary. Our bell ringer. The students find the definition of a word using context clues. Then we get into our research. The students answer questions from encyclopedias. For the most part though, we're reading THE SKELETON MAN and most of the class is into it. Nice story, THE SKELETON MAN. Nice legends, nice realistic fiction. Can it be based on truth? So, yes, we're studying nonfiction, too.

After lunch the entire seventh grade has been coming into my room. We're interpreting data and making all kinds of graphs--stem and leaf, histograms, etc., etc., etc. And they're catching on.

There's problems too. A few students still want to play the bully card. It's an uphill battle, but I'm winning.

Oh, by the way, I spent a few minutes on the phone with representatives from the Chicsgo Storm, a professional soccer team. I won a grant from them for two hundred students to become part of a mentoring program. Worth about 8000 dollars.

Not bad for a day's work.