November 5, 2008

Wednesday.

The first two hours of school was used in the door decoration contest. The theme had to do with Paris. I was not able to go to prayer this morning.

I was a little numb today from the election results. I do not really know what Barak Obama stands for. I am very happy for our country and the folks in it that came out of a history of being slaves. Now they have one of their own leading the most powerful country in the world. As I went to McDonald's later in the day, it seemed that all the black folks had a spring in their step and were very happy. As a look at black folks now it feels like we can look each other in the eye with now question in either of our minds that we are equal. This is an awesome feeling. I am trying to watch to much TV to drink in all the analysis and hype of the media. I am trying just to experience history for what it is in the street, not on the TV.

Bible and Musical Arts went fairly well. We listened and studied new songs for the first 30 minutes until Shawn, my co teacher came. She introduced two new ideas for media production. She was looking for feedback from the students but they didn't give her much during this homecoming week. I got a little upset that no one was talking about how be would implement these good ideas. No one was talking about format or dates or ideas of how to get it done. As Shawn talked about it more and there was no feedback or ideas for implementation, I began to get more and more upset at the mere talk with no inclination to action. I finally spoke up and said something about it. I told the group I was a little frustrated that we were not getting a plan together to DO instead of to TALK.

I apologized later in the day to Shawn for complaining about the lack of follow-up and action. Shawn does have excellent ideas so I am going to look for active ways to help her follow-up on stuff.

Third period was Spanish I class. We watched the Shark Tale movie in Spanish. Andy helped me figure out how the strange menu worked for the Audio and Subtitles.

I asked Peter for permission to leave the campus early. I stopped by Donna's room and dropped off Andrew's cell phone and the Shark Tale movie for Donna to use.

I went home and crashed for almost two hours. I then went to McD's, read and prepared the songs for service.

Worship was awesome tonight, the vocals and band sounded great. We sang Open the Eyes of My Heart, You Are and Refiner's Fire.

Doc spoke on the seven seals in revelation and what they could mean for us today. Donna was very tired this evening and even sighed a few times during service.

I stopped by the school after asking Mrs. Devitt if she could cover for me if a took a day off of school.

Donna is very frustrated in teaching her Kindergarten class. She has a lot of students below level with minimal comprehension skills. They listen little and talk much. It is as if they have never been told to stop making noise in their whole life. They don't even know what silence is. Donna also feels pressure from the first grade teachers to have them teaching at a first grade level. She has students that don't even know their letters yet, much less the sounds they make, much less words, much less sentences, much less paragraphs. She also feels like there is too much distraction with constant parties and constant injections of sugar to create hyper active, unable to focus children. It is very possible that our kindergarten is broken. I have already told her that she does not have to teach next year. She has not been happy one day since school started in spite of her working out on the treadmill and watching her diet almost every day.