Academies Rock

I love Fridays, for more than the obvious reason. Every Friday is Academy Day in the lower elementary. We will be running four academy sessions this year. Students each get to choose two mini-classes from seven offerings which are carried over five academy days. It's great fun. This academy session we have a middle eastern dance class and a middle eastern cultures class, three artsy/crafty classes, a soccer class and a gardening class. I was able to get two volunteers to run my academies - the middle eastern dance and culture classes - so I get to sit back and watch as my students are exposed to way more than I could ever offer in our regular class. It's awesome.
So the students come in and have a 15-20 minute free-work period: no planning or tracking. Then we break for morning line and head off to academies by 9:00. First class runs from 9-10, and then we have a half-hour break. Second class runs from 10:30-11:30, followed by lunch/recess and room cleanup. Then we're done! The day FLIES by, and the students are happily engaged the whole time.
I never did get an entry done yesterday. It was a MUCH better day than Wednesday. I got plenty of sleep the night before, and I felt like a real human being. I also felt cruddy for having been such a meanie on Wednesday. When I called morning line, I picked up the peace table and carried it into the middle of circle, and then I apologized to the class. We talked about how lack of sleep makes it impossible for a person's brain to function properly, and the general consensus was that it was no big deal. The students also wanted to share story after story about times when their mamas were tired and mean. That I thought was cute.
We're on a long weekend here - Monday is Labor Day - and I'm going to do the 2nd Great Lesson when we're back. I should probably work on that over the weekend. Heh.

What a Day

Holy socks, Maria, today was one huge trainwreck. The nightmare began last night when my two-year-old woke up at 1AM and proceeded to vomit every thirty minutes until 5:30. I had this great, beautiful plan, and it was all shot to hell by circumstances beyond my control. So frustrating. I could see it all unravel, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. At first I thought I'd be able to keep it together, you know, run on adrenaline, until the early afternoon, but it was not to be; I crashed around 10AM. I saw myself, heard myself, take on a terse and impatient tone and soon enough the twinkle, which I tried to recapture, was all but gone. Even when we were in the middle of what should have been an awesome afternoon, I could tell my twinkle was forced and fake. Even so, I kept it up as best I could.
Here's what we had on the agenda: I started off with a mechanics lesson - the capitalization key experience. It's not a super entertaining lesson, and for most of my students it's 100% review. I was off my game already, and it kind of fell flat. I spent the rest of the morning teaching individual lessons - I got ID, BP and AC started on geometry nomenclatures, and I helped CB do the problems on the board among other things - and I did individual interviews and spelling tests with three students. LH has been planning and completing the same works every day so far: metal insets and creative writing for language and the binomial cube for math. We had a talk about challenging herself, and we decided on a goal of one language skyscraper and one math box each day. I know she can do it if she just puts her mind to it. KL is new and still figuring out tracking, and I know it will help immensely to get her more lessons. We're working on that.
The afternoon was supposed to be the high point of the day. I would teach them about harnessing the energy of the sun by creating a solar cooker, and we would talk about the scientific method (without calling it such). While our experiement processed, we would play games for movement time, and then we'd enjoy marshmallows dipped in chocolate. A short work time would follow, and we'd finish the day with a lesson by Miss Kati on the relative sizes of stars. That was how it was supposed to go, and on paper we got through it all. It was, however, not my most shining moment. I snapped at NL twice - once during the creation of the solar cookers because he kept sneaking his fingers out to snatch chocolate chips and later as we were enjoying our chocolate dipped marshmallows because he decided to stick his fingers into the chocolate bowl not 15 seconds after I had asked students to keep their fingers out of the bowls. Maybe he didn't hear me? Entirely possible, but did I consider that at the time? No way. Sleep deprivation got the better of me, and I lost my composure. I'll have to be sure to apologize tomorrow.
Speaking of tomorrow, I'm anticipating a much better day. My boy has been feeling fine all day, and I'm hoping he'll go to sleep soon so that I can join him in sweet slumber. We have a field trip planned tomorrow. First one of the year. I'm looking forward to it, and I know the students are too.
If I can just get some sleep.