Today I’ve been at my school’s open house for the community, alumni, former and current staff, parents, and current students. There was a staff reception with snacks near the library and a ceremony in the gym at noon with an entertaining swing band. We just got a brand new building, and since my room has a good view, we had a chat room in my area for the classes of 85-89 this afternoon. I was hoping I could have some people sign up on my wish list for class materials which was to be our incentive for having our rooms open today, but no one actually did.

I was also hoping to get some work done in my classroom, but there was always a group or individuals coming through that had questions for me or that I needed to welcome, which is fine. I feel, though, that this afternoon I will be grading notebooks well into the night.

Today has been a busy day already, and it started with the smell of baking bread. This time of year–when the days get a little shorter and the nights get a bit cooler–is great for baking bread. I use a bread machine for this task, which allows me to dump everything for a delicious loaf of bread into the machine and set the timer. I could smell bread at 5:30 this morning, which, on a cool day, is quite a motivator for getting out of bed. My school colleague at our meeting this morning asked if I liked the smell of bacon and if I knew of such a device that could cook bacon each day like my machine does for bread….excellent idea! At any rate, my delicious, fluffy, warm white bread was a filling breakfast after the addition of butter and honey on the thick slices. I had a glass of milk along with it to add some more protein, too.

After breakfast and my morning meeting, I had a lab with my AP students and a lab with my Biology students. My Daphnia finally came in, and students were able to observe them under the microscope and carry out their self-designed experiments with them today. The ones that were left over got added to my aquarium–and so did the beautiful male betta that a student bought for me over his lunch break!

I hope to have a more low-key day after all of the labs today. I got some more new students, which makes it hard for them to participate in lab on their first day. My language arts students are going with me to see Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan woman who won the Nobel Peace Prize and the Woman of the Year award for her reforestation of parts of Africa and for helping the rural poor in east Africa. We were able to get free tickets through a writers program, so I’ll be going to that and then to Lukas’ birthday party.

Before all of that, however, I am going to enjoy a hot cup of tea–a variety Bethany gave me when she was visiting. Here’s to 20 minutes of relaxed lesson planning.

It’s time to get back to work in earnest. I worked every day during the week and even went in for 5 hours on Sunday. Today I’ve been working on my AP curriculum. I hope to get to bed at a decent time so that the 5:30 wake up time isn’t as jarring as it could be. This year will be a difficult one just because I’ll have three preps again, and I know AP bio will be very time consuming to prepare for and assess. I have a lot of plans for this year, such as home visits, calling parents more, going to games, planning awesome lessons and labs, and teaching a novel during the senior paper semester. Outside of the school day I would like to hike and run, get involved in midweek bible studies, and have people over more often. I love this time of the year, and I want to enjoy it as much as possible, but it’s very easy to get overwhelmed easily. Pray that I keep my sanity and do my job well without sacrificing my personal life!