Wednesday, May 13

Not Perfect, Just Inspiring

This is the project that has consumed most all of this semester. Today they had their "last chance edit". I told them today that we were publishing this. That I would send it to all the parents, teachers, administrators, community members, and people that I know. I told them that many people would see this site and would see their writing. I told them that people would judge them based on this. People would judge them, and their school, and Native American teenagers as a whole based on this writing. And boy oh boy did they edit their little hearts out!

And so I give to you... Rosebud's Most Inspiring People, 2009!


I hope you will read and judge and find both the subjects of articles and their authors to be as inspiring as I do!

Monday, May 11

This is how the year ends....

Not with a bang, but with a movie and a worksheet.

We're watching Romeo and Juliet. Not really studying it, just watching it. I wanted to study it, to read it, I really did. It would have been fun. But we lost 10 or so days to cold and blizzards. I underestimated the complexity of our Feature Article assignment and then decided to toss laptops, Gmail, and Google Docs into the mix- which was an awesome experiment, but took a lot of time. So here we are with 8 days left of school, watching Romeo and Juliet and filling out a worksheet.

The bang came last week, when we took the final reading assessment and hit over 2 years of reading growth. Bang!

And now we're all pretty happy, we're all pretty friendly. We're just watching and filling out worksheets, but the conversations are more real than they have been all year. We're not going to gain a super in-depth understanding of this play... but they are watching closely, asking good questions, making good connections, and listening to my stumbled answers. I think we all deserve this more laid back environment right now, and I think we're all realizing that the questioning and connections do not end after the final reading assessment.

Sunday, December 28

Happy Holidays!


anne_cats1
Originally uploaded by photoschwalbe
This is my crazy cat lady Christmas card photo :)

Tuesday, December 16

"arctic air intrusion"



This is the reason school was canceled yesterday. Supposedly it was so cold the buses wouldn't start. Gotta love the plains....


Sunday, November 30