Day 11: The Evaluation That Wasn't

Today the 11th grade studied one of the Coyote Tales as a way of learning and analyzing the Trickster archetype. Their homework assignment is to take a modern day trickster like Bugs Bunny, Spongebob, The Joker or some other and do a brief comparison and contrast essay comparing the two tricksters.

The 12th grade read Beowulf's speech before King Hrothgar where Beowulf states his purpose for coming to Denmark and boasts of his past victories over enemies and monsters. Their homework assignment is to write a similar boast telling of their past accomplishments and those that they hope to accomplish in the future.

Today we had a faculty meeting where we were supposed to be told about the new evaluation system using the Marzano teaching model as its basis. However, at the meeting we were informed that the evaluation had NOT been developed, and that we would be evaluated using the old model that has been in place for several years now.

In education, we are used to things like this.

Day 10 and the Weekend, an offer to coach a chess team

Tricksters Old and New
Bit of catching up to do.

Friday, the senior class got into the poem Beowulf at last starting with the problems the creature "Grendal" causes for the Danes. I love the way that Maurice Sagoff, the creator of Shrinklits condenses this part of the epic Monster Grendel's tastes are plainish.\Breakfast? Just a couple Danish.

The juniors read Langston Hughes' story "Salvation" in which he tells about a time when he "faked" being saved in a church revival to please his aunt and everyone else in the congregation. It is another example of the kind of reflective essay the students are going to be writing soon. I had something similar happen to me which I wrote about in a blog entry entitled "Camp Meeting".

This weekend has been part school preparation and part home remodeling. We are going to install new cabinets in the kitchen, so the old ones had to be taken out, moved actually. The old are being relocated in the our pantry to make way for the new.

I have also been working on my lesson plans for next week. The people who believe that teachers only work from 8am to 3pm don't know what they are talking about.

I also found out that Casady Schools wants to talk to me about becoming the coach for their middle school chess club. I held a chess camp for them over the summer, which I really enjoyed. If this works out as I think it will, I will be sponsoring three different scholastic chess groups: Centennial, The Village Library, and Casady.

Next week, the seniors continue with Beowulf while the juniors will be reading and working with Native American creation and trickster tales.