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.