Day-Tripping

Yesterday, my 18 year-old daughter and I made a trip to the Detroit Institute of Art. It has been a long time since I have been there. Long as in I was single and childless the last time I was there. At any rate, they have completed an enormous renovation/expansion since then, and we knew as soon as we got there and looked at a map that we would need to come back another day in order to see all of the collections. We had visited the Toledo Museum of Art the day after school got out and had been completely awed by the modern art collection, so that was our major focus yesterday. We also looked through the Native American, Asian, African, and Egyptian galleries. The Egyptian gallery was being renovated so there were only a few pieces on display in a temporary location. The Modern and Contemporary Art Collection was amazing. Even though we had narrowed our focus, we still had to move at a faster pace than we would have liked in order to finish before closing time. We had a wonderful day and are planning on returning to see the rest of the collection.
The $158 million renovation of the museum included replacing the stone facade on the north and south wings with mirrored sheets of granite. The white with black veined granite is beautiful, but wholly at odds with the original central structure. I was trying to remember the facade material it replaced, because it would have to have been pretty bad for this to be an improvement. On its own, it's quite beautiful. It's just in juxtaposition with the original that it becomes heinous. The University of Michigan recently constructed an enormous addition to the Alumni Art Museum in Ann Arbor (beaux arts style), and even though the architectural design of the addition is very modern, the materials (limestone cladding) are an exact match to the original building. I think the completed building is beautiful, because the beauty of the original was respected. I don't understand why there was so little apparent attempt for cohesiveness with the DIA renovation. I don't like to be negative about improvements when they are truly needed, but as a whole, this one is just plain ugly.

Post-Solstice

It always seems strange to me that Summer officially begins just when the days start getting shorter again. I love summer, even more now when it means three glorious months of rest and renewal. I have spent the last two weeks doing serious gardening and yardwork (it looks so much better now), and the worst of it is yet to come. I have a huge "compost pile" that really needs work, and an ancient wooden shed which needs to be demolished and hauled away. Those are really big projects and I can't face them without further study and planning. Ahem.
Our first camping trip of the summer is coming up, albeit a mini one. It will give us a chance to make sure everything is in working order before we embark on a major trip.
I have begun working through the textbooks for the new subjects I will be teaching next year--precalculus and algebra II. Algebra II is not a worry, but I am concerned about precalculus. It has been a long time since I have used any but the most basic trig identities. Well, this will be good for me. It will help me feel empathy with my future students.
The two classes I am taking this summer run consecutively--July 13-30 and August 3-13. We have a long camping trip planned for the second half of August, but I would like to get at week long trip in before the first class starts in July. Can't wait!
On the literary front, I am currently finishing up "The Ten Second Staircase" by Christopher Fowler, and enjoying it immensely. After that, I have "The White Corridor" by the same author, and then "Cemetery Dance", the latest novel by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Childs. By the time I finish these, the two Daniel Pinkwater books I ordered off of eBay should have arrived--one a collection of 4 novels and the other a book entitled "The Afterlife Diet". Is there any better way to spend the summer?

Summer

Well, I finally finished packing on Wednesday and turned in the key to my middle school classroom. Now I just have to keep my fingers crossed that everything makes it to the high school intact. I got a new chair about a month before the end of the school year and as silly as it may sound, I am worried about it showing up in my room in decent shape. The school is having senior students move everything and chairs on wheels in long hallways can be soooo much fun. I need to quit worrying and relax.
Yesterday I finally got to work out in my yard. I have a couple of little corner gardens near the gate to the my backyard that I weeded and planted with some new succulents. I am going to try to get another small area cleaned up today. By the end of the month, I may have the whole yard looking decent.
I also got online yesterday and reserved campsites for the Fourth of July weekend and for a long week at the end of August. The campsites are all at state parks which are a great value. The state park we will be at for the Fourth is only about 20 miles away, and not our favorite. But, it is close enough that my husband (who holds that we are too old to camp) will be able to drive out there after work on Friday and then drive home to sleep, and my sister can make it easily from where she lives. We can also pack up and come home if the weather is crappy or the natives are too rowdy (this campground has a reputation for attracting bikers).
I am most excited about the trip in August. We are going to start by camping up the western shoreline of the lower peninsula, then going up into the UP and spending a couple of days in Taquahmenon, and finally camping down the eastern shoreline of the mitten. We had originally intended to go up to the Keewenau peninsula for a couple of days, but it added about 14 hours of driving and we just won't have enough time. We camp with my sister and her daughter and the week near end of August is the only time we were all out of school. My son, who is now 20, really wants to go up to the top of the UP, to the Lake in the Clouds. I still have all of June free and the first two weeks of July, so maybe he and I can manage a road trip up there. I was even thinking about driving up through Illinois and Wisconsin, and then coming back down through Michigan.
There is also an archeological site in lower Illinois called the Cahokia Mounds that I would like to visit. I am looking into how we can camp our way there over a weekend.
Next year, we may even make it outside of Michigan and bordering states!
Mostly, I will be spending the summer boning up on pre-calculus, taking two more classes for my masters degree, finishing up projects at home (cleaning garage, painting living room), sorting through the boxes of papers (lesson ideas, notes) that I set aside all school year and brought home to work on and a lovely stack of unread/new novels by my favorite authors!
Adios.

Packing Anxiety

I arrived at my classroom (my old classroom, I mean) at about 10 and worked until about 3. I still didn't get finished! I would probably not be having so much trouble if I had been a little bit more organized during the school year. As a result, I am having to organize as I pack--yuck!!! In the past, packing up my room just meant tossing everything into boxes so they could move it into the hallway, wax the floors, and move everything back into the room. Unfortunately, I now have to move to a different classroom, in a different building, where I will be teaching different classes. Needless to say, this has complicated the packing process. For one thing, I will no longer be teaching an enrichment class, so all of the materials I used for that class are no longer needed. Some of the materials I used for my enrichment class which I am now bringing home or donating to other teachers: plastic dropcloth and bamboo rods (for making kites), deckles and molds (for making "papyrus"), short dowels with the ends whittled into skinny triangles (for making cuneiform tablets), bamboo shiskebab skewers (for making platonic solids mobiles), crochet cotton and cardboard pizza rounds (for making string-art), about a dozen boxes of flat toothpicks (for making bridges), and other assorted crap. My enrichment class was fun because it was a creative outlet for both the students and me, but it was also a lot of work. I am glad to be finished with it. It means I will be going from 5 preps to 4. Lucky me!
Also, I am no longer the student council advisor. I have a whole locker filled with half-used rolls of crepe streamers, balloons, napkins, paper plates, Chinese lanterns (from the Cinco de Mayo dance), and penny-war collection jars that need a good home, elsewhere.
Today, whenever I would begin to feel as if I was making real progress, I would remember that I still had 3 crap-filled lockers out in the hallway and several crap-filled boxes in a storage room elsewhere. Then I would almost start hyperventilating. This is why I don't even think about looking for a new house. I don't care if it is a buyer's market. We have been in the same house for almost 20 years and the memory of the move (December 17, 1989) still sends shivers down my spine. I plan on dying in this house.
I have to run my daughter around to some doctor/dentist appointments tomorrow morning, but after that I am back to my former classroom. I really want to finish up tomorrow. Good night.

School's Out for Summer!

It's here! It's here! Once again, the halls are quiet. The lockers are supposed to be empty but still contain what the students didn't feel was important enough to cart home: pens and pencils, rulers, compasses, reading books, and even the occasional calculator. Unbelievable. We had the "big wave" which is where all the teachers line up on the sidewalk in front of the school and wave to the the students as the buses leave. It's corny but a lot of fun for them and us. The high school students are already on the buses so they shout and wave, too. Fun!
Now all that remains is packing up my room for the move to the high school. I went in very early yesterday so I could talk with the high school math teacher who is retiring. I will be getting her room and I was interested in seeing the layout. I have several bookcases and filing cabinets and I needed to know what I needed to move and what I could leave behind. She showed me where all of her curriculum materials are located and gave me copies of the textbooks for the two new preps I will have. The room is nice. The way my classroom looks has always been important to me. When I read about teachers having to teach students in classrooms where the ceilings leak, paint is peeling off the walls, and desks are broken and graffiti covered, it makes me feel as though I am focusing on things that are academically unimportant when I "decorate" my room.  But I function better in cheerful, ordered surroundings, and as much time as I spend in my classroom every day, it is like a second home to me.  To some extent, the students must feel that way about the school classrooms.  I want it to feel comfortable to be there.
At any rate, I still have a lot of packing up to do.  I have sooooo much more stuff than I did two years ago, thanks in part to money from the state that was allocated for middle school math materials.  I have every math manipulative I ever wanted, plus site licenses to some great software, which, now that I think of it, I have to talk to our IT person about getting transferred to the high school computers.  I spent yesterday afternoon grading exams and getting grades posted.  I will go back in on Monday and finish the packing.  I am going to miss being there.  It has been a great four years in our little middle school.  Everyone was easygoing, hardworking, and had a great sense of humor.  Our lunch hour (24 minutes) was always so much fun.  Every year the principal would treat us to lunch to thank us for getting along so well (this would usually happen after a particularly nasty drama with the elementary school teachers) Next year we will all be teaching a mixture of middle and high school courses.  We won't be located in the same part of the high school building, and we don't know yet if our lunch periods will be at the same time. Sigh.....

Down to the Wire!

A 1/2 day today, another 1/2 day tomorrow, and then it's another one for the books. I still have most of my classroom to pack up in preparation for the move to the high school. The principal ordered moving boxes for for the middle school teachers, which were being stored in a back room waiting for use. Mysteriously, though, when I went to retrieve mine yesterday, there was only one left! Apparently the elementary school teachers have used them to pack up their classrooms in preparation for the move down the hall to their new classrooms. The nerve! Well, they can't move in until we move out so there is a serious glitch here. Anyhow, I have stripped my room and am now just waiting on boxes.
I have been joking with my students about the possibility that they could have me as a math teacher for six consecutive years. Many of the students responded favorably when they learned that they would have me for Algebra I next year, which was nice. At least they didn't groan, which was what I wanted to do when I found out I would have them again next year. I keep telling them, "I wish I could say I'm going to miss you next year." All joking aside, I believe the continuity will be a good thing for them and for me. I have had most of these kids for 2 years of pre-algebra and we know each other pretty well at this point. I already know which students will require additional support and monitoring. Good for them but I'm sure they won't think so. Well, off to the salt mines!