Day 5 - National Teacher Appreciation Week...Time to Recoup, Regather, and Rethink Next Steps

In honor of the 5th day, actually Saturday morning, I shout out to the Friday evening cocktail that will hopefully lead into a pleasant weekend. It's been a week celebrating teachers, students, and schools, but all the celebrating kept me away from grading. Now, I'm remarkably behind and we got an email at 3 p.m. Friday that everything must be out of our building by 8 a.m. Monday. We will not be able to enter until all their repairs are done.

(Wide-eye emoji here).

I have half my office packed, but there was not time this week to finish given the obligations of my job. Why this couldn't be suspended one week is beyond me, especially as the last exams and graduate classes were on Thursday. Hmmm. I am seeing that a lack of respect for educators transcends the K-12 spectrum.

Anyway, I had a horrible dinner: Reese's peanut butter cookies. I was too tired to cook and too exhausted to go get something. I needed dog biscuits and stopped on my way home to grade (that's when the email arrived we need to have all things packed and out by Monday). So, I got the cookies as comfort food and devoured them like a 3-course meal

Ah, but Yale University released Shaun Mitchell''s Ted Talk, a personal testimony of his journey to be a teacher. Proud of the guy, as he was in my first summer institutional cohort at Fairfield University and has been excelling ever since. I told Tanya Baker, National Writing Project, "I think this time his excellence choked me up a bit." He's a funny human being and has been so incredible for CWP-Fairfield, our colleagues and the young people he passionately works with. Proud of him, once again.