Attention Parents!

Parents, Parents, Parents!  Please give me your complete attention here!

Here is something you MUST do.

You must make a rule that your lovely teenager cooks dinner once a week.  Call it Independent Living Skills.  Call it Acting Like a Grown-Up.  Call it Whatever You Want.  Just do it.

Because maybe they will start to like it.

And then maybe they will like it so much that they will want to cook a little more on other days of the week.

And then MAYBE you will leave for an hour one day and when you return there will be BANANA PUDDING in your refrigerator!

It's like magic!  It will just appear there. 

And it will be AWESOME.

Trust me on this one.


(We are enjoying summer and slowly finding a routine.  More updates and pictures to come soon!)

The Day I Gave Up...

...and showed a movie.

Despite all my academically inclined tendencies to KEEP. PUSHING. THROUGH. TO. THE. VERY. END. (and I mean "to the very end;" today is the last full student day before exams), I just could not take another day.  It's like a zoo in Room 210 lately.  And I don't like myself very much when I have to resort to raising my voice and sending kids in the hall to get their work done.

So I threw in the towel.  We have reviewed all this week.  My students have been reviewing in every other class since the beginning of May. (Thank you, SOLs, for the academic burn-out.)  They are tired.  Their brains hurt.  I am tired.  My brain hurts.  Andforgoodnesssake I needed to get a little grading done.

We watched Stranger Than Fiction, which actually includes a fair amount of literary terms, so they actually did review a little after all. 

And we were all much happier for the break in routine.

Oh summer, please hurry up!