Summer is coming to an end...

Yes, in days I will be headed back to school for a teacher work week before the students come on August 23rd.  In some ways this summer flew by and in other ways it was forever long.  I feel rested and though am not looking forward to the 5:45 am alarm clock going off, I am eager to get back in a routine.  I find that I am more consistent with working out, maintaining a balanced diet,  a better time manager of my time, maintain organization, etc. etc. the list goes on when I am in school.  I think Dustin is ready for me to be back in the routine as well so that I will go to bed before midnight, allowing him to get a full night's rest.  Today ended a 4 day "Working on the Work," conference for me at Hyatt Hill Country -- it was a costly conference ($900 per person) and our district sent over 100 teachers -- I feel a little overwhelmed and am completely reworking my syllabi, expectations and policies.  I am still wrestling with the idea of allowing students a second chance for full credit as proposed at our conference.  One of our presenters said "School is the only place where we punish people for being wrong."  So...maybe I will allow my students a specific number of "re-dos," on homework, quizzes and tests each six weeks?  After all...isn't the point for students to discover, grow and retain information instead of the "got-cha" system we currently have in place?  I am even allowing cell phones, laptops, ipads, itouches, etc. in my class this year.  (I hope I don't pull my hair out).  I learned of a new system where I can poll a class with a question and they can respond via texting the answer and the website breaks the data down for me immediately -- completely anonymous for me to monitor information retention.  You can even set the system up for students to text a question in without claiming ownership to the question so that they don't feel dumb or singled-out.  The times have changed!  After my conference I went to Dustin's office to meet the people that he works with -- very nice!  We're heading to Lubbock on Friday to go to Matt Vance and JoBeth Campbell's wedding.  Dustin is a groomsman so we there are a lot of festivities this weekend -- and we are SOMEHOW going to bring back Dustin's 101" Blue Marlin that is in my parent's basement.  I'm speechless, but optimistic that Dustin has a special place in mind for it besides somewhere at 7 Inwood Way.  I am going to try to blog once a week -- so stay tuned for pics from the weekend.  :  )