Spring Break: Friday Update

Tuesday was lovely and relaxed, and we spent about an hour sitting at the coffee shop blogging and chatting and... (okay, I don't really know what Mr. Chandler was working on...) before heading home. The coffee shop owners home-school their son, so they didn't realize it was spring break this week. The owner Dave mentioned to Mr. Chandler that he'd noticed we were there during the day instead of just evenings and weekends, and Mr. Chandler told him it was spring break. Dave said their business had dropped about 20% this week, so he was relieved to know that it was because teachers and students were vacationing elsewhere. I'm glad so many teachers and students come here. It's a cheerful place, and we usually see people we know. On Tuesday, one of our summer camp girls was here with her mom. Today, we're sitting one table away from the school board chairwoman. Sometimes we have "grading parties" here -- a group of middle school language arts (and sometimes social studies) teachers gathered to drink caffeinated beverages and chat and grade papers in a place that's less lonely than our individual desks on a rainy evening.

On Wednesday, I spent the entire day in a meeting at the district office. Our human resources director, his secretary, the union president and I were working through 140-some requests from teachers for transfers or changes of placement. It was not as crazy as last spring, when we were overseeing the RIF process, and it's far less emotional because no one is being laid off this time. I think we managed to find placements for about half of the people who wanted them. I wish we could find placements for everyone who asked, especially the high school teachers. I keep hoping that the school board will decide to release some of the $8 million sitting in their savings account and add back some more teaching positions, but I don't know if that will happen or not.

Wednesday afternoon when I got back to my car to go home, my favorite radio station was playing ALL of Dvorak's New World Symphony. I ended up sitting in the parking lot of the district office listening to the rest of it. (There's the music part of my spring break checklist.) I'm not a huge Dvorak fan, but I do like the New World Symphony. I started my car just as they were starting the "Largo" portion -- a section of music frequently used by cartoonists to indicate morning time (but not to be confused with Grieg's slightly more famous "Morning" from Peer Gynt.)

Yesterday (Thursday), after returning some books to my good friend the library, Mr. Chandler and I went to see the Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie with a Language Arts friend of mine. It was fabulous! First, let me say that my disgust at the character does not carry over in any way to how they made the movie. The movie was extremely well-done! The character is a wretched, selfish little middle school boy, but he was in the book version as well. The actors were fantastic, especially the horrible high school brother Roderick, and they all managed to look like the sketches in the book. There were a few minor story changes, but they stayed true to the important stuff. It was hilarious, AND they did a good job on it. Hurray!

I still need to bake things in order to complete my spring break to-do list. I've just spent so much time reading that I haven't been paying much attention to other things. I'll get on it this evening... after I finish my book!