Winter Break

Around Thanksgiving, I was thinking, “There is a hot tub overlooking a snowy hillside with my name on it” as school got out for the three-day break. Today, the last day of school before winter break, I’m too busy to think about the break. I think tomorrow I’m going to sleep in, and as I look at my calendar, I’m shocked at how quickly I’ve managed to fill the two weeks off. There’s something almost every day already, and no “vacation” in sight. I’m going to have to make sure I leave time for baking and playing with the dogs.

I sent my kids off for winter break with a writing assignment, and they went whining all the way. They are to write a 5-paragraph compare/contrast rough draft for the book we just finished. If they were to sit down and do the whole assignment in one go, it would probably take them about an hour, give or take some middle school math… (Take the individual writing ability of the student, multiplied by a numeric ranking representing the student’s quick-thinking and critical thinking skills – 1 through 5, 1 high, 5 low – and add in the number of family, recreational, and parentally-forced activities and events in the student’s 2-week vacation… the higher the number, the longer it will take the kid to write the paper.) ONE hour out of two weeks… and yet, I know I will have students who show up on Monday, January 3rd with a bunch of excuses about why they couldn’t complete the assignment. Seriously lame. I predict an 85% homework return rate on this assignment.