Midday on Day Two

Just posting a little update regarding the day. We had a staff meeting this morning to review the procedures for the start of school with respect to the death of Mr. Bird. There will be a general meeting in the gym for 8th and 9th graders to discuss his passing and there will be a number of crisis team members on the grounds to talk with teachers and kids as needed.

I then met with Guy and two teachers that will be teaching Computer classes this year. Neither teacher has much experience with computers at all and I was pleased that, as we went through most of the terms and procedures, as well as the programs that we will be covering, that I knew most of the topics of the "curriculum" already.

I had an idea about my goal for the classes and my participation this session. I ran it by Guy and he is all for it. The North Fork Lab, our classroom, has a couple of faded bulletin boards and some ancient Apple "think different" posters on the walls. We don't even have Apple computers anymore. I would like to use our computer graphics class to have kids create some computer artwork to start a gallery in the lab. They do it in the Media Center, I think it would be great thing for the lab, as well. I will work this into the classes later in the year, if possible.

Talked with Randy, a math teacher, about Guy. He told me the story about how Guy met his wife (Randy set them up.) He says that Guy is a great teacher, sometimes unorthodox, but that he gets great results from his kids. Guy does not seem to have any written lesson plans or syllabi, he just knows what he is going to teach and he teaches it. Alot of the progress in his classes appears to be the students branching out on their own and learning how to do things. This will be a neat process to watch.

At the moment, Guy is off taking care of some "coaching" stuff, so I am set free for awhile. I may try to find Jay and see about lunch. I saw Stephen here this morning. I think that he is observing social studies procedures with Megan, a PP13 graduate, for the day.

I will be back here at 1:00, when we have to get the classroom ready for tomorrow. This mostly will involve moving the CPUs for each workstation into place, cleaning up, etc.

Time for lunch.