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Next Year

By the end of the week, I should know what will happen with RtI next year. Whether or not we will be having reading and math intervention classes, whether or not we will have money for materials and hopefully, who will be teaching the courses. Hopefully, this year we will have someone before school starts so that we can come up with a curriculum before school starts rather than when school starts. (always a good idea) Cross your fingers for us.

My AP students took their tests and AP Lang reported that it was "easy" and they "knew a lot more than they thought they knew"... I'm hoping that means I've found a sweet spot for getting the information into their brains and helped them find ways to process. The proof will be the scores. Who knows about the AP Lit? They were all thrilled that theHeart of Darknesswas on the open prompt as we had just finished reading it. But they all felt weak on Literary terminology. If you're going to an AP conference this summer in the Pacific Northwest, I really recommend Lance Balla's session - he's probably the only reason I kept sane this year and oh so helpfully provided that unit for Heart of Darkness.

I also got a compliment for a high school principal from another school about my fantastic AP lesson yesterday. He observed us reading Much Ado About Nothing and the students got into a spontaneous discussion about the masquerade scene. Specifically, one students couldn't believe that the characters didn't know who was who if they were just wearing masks. Another explained that they probably did know, but wouldn't admit it since the whole romance of a masquerade is in the not knowing. Personally, I was just glad that all the really snarky complainers were gone while this host of visiting administrators visited my room. I may have to bring in treats as a reward for such a great "discussion".

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