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Forfeit
Does a win count as a win if an outside power forces a team to forfeit? Does the loss count as a loss? Do the standings afterward in any way reflect reality?
Socratic Seminar
They're tough classes at times, filled with a mix of students with mixed motivations and mixed ability levels. And all of this manifests itself in students' behavior: several students are focused and hardworking while a few are determined to gain attention by any means necessary, with the vast majority simply there, engaged sometimes, bored and checked out others.
But there's one activity that always gets good results: Socratic Seminars.
If I could have these on a biweekly basis, I think I could have a serious motivator for the students. So why don't I do it? That's a very good question, indeed. I shall be working them into plans one way or another on a much more regular basis based on how well students engaged in their first seminar of the year.
And I haven't even done one with my honors students yet...
Senior Night
The varsity girls won in straight sets tonight. Again.
It was senior night, though, so there were a few more students there than usual.
Autumn Walk
When I took the dog out for a walk tonight, I forgot for the who-knows-how-many-th time about the Halloween house up the street from us. The kitsch-fill yard that amounts to little more than hundreds (no exaggeration) of plastic Halloween characters all lined up shoulder to shoulder. There's no thought to it, no attempt to create any kind of little scenes throughout the yard -- just a bunch of plastic all lined up.
And it scares poor Clover to death every time we walk by there and one of the animated ones starts moving and talking.
Black Balsam Knob
We took a quick drive (well, not quick for the Boy -- it was two hours) over to the Blue Ridge Parkway for an afternoon hike today. The Girl stayed home because she had volleyball practice -- open gym for the club team she's signed with this year. And she doesn't really like hiking. And she's almost 16 and is starting to have her own life -- though it pains me to admit it. How did she get so big so fast?
Be all that as it may, we headed a little further south on the Parkway than we usually go and ended up hiking along ridges with gorgeous views.
K took some pictures with her phone.
We both took some pictures with the Nikon.
And we arrived home exhausted and hungry.
"We really should do this more often," K said.
Homecoming
Almost Full
Scouting
New Student
We have a new student as of today. She doesn't speak much English at all. The language she does speak -- there's only one person in the whole school who speaks it. Her sister. Who speaks less English than she does. What did four young ladies do when she arrived in my English class? Swarm around her with welcoming smiles and helped her the entire class period.
It was hard not to feel a little hope for humanity glancing over at them as they worked through today's assignment.