A Weekend of Rain

My new running shoes arrived yesterday. Friday night I fell asleep dreaming of my long run, the loop up hill and down from home, through Lincoln Park and back home. But I wanted to break my shoes in, not baptize them in puddles. So I waited till 10:00. The rain took a pause and I ran. North to Roxbury, then east to 19thSW and meandered south onto Shorewood Dr. watching the west view of small boats on the Sound and wisps of cloud decorating the trees on Vashon, turning north on 26th, a 5 mile run in all. I was hardly in the door and the rain began again and it has been consistent, filling the rain gauge to above the half inch mark.

The work week was full. Thursday was picture day honestly, this is the cutest bunch of 5 year olds I have ever seen. So many of them seem really small for their age and very naive or, quite honestly, are babied at home. I have 5 boys that I can think of off the top of my head, that are the youngest in their families and they sure do act it! Taking turns and cleaning up after themselves are totally foreign ideas and of course they think that wrestling on the carpet or playground is the only way to play. Yes this is definitely an immature group. They were all fancied up with party dresses on some girls and three fauxhawks on boys, one which was gold! They smiled adorably for the camera, but I always ask for a funny face photo:



On Thursday evening we had our curriculum night and a disappointing total of 11 families represented the 50 kindergartners. This, I think, was the poorest showing in my 18 years at this building. Why? I can only speculate; new boundaries were drawn for assigning attendance, parents are given less choice in where to send their children to school. When drawing from the immediate neighborhood of our school you get a lot more diversity, more bilingual families, and more low income families and they just don't read everything that goes home (I know this by looking at the untouched papers crammed into the bottoms of backpacks and homework folders). I have fewer responses to requests for volunteers this year too; there are less stay at home moms in this group. Fortunately there are two parents available to volunteer for Science which is a HUGE relief. There is no way an investigative program can work without breaking the students into small groups to encourage conversation. In addition to time in the classroom I had one IEP meeting and one SIT meeting before school. On Friday we had professional development in Writers Workshop (out of Columbia College). This is the second time for me...I love the program but there simply is not enough time in the school day to have 45 minutes to an hour of writing on top of the minutes or Math and Reading. We are going to adapt it to our schedule but we certainly won't be purists.

Now it is Saturday and yes, it is still raining. We passed the two inch mark on the rain gauge!
I am off to a presentation at church about Our Lady of Guadalupe. In a couple hours though, we have a Packer game to watch which I hope will be the best part of my Sunday!