Reading, 'Riting, Recitation

Holy crap - busy today!

During English, the kids did their poetry presentation.  Every term, they each have to memorize a poem and do some kind of presentation with it, whether it's a skit or a video or a slideshow.  This term's poem is "Meeting at Night" by Robert Browning.  My class decided to do a group recitation with actions and it turned out pretty cool.  I should have filmed it... maybe I'll have them do it on Monday so I can record it.

Also, Friday is the day that we practice our play.  We're doing a version of "A Christmas Carol" that has Scrooge as a female (the girls were the ones most gung-ho about doing a play, so I wanted a mostly-female cast.  The boys will help and participate, but it's almost better if they just have bit parts).  And the most exciting thing is that today was the first day we got to use the whole stage area that we want.  We're performing the play in the common room/lunchroom, but one of the walls can be opened up into the adjoining classroom.  We've wanted to open the wall so we could have a bigger staging area, but I didn't want to infringe on the teacher who uses that classroom.  But she said it was okay if we opened the wall up and left it open so we could practice because no one's in the lunchroom during her classes (our school is small enough that we can control that).  So, we got to do some blocking and visualize how this is going to look and it's way stinking exciting!

In addition to all that - today was my first official day as the school librarian!  The lady who had been the school librarian/special ed aide is moving, so they're letting me take over the library for the high school (and, technically, I'm also in charge of the elementary school's library.  At least, I think I'm supposed to go over there and do some library maintenance and what-have-you - I'm still learning the ropes).  Today, I just got the library computer swapped into my classroom.  With the Poly-Com and the library stuff, you should see how much equipment I'm in charge of.  I feel like I really am the captain of the Starship Enterprise (or the TARDIS - take your pick.  I do have a sonic screwdriver that doubles as a pen, you know).

Oh, and somehow I have become the unofficial tech support for West Desert High School.  Don't ask me how that happened, but people are now coming to ask me questions about everything to making videos, using PowerPoint and why the copier is printing phantom shadow-y text on the copies (I dunno... dirty rollers?)

It's insane - but that's life out on the desert.  You can have any job you want as long as you take three of them.

ETA: Forgot to add - Scout is out to the ranch today.  I feel like I'm in some weird kind of weenie dog joint-custody agreement - my sisters in town get her for a couple of weeks and then I get her for the weekend.  But then, Scout went sniffing around the door to our utility room and one of the cats snuck in from outside and had kittens.  You might be a redneck if...