Intercession Week

This week is intercession week (well, week isn't quite the word). Intercession is a week where regular classes are cancelled and the students participate in something else. Fall intercession usually centers around college or college preparation. I'm not going to go into detail about what happened, but basically it wasn't planned well enough for the 10th graders so my MT teacher had to take over and plan stuff out (which is great that he has me!). Yesterday one of the colleges backed out so we were only allowed to send 60 of our 160 students to Xavier and there were no other plans telling us what to do with those 100 students. We didn't want to punish them because it's definitely not their fault they couldn't go. My mentor teacher came up with the idea that all the teachers would come up with something to do and then the students would be able to choose where they wanted to go.

I decided I was going to show Charlie Chaplin films in the morning and then in the afternoon show those corny 50s and 60s educational films. Only 2 students showed up to my morning session. I wasn't surprised because what student would want to watch silent films when they could watch movies like Day After Tomorrow. It was really cool though because I spent the last hour talking to them and getting to know them better. One of my students told me she's the only sibling without a disability. This other student (whose sister is also one of my students) told me that his family is very involved with the government of Sudan (he's from that area and lived in Egypt). They miss school sometimes so that they can participate in rallies to get Obama to send troops to Sudan. His father met with George Bush when he was president. He also ate dinner with the vice president of Sudan. I seriously did not know any of this. It's so amazing what you can learn about students. For the afternoon session the kids were just put in my room because the other places were filled so I wasn't going to force them to watch a video they didn't want to watch. I ended up watching some rapping and dancing going on. It was pretty hilarious.


I love Charlie Chaplin's films!

Today the students were able to go to Miami or the Art Academy. Only 25 students chose to go to the art academy so my mentor teacher decided we would be in charge of that group since there were two of us and all the other teachers going to Miami had 20 in each group. It was a really cool experience and my MT and I were talking about how they would have enjoyed it much better than Miami because Miami really is a glorified high school. My students would not have fit in there. After lunch we got to go on a tour of the building which was really cool. They offer classes to the public also, which is really cool and if I'm in Cincinnati for a while I might take one, although they are kind of expensive. I'll just wait until I have a real job.

My students kept asking me if I went to the Art Academy. When I would say no and then ask why they would tell me I look like I went there. Not sure if that's a compliment from them or not, but I'll take it. Lunch was amazing. They cooked us lasagna, garlic bread, and had salad. It tasted like real food too, not some gross cafeteria food. I sat down with some of the students and they were sitting near 2 students from the art academy. When I sat down one of my students says really loudly, "Oh, now I know why you're sitting here" as she was looking at the boy sitting about 5 feet away. It was so embarrassing! Three of my students were up at the counter talking to one of the guys who worked at the cafeteria and who went to school there. Later I was talking to them and they told me they were talking about the school and then one of my students goes, "And, he's cute!" He was! I decided I need to spend more time at art schools because the guys are pretty cute! Haha.