Friday post

Just back in the office, busily typing while clock ticks down to the weekend. Finished my classes. Finished a meeting about my classes. Finished playing tag. Now I just need to keep myself staring at the second hand of the office clock. It rained all morning and while relatively cool is now pretty humid. I wanted to take a funny picture to post but nothing really inspirationally presented itself today despite me laughing a lot. Again this week the grades 1 and 2 covered sea creatures and we stumbled onto the most dreaded of problems: The Dol-phish. This is not the first time we as professional teachers have faced such a enemy. There are eight flash cards to learn but four are important to this story: fish, jellyfish, starfish and dolphin. Imagine a group of students, everyone saying the names correctly except one. And though I can hear someone saying "dol-phish," I am never quite quick enough to see who. This is a teachers nightmare. One can see how it's progressively combined from the others but it can be an amazingly hard to stamp out. At these young ages, everything is done by rote, and so it has to be un-programed before being re-learned. My heart sank when I heard "dol-phish" today and as of this posting I'm unsure of my success or how the problem will resolve itself.