Monday, August 22, 2016

And It's Off To School We Go

The Seniors have Graduated.

Best senior prank EVER. Thanks Dominique and Celeste!!


Long Live the Seniors!




The Class of 2016 has mostly gone off to become the Class of 2020, and the Class of 2017 has risen to take their place.  School began last Wednesday and we're off and running at pretty much full-speed already.

On Friday morning, the Junior High had a very successful Skype session with Ami Polonsky, author of the summer all-read novel Gracefully Grayson.  The six homebase classes generated and submitted questions on Thursday afternoon, and the author, a middle-school teacher herself, answered them non-stop for 20 minutes before having to off to an 8 am (her time) teacher planning meeting.  This wonderful novel has been embraced fully by our junior high teachers and students, and it's been the catalyst for some amazing learning already.  Only 8 months left to find a 2017 all-read that comes even close to this one. Yikes.
In the library, it's the usual carousel of summer books coming back, and more books going out.  I've added a couple of titles to our iPods for listening by students for whom text is difficult, and pulled together options for "free choice" assignments.

An alumni family clearing out a friend's house donated 50+ great, essentially brand new books for distribution on the "Free Books" cart.  Who doesn't love free books?

And I've printed FORTY book cover images for faculty and staff participating in the What I'm Reading display.  That's a LOT of reading going on around here, folks!  Yep, it's another school year, all right.  Somebody let the kids in, and we're running with it!