Early release

Hello,

The speaker was pretty good last night.  He spoke about the original blueprint for public education being to weed out the laborers from the thinkers.  He said that in the 1960's, 83% of jobs in the U.S. were low skilled labor jobs.  Currently that number is down to 13%.  He concluded that this is the first time in history that the moral thing to do: educate all of our kids to a high level, is also the necessary thing to do.  

It was an early release day, so not much homework tonight.  Besides math, there is only the usual 20 minutes of reading.  It is tough to get too motivated on a day that gives you a beautiful afternoon and some extra time to play in it.  I didn't want to burden them with too much.

I took part in their physical education class today.  Ms. D'Agostino does a great job of getting them to be active in a way that incorporates some of the bigger lessons that we are trying to teach.  We played a type of freeze tag where some students had a "helping heart" to toss to unfreeze their teammates.  As we played, there was much less choosiness in who was getting helped.  Students began helping anyone and everyone.  It was nice to see.

I gave students the choice to choose their next seating assignment in class.  Some chose to sit next to their best friend(s).  We'll see how wise that was beginning tomorrow.

Thanks for reading,

Mr. Shea