Today was: Quite Good

We went to the aquarium today... and it was fun, but exhausting. In the morning, before we left, we had to get everyone into green "Bryant School" t-shirts, then put name tags on them, then pair them up [boy-girl], and then assign an adult to each pair. Interestingly, I was the "Leader" for a twosome made up of the highest performing girl and the lowest performing boy in the class. This arrangement didn't work so perfectly because the girl wanted to be more methodical about the experience and spend time looking at everything, whereas, the boy was BOUNCING AROUND ALL OVER THE PLACE basically yelling out, "Hey, look at that! Hey, look at this! Hey, look over here!" What ended up happening is that, early on in the day, we ran into Miles' group [another high performing girl, and a hyperactive boy] and I ran ahead [i.e. chased after] the boys while Miles hung out with the girls. Oh, and there were still some sharks there! AND, the girl with autism didn't show up for school this morning, so there was no worry about how she was going to react to being led through a dark museum surrounded by a bunch of wandering strangers. Whew.

On the way to the aquarium, somehow a backpack fell on my lunch bag and one of my Gladware tubs was crushed, causing applesauce to explode all over my food. One of the girls in the class was nice enough to give me one of her cheese & crackers packs - yes, the ones with the red plastic "knife". All in all, the day at the aquarium went by way too fast, and all my group got to see was the aquarium part. Some groups, I heard, went into the Science wing and got to stand on the Earthquake Table which simulates a violent earthquake. I would've LOVED to have done that, but instead my group focused on what we were REALLY there for - the aquarium - where we touched some starfish and got to watch the penguins being fed.

After school, I went to the Leadership Team meeting [bi-weekly meetings to discuss things going on at school], and then Miles and I spent an hour and a half replacing all of the Colors All Around theme stuff with We're a Family materials. Tomorrow, we meet Tiggy the Tiger. Miles is getting REALLY fed up with all of these stupid mandated Reading Program characters, and I can't say that I blame him. On the one hand, I'm not SO against the program because as a first year teacher it will help to direct my reading/literacy instruction, but, on the other hand, these standardized programs act as the "great leveller" that aims to make every child the same - when, as we all know, every kid is different, every kid learns differently, every kid is at a different point in their language development, and not every kid likes listening to doofy songs about creepy alphabet animals.