Friday... finally... the first week is always the toughest, simply because we are in the training part of the school year, trying to get students into the routine, learning where, when, how. It is amazing how quickly I learn so much about each individual from the seemingly innocent actions.

One thing that struck me particularly odd was the stacks of math notebooks after school yesterday. My kids all have a math notebook, which is stored on a rolling cart by the classroom door. On their way in and out, they grab or toss notebooks there for storage. My math classes are tracked this year, 1 high, 1 low and then a middle group. The notebooks for the low group were tossed haphazardly in a random this way/that way arrangement on their shelf. THe middle group was neater, some in a stack, the rest tossed whichever way. The high group... all perfectly stacked, going same way, in one neat stack. Wow... hard to imagine we could predict intelligent by organizational skills?

Overall, this bunch seems like a good crew. So far, even the "trouble-makers" from last year are not causing too much havoc. I am loving the sense of humor of several of them, and am impressed with their intelligence and willingness to answer questions, take risks and be wrong. Those are such important to success skills, more so than any "book learning" they can come in with.

I shared a powerpoint of goofy slides today, taken from a couple of those emails you always get in your inbox and never know what to do with: one of optical illusions, and another of food carved into weird things. They absolutely had a blast with both of them! The discussions were the best!