Graduation Time

School is now over for the year and graduation season is upon us. Within one week I will have attended four graduation parties in three different states. It started last Saturday with a graduation party for Rhoda who graduated from nursing school. The next one was Joseph who graduated from high school in Virginia, Last night was graduation at Terre Hill. I think, tonight the one for a nursing student in Maryland is the last one.

One of the last events at the end of the year was the THMH/FMH softball games at Gap Park.

Kayla rounds third base on her way to making a home run.

Rhoda finished her BSN and threw a party for herself.

Immediately after te softball game on Wednesday, I left for Virginia to attend the graduation party for Joseph. The Showalters didn't know I was coming. I had told them just the week before that there was no way I could make it because I was giving finals on Wednesday morning and had the softball game in the afternoon. On Monday I started reconsidering; by Tuesday I had decided I could go. The party was on the front lawn with about 100 people there until a rain shower came through the valley and we all headed indoors. It was wall-to-wall people for the rest of the party. I spent the night with Sharon and then went back to Showalters to help Sarah clean up while we visited.

THMH Class of 2008

Donna has finished her RN training and has taken a job at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.

Day in D.C.

General Robert E. Lee

We spent the day in D.C. with the freshmen, sophomores, and juniors. Our first stop was the Madame Tussauds wax museum. It was a very interesting place because, unlike many wax museums, you could touch the wax figures.

Bob Dylan

The Oval Office

After the wax museum, I took five sophomore girls through the National Gallery of Art. I had a splendid group for that. They were interested in the art and trying to find paintings and/or painters with whom they were familiar.

We interrupted our visit to the art gallery to make use of our tickets at the Air & Space Museum, but the girls voted to go back to the art gallery when we had more time. So, we walked across the mall again.

We ended our day in D.C. with a talk by a Holocaust survivor at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. We arrived back at school about 7:30 this evening.

Loyalsock

We spent the weekend at Loyalsock at a cabin. The children played in the Loyalsock much of the weekend. It was a relaxing weekend although I graded about 10 author projects while I was there. Bob's boat was a major attraction Saturday afternoon and evening.

The Loyalsock

the back of the cabin where most of the action took place

Gwenna and Cordell taking their turn to enjoy Bob's boat

Warren grills the pork chops for Saturday evening supper

under the careful scrutiny of Paul, Austin, and Clair.

Josiah and Cordell show off their roasted crayfish.

Liberty Martin

Besides Teaching

Every year there are numerous responsibilities that we as teachers have in addition to teaching. As the freshmen homeroom teacher, I am responsible to chaperone the spring freshmen social. That class is rather inexperienced in planning and carrying out such activities, but this particular class has good student council members. These three young teens took their responsibility well: they planned the games and meal, gave leadership to the group throughout the evening, and cleaned up after the social was over. That was five hours of activity that they were responsible for, but they put in more hours than that in planning and preparing for the evening.

The EGG Toss

Oops! She missed the egg, but the egg didn't miss her!

Unity supper

Newspaper Scavenger Hunt

Free time between games was rather noisy and active.

Static Electric

Moses Burkholer was at school today to give a demonstration in science class. The freshmen were a bit nonchalant and and univolved when he started, but it didn't take them long to be fascinated by the demonstrations. They were soon volunteering to be shocked, etc.

Mini-Terms 2008 -- Day 4

No photos at all today. Mini-terms is over. It was a good week, but we are ready to go back to a normal schedule and activities. We were glad for all the time it wasn't raining this week (especially the horseback riding, tennis, biking, etc. classes). The school is returning to norm again. My room has desks in it again. Ping pong tables have disappeared. Sewing machines are back in the home ec room. The library has returned to being a library rather than a scrapbooking room. It has been a good break, but a break doesn't last forever.

Mini-Terms 2008 -- Day 3

I did not get to walk by or stop in many other classes today. Hence, the photos are rather limited to my two Readers' Theater classes today and the bean bag class that runs in the yearbook room close to the office the period I am in the office to answer the phone.

Readers' Theater class carried 12 ft. ladders through the hall and then set them up in the foyer. Some of the ladders were amazingly flexible!

Readers' theater class "ice" skating.

rag quilts patches are ready to be put together

bags of bean bag stuffing waiting in the furnace room for the girls to finish their bean bags

While some girls are still sewing their bean bags, others are beginning to fill them.

or at least trying to fill them. But there is a problem when the bag gets a hole at the top and the bottom and the person holding the bean bag runs off.

Mini-Terms 2008 -- Day 2

More activities of mini-terms . . .

table tennis

candy making

cake decorating

June, a former student, came in to talk to the college prep class about applying to college, first impressions of college, how college is different from high school, and anything else she could share from her experience. It was helpful that she is an LPN and the two students in the college prep class are interested in the nursing field.

The math room has turned into a bike storage area.

painting class is doing a painting of snowmen

Mini-Terms 2008 -- Day 1

This morning we started mini-terms at school. I am teaching two classes of Readers' Theater and a College Prep class. Each class is 1 1/2 hours, and there are four periods in a day. The fourth period I am sitting in the office to answer the phone.

Today I took my college prep class to the local high school Career Center to get information about colleges, scholarships, etc. They came back with a handful of information and a lot more questions than they had when they went. I think it was worthwhile visiting the center and getting them started asking the questions they need to ask at some point.

The two readers' theater classes have a very improvised "stage" identified with masking tape on the floor of my classroom. Today we talked about characterization and read through several skits in each of those classes.





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Not a part of the skit!

I have not been able to observe much of what is happening in other rooms. The other classes are breakfast foods, basketball, chess, scrapbooking, electrical, CPR, horseback riding, Creation Research, woodshop for girls, hometown cooking for guys, archery, digital photography, meteorology, quoits, rag quilt, candle making, blasting, hockey, slate painting, cake decorating, table tennis, candy making, auto body, tennis, cross cultural class,biking, chip & putt, auto mechanics for girls, urban youth, bean bag chairs, lawn golf.

Bean Bag chair class

Obstacle Course in Urban Youth class

"Leading the Blind"

The Extra Day?

So what did I do with the "extra" day, February 29?

It started out a rather normal day. Jan made egg-in-a-nest for breakfast. I packed lunches. Mary tended to dog and chickens. Then, we all headed off to work.

I taught my first two classes followed by chapel, two more classes, hot lunch, and one more class. I had a former student visiting my classroom for periods 4 and 5 to observe as a part of her college training to be an English teacher. At lunch I received a friendly reminder note that I am responsible for the bulletin board in the hall for the month of March. At that point, my day changed.

Rather than studying my Sunday school lesson and reading Ben Hur this afternoon, I pulled a bulletin board out of the archives in my room and put it up. By 5 PM I was finished with that and ready to start on the tasks at hand. That's when Mary called and said she would be working another 2 hours because they had a job at the cabinet shop that was behind schedule.

So, here I am at 6:30 with my school work finished, a new bulletin board on the wall, my Sunday school lesson studied, and ready to begin reading Ben Hur. I am only about 25 chapters behind my students.

I need another extra day to catch up!

The Cat Comes Back . . . or Maybe Not!

P.S. I'll add this at the beginning. On Sunday the man I bought the Suzuki from stopped in and told us Tyler sold it on ebay and there was a truck coming in from Ohio to pick it up that day. I guess we won't be seeing it around anymore. Goodbye, Suzuki!

In August we sold all the Suzukis. Mine was purchased by a local college student. Apparently he tired of it in several months. It could be rather annoying especially when it rained and the passengers received an involuntary shower. I guess I understand why he tired of it.

This week we saw "the" Suzuki parked by the road with a for sale notice in the window. It gave us a chance to get pictures of it with the hardtop (somehow we had never taken any picture with that on while I owned the vehicle).

He is trying to sell it for twice what he paid for it six months ago. I don't think it will happen very quickly. We certainly have no intentions of buying it back.

Bible Quizzing

I spent Saturday at Lititz Area Mennonite School watching the MACSA Bible Quizzing. We had seven teams there quizzing all day. It started around 9:30 AM and was finally over about 5:20 PM. It was a long day of quizzing with stressful moments, funny moments, and a great time for meeting people I don't see very often. One of the funny moment was when Demetrius had no idea what the question was going to be except that it started with "what?" His answer: "What is this thou hast done?" The crowd packed into the too small classroom burst into laughter. It was the only verse in Genesis 1-11 that he could think of that started with "what."

Tyler concentrates on the passage during a quiz, comes up with the right verse,

but says the wrong question.

The "Babblers" won second place in the finals.