Spring Break will officially end tomorrow (Tuesday) when I wake up at 5 am. The 10 days of enjoying friends, beach, windsurfing, frisbee in the gulf, grilling, gardening. planning the post-work phase of our life, reading in the hammock, sleeping in the hammock (which usually quickly followed any attempt to read in the hammock), painting faces on palm fronds, sketching, and a thousand other relaxing activities ended yesterday when we drove to Ft. Lauderdale to catch the midnight Spirit flight to San Pedro.
The Honduras immigration people are very understanding. Our residence visa has lapsed and the school is not spending the money to get us a new one for the little time we have left. Whenever our allotted time is abot up, somebody takes our passports to the airport (I think) to get another 30 days added on. I wasn't quite sure what to put on the piece of paper for reentry. We're coming for business, but we have no visa for that. I left it blank and the immigration agent cheerfully said, "Good evening (in English)" and stamped in 90 days. I only need 40 days more and then Honduras is in the rearview mirror and a new life begins.
Over the holiday I would very occasionally reflect on what should be my final instructional concepts. I have enough grades in the gradebook and have covered the material that will be on the final exam. The 6th grade has some fun experiments with flight and a PowerPoint comparing 2 objects (not a planet or the sun) in our solar system. The 8th grade has EarthWeek activities supporting shoe box sales in their assigned classrooms. They will then be involved in their production of The Tempest and return to science class for only a couple of days of review before their exam. The 7th grade has a little 2 week window of opportunity to teach anything. I'm leaning toward a week of theories of cognitive development and psychology. I'll use student debates of environmental issues to look at capacity to see issues from more than one side. The last week I'll introduce Piaget and arrange for them to collect data on pre-kindergarten kids ability to perfrom conservation tasks. I usually do that to begin 8th grade, but I doubt if these 7th graders will get that next year. It's not in the textbook.
For those of you who have followed this blog and might be wondering what will happen in 40 days when Continental hauls me and the few items I'm taking out of Honduras to my new life, I have applied for a job. In case you might feel betrayed that this blog has been falsely presented as being about my last year teaching, I'll let you know that the job I'm applying for is in education but not teaching. I'm not going to jinx the job possibility yet by saying what it is. Stay tuned for that revelation. If the job falls through, my
wife and I have planned to start building (after our trip to the rugby world cup in New Zealand) a tiny cottage (480 square foot) on a small lot onPine Island. We are having fun planning the space and trying to make it environmentally friendly and futuristic while still being comfortable for a couple of old folks. After all is said, done, and written, we are definitely on the edge of the BIG home stretch.
No comments:
Post a Comment