The day we've all been waiting for... the carnival! The picture above is actually the book swap, planned and coordinated by our lower-academy DOI. It was extremely successful and really cool - the idea behind it being that students and teachers bring in old books or books they've read (we also cleaned out SCARCE, the free book resource) and swap them for new books to read over the summer. The average student loses about 20% of a year's information over the summer and that number often doubles in low-income and minority communities. The kids actually got really excited and were reading all day. That's a wonderful teacher feeling! This day was made triply fun by my getting to have Brenton around - he came in and helped run the book swap and then helped chaperone the carnival. The kids loved him (my girls said "Did you SEE his EYES?!" and swooned a little...) and by the end of the day, a few of them had figured out who he was and so they bombarded him with questions.
Every year's highlight, however, is the carnival (designed and coordinated by my amazing and dear friend Kristen and believe me - its a pain in the ass to run! She was a rock star.) Even the rain couldn't keep this one down!
The part you won't see recorded for posterity here was the end of the day and one of the hardest things I have ever done - telling my kids I would not be back with them next year. We all sobbed together for about an hour and I had to tear myself away from my special babies who took it especially to heart. I truly truly love my kids and will miss them every day.
No comments:
Post a Comment