TAKS Days Underway

Testing is always unsettling for the students it seems. We had a very strange occurrence today with the morning students attending DJCC in the afternoon due to morning testing. It seemed that they had a lessened ability to sit and concentrate on their work, so I tried to allow them to do a little bit more relaxing during the class period than I normally would. They were working, but more of them were up walking around than usual. Even the ones who usually work all class period on a normal day, sometimes even through break time, seemed to need to be out of their seats and were a little bit restless. Of course, the seniors had the morning off, so they were really out of their "routine". One of my favorite quotes about routine is this one by Henry Van Dyke, the American Poet of the late 1800s and early 1900s:

"As long as habit and routine dictate the pattern of living, new dimensions of the soul will not emerge."
Sometimes it is a really good thing to set "routine" on its ear. It makes us see things differently and makes life much more interesting. I found that some of my students who are kind of sleepy in my morning class were wide awake and more energetic during the afternoon.  It was quite a new perspective!

Other than the TAKS change, there was not too much to set this day apart from any other spring day in our school. Everyone was in a pretty good mood and the teachers were all very busy helping the students with various projects. I know that there are a lot of requests for extra help on projects that have piled up on my desk, and we are doing a pretty good job of getting these requests fulfilled. It won't be long until we are in our last month at DJCC. That seems odd, but I know that everything must change sometime, and it is our time to grow and change. Soon we will be taking work down off the walls and moving out to the CCE. I have a field trip planned soon to see UNT and the Denton area, (May 20th) and I will be taking the students over to see the new career center too, at least from the outside. It would be nice to be able to go inside, but I'm not counting on it. I am going to ask permission though. It would be fantastic.

More news tomorrow!

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