Finally catching up

As some of you have emailed or posted on the blog, we haven't been keeping up for the last week or so. We've been trying, but it's been very busy. School began on Thursday, 28 August. We had meetings at school Monday through Wednesday, tried to set up our classrooms and had to get our curriculums all figured out. It has been a whirlwind. We've been leaving the house by about 7 each morning and getting home a bit before 6 most nights, trying to get some dinner cooked, spending some time with the boys, then hitting bed around 9. The temperature outside has been hovering around 90-95 each day, with 70-80% humidity. Just walking around the school, I have sweat dripping off of me. The classrooms are airconditioned, but many of the hallways and other sections of the school are not. The high school and middle school students are in a section of the building that had previously been offices leased to an NGO doing anti-drug education. After 2 years of negotiations, the landlord finally gave in and leased the rooms to the school. Exactly 1 week before school began, the school officially took possession. During that week, they tore out tiling, scraped walls, did lots of repair work, repainted, laid carpet, etc., etc. The airconditioners were wired up about 12 hours before school began on Thursday. It's amazing how well they did. Doing our setup of the classrooms on Wednesday, though, was incredibly draining.

There are only four teachers for the middle school and high school (not counting language instructors). I teach all of the history and cultural studies courses (This year, that's 10/11 year old Cultural Studies, 12/13 year old CS 2 - from the Fall of Rome to the Age of Exploration, 14/15 year old Modern World History, 16/17 year old AP World History and 16/17 year old US History), as well as a drama elective twice a week, overseeing two senior research projects and serving as the upper-secondary homeroom teacher (class advisor). Brian teaches all of the middle school and secondary science courses. Emily teaches the Literature and Writing courses (she is not an English teacher, however... in a school like ours, that implies something completely different! There are many elementary students who receive intensive instruction in English. Not "English as a Second Language," however... because for many of these students it's their third, fourth or fifth language!) Hal teaches all of the math for 10/11 year olds and up, as well as science for the 10/11 year old class.

So, things have been very busy! We'll try to get more posted on a regular basis now.