Beginnings

We finished our first week of school -- four days of in-service activities and getting our classrooms ready and a half day on Friday with our new students. It is so much fun to see these wide eyed kids come into their classroom, full of hope for the new year, a little intimidated by new surroundings, a new teacher, and new routines. I tell my fifth graders that they are fifth graders in name but they will ease into "real" fifth graders over the next several weeks. They are not quite sure what to do with that one! GB has several kids in her third grade that she also had as kindergarteners. One second-time little girl has a dad who often works in Jamaica and has gotten in the habit of giving GB Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee. We received this wonderful variety of coffee again yesterday -- Wallenford Blue will be our Sunday coffee for the next couple of months! GB makes these amazingly creative thank-you cards, and we think Hugh keeps giving us this decadently delightful coffee just for the cards...Hope that Hurricane Dean doesn't smash Jamaica too badly, but this storm seems to be a whopper heading directly for the island.

GB and I are members of a new mentoring team at TCS. We worked with the school administration over the summer to put this much needed program on its feet. GB is one of four mentor/mentee teams and I am the facilitator of the mentoring committee. GB is working with her kdgn teacher replacement, a brand new just graduated teacher. We've had a good beginning to the program and it is doubly good because our school head's opening devotions focused on the Body of Christ. Great way to extend that idea on a personal level. GB has some new tools in her room -- a video projector that connects to her teacher computer, a document scanner that also feeds through the video projector, and a room audio system that has both a personal microphone on a lanyard for GB and a wireless hand held mike for students. GB is one of five teachers who have this new system. TCS wants to fine tune these rooms throughout the year. I'm hoping that my room will benefit from the next round of technology improvements. GB's third grade classroom is right next to my classroom, and my fifth grade partner who teaches the other section just across the hall also has a technology enhanced classroom. They both have offered their classrooms if/when I need to use the equipment, and I'm trying not to be jealous. We also have a portable projector and laptop on a cart, which I do plan to use already this next week.

This Monday we connected to the local cable company. Several reasons, the first being total frustration with the large national phone company that was providing internet service. New oxymoron: AT&T customer service. Impersonal, time consuming computer driven phone menus, dropped calls. Imagine! A phone company that can't complete the transfer of my call within its own company! We also get strong ghosting when planes fly overhead, which they do every two minutes coming in or leaving OIA. Minor joy of living within 10 minutes driving time of the airport and exactly north of the west runway. Now that we both have cell phones, we also decided that we did not need our land line so we are quitting Bellsouth/AT&T/Embarq the end of this month. So our internet is through the TV cable company; we've heard nothing but good about their service, and they really do have lots of real live people to help you. Whoa! What a concept! If you don't have our new e-mail or our cell phone numbers, better get in touch with us soon...