My incredibly busy (and productive) fall school term is over, and now I get to breathe again! The video that my class made about the salmon spawning near our school is finally on the EcoKids website - www.ecokids.ca/pub/ecoreporters/videos/save_the_salmon.cfm. We are pretty excited about finishing the first stage of our multi-media documentation of our learning at school. We will be producing two more videos or photo-stories in the next two terms for EcoKids.
We celebrated the end of the term by participating in a very cool concert called "I Need a Winter Vacation" with the other 350 or so students at Eagle Ridge School. The kids sang beautifully and several soloists got over their stage fright and performed as Shakespearean actors on the stage - Romeo and Juliet meet Julius Caesar.
And of course, my 2-year LTT program is finished - went out with a bang (more like a fizzle, since my video/PowerPoint comprehensive portfolio presentation in our last class wouldn't play properly on the computer I was using!) But I certainly learned a lot and made huge strides in my teaching practice towards a student-centered constructivist classroom.
Helping to extricate our 31 year-old son from a tough situation in Hanoi, Vietnam, made the last week of school even more exciting! Arranging a flight with a travel agent in Vietnam with a 15-hour time difference and a malfunctioning credit card was not easy, but imagine trying to do that without email and the ability to pay bills half-way around the globe in a wink!
Now I just have two rooms in our house to clean from top to bottom, paper and teaching stuff that have accumulated in the past year or so of neglect. I hope I can get that done before Christmas and then relax before going back to school - snowshoeing, maybe some telemark skiing, more time with friends than I usually have to spend. Oh yes, and of course, all the Christmas goodies to enjoy that my students and their parents blessed me with as gifts. I guess I'll need that snowshoeing!
A peaceful and joyous Christmas to all and all the best in 2011. (Boy, the years are going by way too quickly!) If you aren't one of the 23 million people who have viewed this heart-warming video already, please take 5 minutes and see it, it really says Christmas to me! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXh7JR9oKVE
I hope you are enjoying your well deserved holiday, and I'm glad to hear your son got home safely! I hadn't seen that particular video, but I had seen another great one that takes place in the Philadelphia Macy's store with a choir of 650 - Hallelujah Chorus as well. It's on Youtube if you are interested. Merry Christmas!
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