"What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candor, more unashamed conversation." -Glenn Close

This week was a short week (HALLELUJAH) because we have fall break today and tomorrow! (Thus the sudden bombardment of blog updates.) SO I decided to make it a fun(ish) sort of week where we mostly did science centered around, wait for it.....PUMPKINS. We've already talked a lot about making observations (come and ask any of my students what "observe" means...they'll tell you AND show you, it makes me so proud), so we reviewed that.... "When we observe we carefully hear, taste, touch, smell, or look at something."  And then I showed them this: And I told a little bit of a "story." (Based in reality...with some made-up details to make it more exciting.) I told them that I had something VERY special to share with them. My dad grows PUMPKINS! This is a picture of me with my dad's biggest pumpkin when I was in Minnesota! And every year we have a big competition (where people try to win something) to see who has the biggest pumpkin. M

ANNND for 2nd quarter we have a NEW CLASSROOM SET UP! It is VERY exciting. Riveting, really. (I like to think that getting excitement out of making a new seating chart is proof that I'm meant to be a teacher....then again some days I'm grasping at anything to prove that to myself..SOMEONE JUST TELL ME I "SURE CAN TEACH THE HELL OUT OF SOME KIDS" OKAY.) Anyways we're now in pods/table groups. I'm trying to give the little ones a little more ownership and responsibility in the classroom (now that I feel like I have control... well at least like 87% of the time....a huge improvement from the 14% of time I had control in the beginning ...these are just approximations of course..) so I'm planning on teaching cooperative learning strategies starting next week. I've put them into partners, and we're going to start WORKING TOGETHER (fingers crossed). Each person in each pod has been assigned "partner A" or "partner B." Partner A:

If you haven't heard me say it, then you can't understand how funny it is. My kids, in their cute little accents, call me MISS FORSTAAHHH...or, if I'm lucky, just MISS FOOORRR (drop the STER...seriously it's too much effort).....it's actually just the highlight of my life sometimes. And sometimes the most annoying thing in the entire world. I'm sure any teacher will tell you sometimes you get so freaking sick of hearing your own name that you want to go to the town hall (or whatever) and have it legally changed....but I also just love it. Especially when I hear it down the hall and it comes along with a beaming child running to give me a hug. Or when  cool high-schooler says it while passing me in the hall even though I don't know who they are...#popularity. But anyways here's the update of Miss Forstah's first grade adventure in the Mississippi Delta (lately I've been referring to it mostly as "this godforsaken land"....#oopsies...bu