In which I am now a "real" teacher.

It's true. It's real. I'm a 4th grade teacher.

To really help you capture the weirdness of this reality, I'd like you to participate in the following exercise:

First, think about fourth grade. Do you remember your first crush? Did you do a good job learning your multiplication tables? (Do you remember them now? 7x6 still gets me from time to time. As do most of my times 4's, actually.) You probably were starting to develop cliques for the first time ever. You played soccer at recess. You hung from the monkey bars by your knees and made up bratty songs that used simple rhymes. You probably made fun of the weird kid. Maybe you were the weird kid.

Second, think back to your fourth grade teacher. She was probably a she, and her name was probably Ms. Smith, or something like that. She was or wasn't nice. She was or wasn't fun. She did or didn't throw a Valentine's Day party.

Third, I want you to make your teacher disappear.

Fourth, I want you to make that teacher you. You right now. Just replace Ms. Smith with you. This might be tricky because you probably didn't know Ms. Smith was a real human. I always kind of thought teachers were a freak breed that lived only by the holiest of morals and acted always from the high point of perfect logic and calculated wisdom that I might only understand if I was older. Well, we're older now. Do you feel like you're that perfect moral compass/logician/sage? I don't.

But I am Ms. Smith. Weird.

I have no idea if that really had any effect on your perception as to what it means to be a teacher. If it was a total miss, just know that it is really a bizarre twist. Trust me.

Anyways, Spring Break is ending tonight. I'm reflecting on my year so far and desperately trying to gain control of what I'll be doing for the next two weeks, but more importantly what I'm doing tomorrow. All of this reflecting has whittled away the layers of BS and allowed me to expose what seem to be my core values and beliefs about teaching and by extension, life. I know, right?

Tonight, over the course of the next 15 minutes or so, I'm going to turn off my filter and see what comes out in regards to this core value. I'm hoping that it will sound noble, determined, and revolutionary when it's finished. Probably more likely it will sound naive, blurry and insignificant. We shall see. In either case it will be honest - which is something, right?

Without any further ado...

Peter's Teaching Manifesto

Life is not hard. It's really not. There are things that are sad, and frustrating, sometimes even dangerous. But by and large, it's just not that tough. Think about it. Really stupid, incompetent people are alive. They are well. If they can do it, anyone can. So if that's the case, why is it that everyone seems to be stressed out, insecure, and frustrated about life? This is especially true at work. Especially true in teaching. Life just isn't that hard, but we do our best to make it hard by stubbornly refusing to accept that it might just be fun. It might just be fun.

That's really what it comes down to. It is fun. It's supposed to be. If you're not enjoying your life, you're missing the point. If you accept that truth, then there is NO REASON teaching should not be fun. In fact, it should be more fun because it's with kids. In my humble opinion, kids are the best because they are the number one group in the world who properly prioritizes fun.

If it's fun, kids will literally do anything. It's also true that because they're so into fun, anything can be fun if properly presented. Because of that, teaching can be very powerful and very fun at once.

People have tried, in recent years, to reduce teaching to a science. They've attempted to set up a very calculated and systematic method to ensure that all students are being properly educated to compete in the world's global market. They use mostly acronyms to describe that method. HA! That all sounds very good and orderly, except that you're teaching KIDS! KIDS! They love boogers! They love the IDEA of poop. They do not give a rat's keister about the global market. And nor should they, probably. I don't, really. Do you?

You see, the thing about working with kids is that they're impressionable. It matters. If you act like everything is stressful, and there is a black and white answer to every question, and that it is vital that they meet x standard at y time proven by z assessment, then they will believe that. They will become that. Yuck. And yet, in spite of that, that is how most teachers act. Of course they do. They're laid with that burden by the principal, who is burdened by the superintendent who is burdened by the state who is burdened by the federal government who is burdened by that global market that you and I really just don't care that much about.

But the thing is that that's not the way life is. True, education may be facing those pressures for whatever reason, but it's beside the point. We don't want to raise a bunch of black and white thinking children who are burdened by expectations, standards, and false assumptions of stressful and painful living. I don't, anyways.

I want my kids to enjoy what they're doing, when they're doing it. I want them to be proud of who they are. I want them to be a part of something positive, something bigger. I want them to make choices for the good of the group and for the good of themselves. I want them to understand that those two things aren't that different. I want them to succeed at every task. I believe success is engagement - true engagement for the sake of the task, not for the sake of a test, or a standard, or a plan.

I want them to learn because it's fun to be at school, and at school, you learn.

The reason I have always believed I would be a good teacher is because I believe in fun. I truly do. I also believe that people are not bad. They just aren't. They're good. They're going to be okay, even if it doesn't seem like it.

Fun is not a bad thing. I don't need to shy away from it. It stinks that being a professional teacher right now means being someone who is very aware of their students' progress and has and research based, orderly and accessible data collection to prove it. It is too bad that being a professional means that you must act in a businesslike fashion and be aware of the most current trends in curriculum development. It's stupid, and it loses sight of where the true art of teaching lies.

Being a professional teacher means being committed to the craft of engaging children. There are of course many ways to do this. You can engage them through fear (Read, or ELSE!). You can engage them through stress (We have so much to cover, we can't waste a minute). You can engage them through routine, (You know what to do children, if you want to earn a piece of candy). None of those are the best practice though. The best practice is engaging students through fun, because there is no more engaging thing.

So to be a professional teacher, you need to be a teacher who has fun. A teacher who loves it. A teacher that enjoys what they're doing and isn't afraid to say it. God knows the kids need to be a part of something fun and positive.

I can be that teacher. I can be it now and I can be it forever. That passion burns deeply within me and I will do my best do dedicate myself to the proposition that LIFE IS FUN.

Did that make any sense? Revolutionary or naive? You make the call. In any case, it's bed time. Happy Easter!

I'm wearing my Felix Hernandez jersey to school tomorrow. It's opening day.

-Mr. Reni

In which I reflect on my first full time week

This has been a week of many thoughts as I've bounded through my first full time affair as Mr. Reni. Some of those thoughts have stuck out a bit more than others. Here I will share them.

My roommate has always been one to live on the more laid back side of life. But recently he's been a very busy boy. Amongst other things, he has a new job, and he likes it. I asked him why and he responded with a quote that I thought to be quite enlightened.

"I go to bed feeling like my day counted." -Sam R.

It's impossible to overstate the importance of that. I think it's why I enjoy teaching so much. My day counts here, and it's hard to quantify that. I work hard, and my work shows up to produce something tangible. Kids learn. Kids DO things because of me. That counts. People expect me to produce something, and I produce it. That counts. It's a good feeling. It's why I love coaching tennis too, it's why I have pursued this profession.

I'm very lucky to have Beckey floating around the classroom with me, because she is a very encouraging and thoughtful conversation partner. She said something to me the other day that stood out as well.

I was trying to figure out why it was that I felt so frazzled, why it was that I felt like I was leaning forward and running into the wind, relying on an unstable force - a combination of luck and momentum - to keep me standing.

"Teaching is one of the only professions that requires someone to make 100 decisions a minute. From the second you show up until the second you leave nearly every thing that you do, or say, and many of the things you don't do or say has to be a concious and informed decision that can change the course of your day." -Beckey C.

This couldn't be more true. My mind basically sounds like this all day long:

"Okay, what's next, am I prepared? I don't know. How much time do I have? 7 minutes. What materials do I need? Not sure? Where do I look? Science kit. Do I need copies? No. Does something need to be on their desk? Yes. Pass it out. Get the kids. Are they too loud in the hall? Should I stand in the front or the back? Paul's making noise, have I pushed him too hard today? Why is he making noise? Is he aware that he is? No. Let it go. Sasha is lagging behind, do i let it slide? No. Do I call out? Yes. Noise volume went up. Address or ignore? Wait on it. Still loud. Shush the crowd. Sasha is still behind. Should I get her? Should I wait? Will the kids be out of control? Positively reinforce good behavior as I wait and kids pass. Success. Should Imake personal conversation with Sasha? What's her mood? Should I scold her for lagging? Little of both. Back to class. How will I quiet them? Turn off lights. How should I begin? Review schedule. Noise. Scold? No. Positive reinforcement. Quiet. ..........................."

And that's when there are no kids nagging me or needing my instruction - a "quiet" part of my day. "Down time."

Yeah, right.

All told, this is so much fun. I'm so proud and happy of my kids, and very pleased at how capable I'm finding myself of making those decisions. Week two will be a thrill. I can't wait.

Also, I'm thinking golf might turn into my new thing. That is all.

-Mr. Reni

A bit of a WASL rant

It's WASL week here at school, my first time since I was in fourth grade.

I told the other teachers that I'd taken the WASL (granted, it was the pilot), and they all groaned. I felt young, they felt old. It was a good laugh.

About the WASL; What immediately stands out to me is that during testing, which can take an entire school day, start to finish, kids aren't learning. We're not allowed to instruct, and so it feels like a wasted day. Granted, the the kids are writing, they are getting practice, but it's definitely not the best use of a kid's life.

School is ultimately supposed to be for supporting student learning. It's for the kids. WASL is not for the kids. It's for the state. On days of WASL, school days, the students aren't learning, they're showing what they've learned. In this way, with such extensive time dedicated to the test, students aren't gaining much from this experience.

That's true of all testing though, students are not learning during testing, they're just showing what they know. So is assessment valuable?

Of course! Assessment is the ultimate teacher tool in deciding what needs to be taught, what students need to learn. From assessment we plan, and from planning we teach, and before, during and after teaching, we assess. It's the only thing that can accurately, and if done right objectively, guide good teaching.

So then, the WASL must be a great way for teachers to make decisions for their students! It's surely worth the extensive time we dedicate to it, because teachers can use it to make smart decisions about what to teach. We can get a TON of great information about our students that will ensure that they are being taught exactly what they need to learn!

Nope.

We teachers can't even look at the tests! We can't even know what's asked of the students, let alone see their responses. Heaven forbid that we, gasp, know what students wrote. In fact, after students write such brilliant stories as I'm sure that they did on the writing portion, we destroy their drafts, ensuring that teachers can, in fact, learn NOTHING from this test. Far from a tool to drive instruction, it is forbidden that the classroom teacher glean any information from the test.

But the scores! Surely they will give us information.

Nope again. We won't hear back about the scores until NEXT YEAR. Not only does that mean that student efforts on the WASL will be useless for improving their learning this year, but also that next years teacher will get no information from this extensive testing that is objectively relevant, as their results will be outdated!

Lets talk about the results. And of course I'm not talking about the results for students I'm asked to teach now, because I won't hear about them in time for it to matter. By the time I do, it will just be an afterthought. The results I get will be for kids I have never met. I will meet Billy, Writing 456, Math 345. That's it. I would love for someone to tell me how to make informed decisions based of that information.

No one will. It can't be done. All that number can give us is a reason to assess more, to figure out why it is that Billy has those scores, and what he needs to improve them. Couldn't I have learned that information from the test itself? Couldn't I have learned it with the group of students that took the test in my class? Why can't we see what they have written?

We can't because this test isn't about a student learning. It's about a state learning. Washington learns from this test. Billy doesn't. That is a mistake, and it's hypocritical. If you want students to learn, teach them. If you want to do a thorough assessment, and dedicate OVER A WEEK of class time to the cause, not to mention millions of dollars, let it be an assessment that drives teaching and learning.

There is a major flaw in how we use state testing. It needs to be improved, because spending days in the classroom without any learning happening is a huge waste of time and money, not to mention the cost in potential growth.

I'm not sure what the answer is to this problem, but hopefully it will include a LOT more teacher involvement so that students can actually benefit from their efforts, justifying the amount of time, energy and money that is spent on this assessment.

Until then, I guess I'll just smile, nod, and be sublimely proud of my students for their intelligence, ability, diligence and persistence as they submit themselves to such questionably justified scrutiny.

- Mr. Reni

On Sports and Teaching

I'm a big fan of sports metaphors. Sports make sense for my ego in a way that life doesn't. There is defined success (hitting a double, scoring a touchdown, winning a game), there is defined failure (striking out, double faulting, losing a game). Achievement is obvious, public, and measurable, and practice leads towards improvement. Talent plays a big role in ultimate ability, but hard work can compensate. This is how my ego thinks life should work - teaching included. Does life work this way? No, not really. There is no obvious definition for success. It's never clear whether you are the best or the worst on the field. The black and white of sport is replaced by the grey of life, and our brains aren't well equipped for grey. Mine isn't, anyways. So, for the purpose of my own sanity, I deliberately lie to myself and liken life to sports because my ego needs to believe that someday, with enough effort, enough talent, and a little bit of luck, it will "win". Baseball is my favorite.

Call it ignorant bliss.

Several years ago, during an independent study with Nancy Johnson, I felt confused as to my role in teaching. At school, I was getting good grades, but something felt wrong in the classroom, and I knew it. Seeking to make sense of this discrepancy, my mind drifted straight to baseball.

"Am I supposed to be a Major Leaguer right now? I feel like I'm in A ball," I asked.

"Peter," replied Nancy, who is also a baseball fan, "you're in little league."

Wow. That put a nice perspective on the situation.

In a way, I was frustrated. I had put in so much work. Years of school, years of coaching, countless practica, essays on theory, hours of conversation with esteemed and respected teachers and professors, and yet there I sat, staring the end game in the face and being told by my mentor (who thought I was doing very well, actually) that I was the baseball equivalent of a 10 year old. It wasn't exactly a hug.

But it made sense. Ken Griffey Jr. was 10 once. And he was still Ken Griffey Jr. He too was a little leaguer. He was a very good little leaguer. By the time he was twelve, he was the fastest, strongest kid on the field and he was smashing home runs like the fences couldn't contain him. Scouts drooled and graded him highly. He was a Major League talent, but he was still in little league.

Now, I'm not going to be so bold as to call myself the young Ken Griffey Jr. of teaching, but this scenario begs the question. When did Griffey become a big league hitter? He was Ken Griffey Jr. his whole life. What happened that made him a big league hitter? What is a big league hitter, besides simply someone who hits big league pitchers?

When do I become a big league teacher?

Obviously, in my classroom, there are no big league pitchers. In fact, there is only one player in the teacher game. And just like that, as so often happens, my sports metaphor begins to unravel in the face of real life.

In teaching, real-life teaching, there is success, and there is failure. To dwell on the success is to ignore the failure, to dwell on the failure is to ignore the success.

In a sense this is like baseball - Griffey is an undeniably amazing hitter, but he still fails 60% of the time he steps to the plate. His success depends on his ability to accept his failures. This is an amazingly difficult skill to master, and serious connections can be drawn from it to teaching and to life.

But, in another sense, this is different than baseball because, even with his failures, Griffey can come home and say without a doubt that he is an amazing hitter, and no one can disagree. He success is very public, and it is supported by concrete evidence in the shape of 500 foot home runs, and the simple fact that his batting average is higher than nearly any other player in the game. He knows he's the best, because no one else can do what he does given similar situations. Teaching provides no obvious avenue for comparing, or even measuring ability. Given his 60% failure rate, I wonder if even Griffey would view himself a bad hitter were there no objective way to rate his performance.

How does this apply to my teaching?

I have days where I feel like I've done something great. I have days where I feel like I am in control and on top of my game and possibly the greatest teacher on the face of the planet. On those days, I feel as if Randy Johnson in his prime couldn't strike me out.

Griffey must have days just like those.

On other days, when the kids are wild and it seems like I'm the only one in the room hearing my voice, or when I look out to a sea of blank faces and realize that I'm the only one that cares about math, I feel like I should have never stepped up to the plate.

Griffey must have days just like those, too.

But because baseball has a clear way of measuring success, Griffey can still come home from both of those days and know objectively that he is an amazing hitter.

Somehow I must come up with a way to value my teaching ability without clear measures so that I can accept both my successes and my failures as a rational part of teaching - a rational part of life.

How can I synthesize this? I guess I feel like I'm an up-and-coming teaching prospect - not unlike Griffey once was. But now, two years after my talk with Nancy, I know that development in teaching does not look just like development in baseball. The metaphor doesn't hold true.

Teaching is not a series of leagues you must progress through before you get to the big show. It's not that black and white. Taking classes and getting more and more immersed in my student teaching environment can make it feel like it is. That black-and-white lie was comforting when I was taking classes.

Taking classes was like playing a sport, a teacher game. There was defined success (answering a question, getting an A, passing a test, passing a class, getting a degree), and there was defined failure (not knowing the answer, getting a poor grade, failing a class). Achievement was obvious, public, and measurable, and practice lead towards improvement. Talent played a big role in ultimate ability to compete in the sport of school - the teacher game, but hard work could compensate.

Now that I'm done with classes and grades, I find myself standing in the front of a classroom day in and day out. Here the definitions are gone and achievement isn't so public and measurable. There aren't 20 classmates to compare my performance against. In fact, there is no good way to compare my performance to anyone else's. So what, then, is success?

Without competition or concrete statistics on which to base conclusions about my performance, without clear victories or clear defeats, black and white bleed into grey. As the colors bleed, it becomes clear that the sport of school, the teacher game, was just a construction of society, just as baseball is.

It was a useful game for both me and for the university. For me, it provided opportunities to learn important concepts and experience measurable success - a framework within which I could allow my black-and-white ego to play. The university staff invented the teacher game to convince their egos that training successful teachers was a black-and-white process. I represent one of many people they have deemed as prepared - I represent a small victory for them. Perhaps I am a double. But the university hasn't won the game yet, because there is still grey. They will continue on in inventing and changing their sport, their black and white hides the grey, providing an intriguing and somewhat functional venue for an ego that aspires to learn how to teach.

But for me, the black and white has ended. The school sport, the teacher game, is over. I have already won.

Now, there is teaching.

In teaching, as in life, there is grey. There isn't a best, there is always better. There is always a higher batting average. Home runs can be longer than 500 feet or land short of the fence. Some might never land at all. It is not my goal to progress to one top level, because there is no such thing. I am a teacher. I am a good teacher, hopefully. I can be a better teacher, definitely. That will always be true, no matter how good or bad I feel on any given day.

To "succeed" in teaching, and ultimately in life, I must change my definition of success. I must free it from the black-and-white of the teacher game.

I must:

1) Trust my talent and my ability to be enough.
2) Trust that hard work and time will yield improvement.

Those items aren't a recipe for success, as they are in baseball or in the teacher-game, where they often lead to hits and wins, grades and degrees. Rather, those things are success. They define it.

If I can do those things, I'll be a big league teacher. And unlike big league ball players, big league teachers don't peak at 27 years old.

What's to stop me?

-Mr. Reni

Exploring the Blogsphere

I've been a blog reader for some years now, but I mostly stick with baseball. I'm a huge Mariners fan, and it just so happens that the Mariners have one of the best "blogspheres"around. Reading about baseball at my favorite blogs has made me a better and more knowledgeable baseball fan. Unfortunately, that's not a skill that is so easily applied to professional life.

Teaching seems to have it's own blogsphere, and exploring some teacher blogs has been a fun and rewarding experience for me. Here's hoping that reading expert teacher blogs will provide me with the ability to be a better an more knowledgeable teacher, just as baseball blogs have made me a good fan.

One blog that I really appreciated was "My First Year" which is updated by Siobhan Boylan. It can be found here; http://www.ibabuzz.com/myfirstyear/. I like this blog because Siobhan talks about failure. Failure is going to be a big part of my first year of teaching, I can see it now. I am not going to be perfect - there will be days when I just don't have much to bring to the table. But I will improve, and I must always remain steadfast in my determination to get better. This type of thinking resonates in Siobhan's blog. That has proved comforting to me, and helps me remind myself that while I'm not perfect, I can certainly improve.

Another blog that I have been checking in with is JT Spencer's Musings from a Not-So-Master Teacher. It can be found at http://jtspencer.teacherlingo.com/default.aspx. I like this blog not so much because I always agree with him - sometimes I think that he is too harsh, like when he rudely and publicly denied a successful student partial credit. However, I like that he doesn't act impulsively. He looks at his decisions and critically evaluates them. That's pretty cool, I think. He also updates very regularly, which is nice for a reader, and his posts get some feedback too.

I appreciate bloggers who are regular, honest, and well spoken, and these two blogs that I have mentioned are both. I wonder what role blogging will play in MY teaching experience. To blog would be a natural progression for me, I think.

Only time will tell. Until then, I've got some great blogs that should keep me thinking until I feel comfortable enough to fully enter the blogsphere with a self-driven professional blog of my own. Perhaps I'm not far away!

-Mr. Reni

It seems hard to believe that this first quarter is coming to a close. Harder still to believe it when I glance at my still lengthy to-do list. It's been a very rewarding quarter, one to remember, for sure. Each day has presented me with new challenges in organization, priority, professionalism, self-motivation, skill, and practice. With these challenges as my fertilizer, I have grown. Along the way I've found certain elements to be just as I expected. Others have certainly surprised me.

My biggest concern, coming in, was that I wouldn't be able to find a teacher voice. I worried that perhaps I was too informal, too young, too green - not ready. But when I got in the classroom and stepped up the stage, I was surprised at how readily I morphed into the role. The kids respond to me in a productive way. I've found that if I'm confident, if I believe in my role and my ability to rise to the situation, I can. "If you build it, they will come." Of course, I'm still a touch informal, a touch too young, and a touch too green, but I am ready.

I am ready.

That has been the message that I've taken from this quarter. I'm not going to be perfect, and there is always much to learn. But If I've learned one thing in these last three months it's that I'm ready to start learning it, and practicing it.

Along that same train of thought, I'm excited for next quarter, and that's surprising in itself! I have found that I feel at my best when I'm involved in curriculum and pedagogy decision making. If I'm not, I can feel disconnected or useless. This quarter I was able to do a little bit of that with my unit planning. Next quarter, with my classes in math, literacy, and special education, I anticipate more planning, thus more connection with the everyday life of the classroom. So while six months ago I was dreading the upcoming workload, now I'm surprised to say that I'm eager to begin.

This year will be over as quickly as it began. It's important to absorb as much learning as I can along the way. Here's hoping that even more surprises and opportunities for learning are headed my way!


-Mr. Reni

Simulating Success

Man, oh man, have I taught a couple of marathons this week. They've both been very fun and rewarding for me and, more importantly, my students, but sheesh, they've really eaten up some hours. I'll have to get better at keeping them shorter, because there simply won't be enough time in the day!

The lesson I'm going to talk about today is one that I'm particularly proud of. I spent a lot of time creating the idea, and it seemed to go over very well. I was trying to teach a lesson that made students aware of the following learning target: humans' ability to meeting their basic needs is both limited and helped by their environment and the natural environment around them. I was teaching them this universal lesson through the lens of Native Americans, the theme of my unit. As this was the first lesson, it was important that I get them familiar with all of the topics at hand. To do this, I created a survival simulation. With the lights low and their eyes closed, students listened to me read them a description of a survival challenge that they were being thrust into: a month alone in the pacific coast wilderness. When the lights came on, we talked about what we'd do first, and then brainstormed a list of basic human needs, including food, water, shelter, warmth and tools. The students continued to brainstorm in small group discussions their strategies for survival, prompted and pushed by my questions and alterations to the situation. To keep their minds imaginative, a slide show of PNW coastal wilderness pictures flashed by on the screen. At the end of the activity, which took over an hour, the students responded to a writing prompt that I'd created, describing their strategies for meeting their needs. They also drew pictures of their imaginary created shelters. This was a subtle set up for the final evaluation of the unit - students will make model Native American houses with regionally appropriate resources.

The best part of this lesson was that I think it worked! Students responded to all of my questions very thoughtfully. By the end of the lesson, students were able to describe to me with great confidence basic human needs, and how they could meet them using only natural resources from their surrounding environment. When I challenged them by reshaping the environment (taking away the option of driftwood) students were able to thoughtfully come up with other options for shelter that relied on other resources, and explain why they made their decisions. When I taught the next lesson, brainstorming natural resources was a cinch. In fact, they were able to develop a hypothetical list for the Plateau tribes as well, a very thoughtful list, too, I might add.

Now, just because it was successful doesn't mean that it was perfect. I regretted a couple of things along the way. If I could reteach this lesson, I would be way more aggressive with writing things on the board. I decided in this lesson to let the discussion stay oral, and not write anything down. In hindsight, I don't think that this was the most beneficial for the students. I think that more students would have been able to create more complete answers to the writing prompt if some of the language that we'd used would have been present in written form for them. I also think that I should have been a little bit better about only responding to raised hands. The behavior of the class was over all absolutely stellar, especially considering the duration of the activity, but during discussion certain students had the tendency to holler out the right answer. If they were wrong, they were reprimanded, but if students blurted what I was looking for, I (oops) sometimes went with it. I can improve.

I've already planned on extending this lesson, by taking it more deeply into a study of how the Native Americans responded to the same natural resources, but with over 10,000 years of time to figure out how to meet their needs. Students were excited to figure this out at the end of the lesson. If I wanted to, and if I had the time and resources, this would be an optimal unit for a field trip. And at the very least, the students general interest in shelter will be very useful when I assign the take home project. There is no reason that every student shouldn't be able to use this information in many aspects of their life. Any time that we talk about a foreign culture, I will be able to relate back to this EALR, and they'll have the tools to appropriately and fluently respond.

This lesson was an overwhelming success, and I'm very proud of it. If they all went this well, life would be too easy. My second one, for the record, went very well too. I hope that you all are having such fun with your respective lessons. This was an excellent experience for me - one of those "I can do this!" moments. I can only wish you the best of luck, so I will. Good luck!

-Mr. Reni

(editors note: whoops, I forgot to click publish when I wrote this earlier this morning. I hope that my eager and devoted readers weren't left wanting!)