Hi. I thought I’d throw in a quick one. The dog is outside doing his business, it’s three am, and I haven’t written for two days. It was a busy day at school, we threw a holiday party for the students, it was fun and it went well. I like planning days like today. There was a little chaos, but I don’t think anything untoward happened, and it’s good for the students to have some fun together at school.
It’s so hard to keep a balance between having fun, learning, being nice to each other, and moving forward academically. I will have to explore that one later, when I feel up to it, not on a fly by night entry – but I will confess that I find it very difficult sometimes to balance everything. Either I get all about academics, which makes me too uptight, or all about emotions, which makes me maybe too relaxed about academics. But I do believe that you can’t learn at all if your emotions are raging out of control. And one emotion that students have is stress – maybe a little stress is good, but I am constantly seeing kids “stress out” about school, and when they are in that state, are they actually learning? I doubt it.
Anyway, it’s late, the dog is finally in, and if I don’t get as much sleep as I can at this point, I’m liable to be grumpy in class, and that wouldn’t be good on the last day before the holiday break. I should tell you my theory about how much teacher can accomplish when they are stressed out… but I don’t want this to be a lesson in irony, so good night to you! 
Sheila
