Aloha Again!

I'm back! What a trip! I think I've got enough pictures to do several posts over the next week. So, the first one will be... amazing places on Oahu.

Here was the view from our lanai... this greeted me every morning. (Looking north from Laie Point.)

This is the Byodo-in Temple in the Valley of the Temples (east side of Oahu). Beautiful place! Be sure to ring the giant bell for luck.

We hiked into Waimea Valley to the falls (a trickle this time of year) and the tropical landscape was unbelievable!

We took a boat out to a submarine in Waikiki bay. Here's a view back at Diamond Head crater. Yes, the water really is that color.

Last, this is sunrise on June 21 - the Summer Solstice. My daughter and I got up to greet the sun from a beach just south of Laie Point.

Aloha!

Aloha (the goodbye kind) to home, school, work, foggy mornings, and my kitty (sniff)...

and

Aloha (the hello kind) to beaches, sunsets, snorkeling, and lots of reading time!

I'll be back in two weeks with lots of pictures!!

Across the Finish Line!

I made it! And I'm still in one piece (I think).

Yesterday was the last day of school. Today was my last day of student teaching seminar classes. I am officially finished with my student teaching! It feels very unreal. This is the day I've been looking toward for months. Now that it's finally here... it's just hard to believe. Am I still dreaming that it's today? No, it really is!

The trick now is to figure out what my next step is on the path to becoming an elementary school librarian. Well, that will have to wait two weeks because...

I'm off to Hawaii!

Celebrated.

It's not a 5th grade graduation... because technically you don't graduate. They're just moving on to middle school next year. So they call it the 5th grade celebration. OK, so my son is "celebrated".

Other than the 90 degree weather (hot for here) it was a lot of fun. The 5th graders sang a cute song they learned at Science Camp this year. Here is the chorus:

And I was thinking maybe somewhere later down the road
After all our stories have been told
I'd sit and think of you, a dear friend I once knew
Shot through my life like a shooting star

Isn't that how it is with life? People come and go through the skies of our lives like shooting stars. Our paths are always crossing. We enjoy one another for a season and then time moves, we move, the planet moves...

Celebrate it!

Almost there...

Two more days of school! I'm almost there! And this week has been a breeze - all I do is hand the students their final exams and then listen to their final speeches. My juniors are giving a speech on whether or not they think the American Dream is alive or dead and reference one of the texts from the semester. There have been some very interesting and meaningful speeches. Pretty cool.

I've been thinking about the "last days of school" tonight and remembering a few memorable ones of my own. I'll never forget the end of 6th grade. I got the chicken pox two weeks before school was out. It was the culmination of my elementary school experience and I missed the bowling party, the ice cream party, the swimming party, and the pizza party. I did (just barely) make it to the 6th grade dance, for which my mom had made a smashing cute dress, and where we basically all stood around and stared at each other to music.

My 9th grade end of the year was a good one. The last two days of school were completely worthless. Over half of the school didn't even show up. Being a good freshman, I came to school, but my friends and I just wandered from class to class, making sure our teachers knew we were there. We somehow ended up in our Honors Biology room and sat and chatted with Mr. Watson. Poor man - we had given him a first year of teaching to remember - and at the end of the year he still liked us! In the course of our conversation, somehow we convinced him to let us tap dance on top of the lab tables. They make great sounds! And the bio room had pretty good acoustics!

Who can forget senior year? The last days of school are such a mix of happy/sad that it overwhelms you every 3 minutes. I really just remember emotion more than specific memories, but it's the kind of strong emotion that comes back in tsunami-sized waves in those quiet moments when you think about it hard enough.

OK, enough reminiscing. I've got to get ready to send my students off this year, get my daughter finished with 7th grade, attend my son's 5th grade graduation, and then head out to my own "I Survived Student Teaching" PARTY!

Oh, the things you can think!

Oh the things you can think
In the course of a week
I was feeling quite crazy
It was looking quite bleak

But I got through my classes
Another week of school
My son had a party
Ninety 5th graders in a pool!

And after rehearsals
That went oh so late
My daughter's show Seussical
Was really great!

And now I've been rhyming
All night and all day
Thank goodness vacation
Is one week away!

Poetic Justice

This was just too good not to share. I read it in my daily peruse of the news. Enjoy!

From bad to verse: Vandals get classroom penance
By JOHN CURRAN, Associated Press Writer Mon Jun 2, 3:36 PM ET

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. - Call it poetic justice: More than two dozen young people who broke into Robert Frost's former home for a beer party and trashed the place are being required to take classes in his poetry as part of their punishment.

Using "The Road Not Taken" and another poem as jumping-off points, Frost biographer Jay Parini hopes to show the vandals the error of their ways — and the redemptive power of poetry.

"I guess I was thinking that if these teens had a better understanding of who Robert Frost was and his contribution to our society, that they would be more respectful of other people's property in the future and would also learn something from the experience," said prosecutor John Quinn.

The vandalism occurred at the Homer Noble Farm in Ripton, where Frost spent more than 20 summers before his death in 1963. Now owned by Middlebury College, the unheated farmhouse on a dead-end road is used occasionally by the college and is open in the warmer months.

Parini, 60, a Middlebury College professor who has stayed at the house before, was eager to oblige when Quinn asked him to teach the classes. He donated his time for the two sessions. On Wednesday, 11 turned out for the first, with Parini giving line-by-line interpretations of "The Road Not Taken" and "Out, Out-," seizing on parts with particular relevance to draw parallels to their case.

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood," he thundered, reciting the opening line of the first poem, which he called symbolic of the need to make choices in life. "This is where Frost is relevant. This is the irony of this whole thing. You come to a path in the woods where you can say, `Shall I go to this party and get drunk out of my mind?'" he said. "Everything in life is choices."

Even the setting had parallels, he said: "Believe me, if you're a teenager, you're always in the… woods. Literally, you're in the woods — probably too much you're in the woods. And metaphorically you're in the woods, in your life. Look at you here, in court diversion! If that isn't `in the woods,' what… is `in the woods'? You're in the woods!"

"It's a lesson learned, that's for sure," said one of [the students], 22-year-old Ryan Kenyon, whose grandmother worked as hairdresser in the 1960s and knew Frost. "It did bring some insight. People do many things that they don't realize the consequences of. It shined a light, at least to me."