Presentations

After a nice, long weekend, today was the first day of Science Fair presentations. I was pretty nervous about keeping my kids in line.

There was some yelling, mostly getting the kids settled in the first place after a long weekend and coming within an inch of a delayed opening. After that, though, they were great. For the most part, they were really respectful of each other. My best class today was one of my most difficult, Blue. They were quiet for each other. When a particularly timid student stood up to speak, the entire class was SILENT. Not only that, but when the speakers had finished, they had very thoughtful and (mostly) respectful questions to ask.

There were a few jabs, such as "It looks like X did more work than Y, is that true?", but there was a lot more of, "Why did you try dissolving it in soda, rather than water?" or "Did it also work in this scenario?"

I am proud of myself for running through my expectations in my head while getting ready this morning, and then repeating them as excitedly as the first time for every class. It worked.

After school, I had the privilege of watching my blind student get through a couple of levels on a Super Mario Bros. emulator. Wow. That is pretty much the coolest thing I've seen here.

I'm still on track with exercise, believe it or not. The healthy eating is a little more challenging, what with weekends happening, but I'm working on it. This weekend I had some delicious food (and I discovered a new yummy, not-too-expensive Italian place at Mohegan).

In other news, some of my good friends in Boston are suddenly without an apartment. Fire is so much less cool when it happens to someone I know. Fortunately, everyone is okay and so is most of their stuff. Reminder to everyone: get renter's insurance. It's worth it.

I think I might register for my first SCSU Master's course today, for the summer. Their website made me come up with a new password because the old one "expired", lowercase letter, uppercase letter, number, symbol, and all. It reminds me of this comic.

Let's hope tomorrow's Science Fair presentations go as well as today.