Pain

I have officially been sitting home in front of a computer for too long. On Friday one of my students at school fell backwards off the playground, and my long braid was a convenient hand hold. Fortunately he did not get hurt. Unfortunately I did. So whiplash, a four day weekend and *lots* of boredom. I find that I am not so good at empty time, especially when I can't do much of anything. That's something I know about myself, but had forgotten. I am really looking forward to going back to my kids on Wednesday. This means I really must start thinking about how I can fill the week and a half to two weeks of freedom which I will have after my last day of work (it's official, by the way, September third is my last day!). Any ideas for cheap leisure time activities will be considered and appreciated.

Late night Browsing

Yahoo! Groups : DemocracyInPublicSchools

This seems to be an interesting "group". It is no longer active, as far as I can tell, so it is more for informational purposes than anything else. Most of the posts I have looked at thus far are written by a teacher in an inner city Public school attempting to implement a sort of psuedo-democratic structure in a traditional school. He seems to have some interesting ideas, though I would be interested to see how these students fare after a year in that environment. It seems like the problem with giving children only one year of freedom (and I am not arguing against it), is that it is very apparent to the children (I would assume) that the freedom is not theirs but rather given to them at the whim of one particular teacher. I would worry about whether the students might tend to "choose" to follow the teachers suggestions out of fear of losing their freedom altogether if they struck out on their own. It seems like this would be a fine line to walk.