Fight or Flight

So last week I had a discussion with Liesl and Laura at Caribou and I walked away in a pretty deep state of discontent. Laura had talked about some of the new programs that are coming in affecting (read harming) the smaller language programs. This was shortly after I had heard that the new high school would only be offering Spanish (of the currently offered languages).

I had two factions warring inside myself and until I named them, I was simply restless and unhappy. These warring brothers were the instincts of fight or flight. Do I accept it, read the (possible) writing on the wall and prepare for landing... or do I begin fighting it now... pushing further and harder into the space of education?

I had a discussion with Shawn who (wisely) told me to talk to the Doctor about it. I haven't done that yet for a number of reasons but plan on doing so...

And then today it happened again.

This morning at our meetings, we were told that, in fact, they were only offering Mandarin, Arabic, Spanish and (probably) French: clearly leaving out German. My question is what effect this will have on the program as a whole... and what meaning this has as we look at adding another German teacher in the district.

So what do I do?

Prepare for a fight or a flight...
I vacillate with every breath.

haikus and kwl

Today in 3/4/5 we did, after the vocabulary quiz, a quick KWL for the separation of East and West Germany. I'm looking forward to building this chapter/unit and really having a good time with the students learning about history. I will look through their lists of K/W in a bit... overall I'm excited.

After that, we took about 15 minutes and wrote haikus in German... and then had a poetry corner. The poetry corner is what made it great. Prior to that, I could tell that the haikus seemed like a hoop to jump through... but everyone presenting their haiku and having the snapping afterward made it enjoyable.

Very cool.

Off to tabulate KWL results.