Today was relatively unaffected by the slacker holiday, with the exception of one kid making the vocab sentence, "I blithely smoked a blunt."
Though drugs were not a problem, violence was. In a gang shooting this weekend, a former student's father was killed. The surviving mother and family cannot afford the funeral, so leadership students came around at fourth period to collect donations. None of the kids offered anything.
The rest of the day was spent in the usual cacophony of whining and complaints, but the kids did what they were supposed to (interview their fellow students for lit circles) and some of them were even reading! They were reading the book before they were even supposed to! This may be my most brilliant scheme to make them literate yet. We'll see.
I spent the remaining afternoon and most of my evening going to the seven Border's and Barnes and Noble bookstores between work and home collecting as many of the books they chose (but that we don't actually have) as possible. Those I couldn't find will have to be overnighted from Amazon.
Coincidentally, a HUGE thank you goes to Dan. When he became a monk, he said to sell all his possessions and donate the money to charity. So that's what I did. I took as money books as I could, traded them for cash, and used that money to buy the books today. Happy birthday, Dan, and thank you for making it possible for my students to choose a book about their lives.
I probably don't have what you need, but what do you need? if I have it, it's yours. (though you seem to be pretty set. but anyways let me know.)
Thanks for the birthday wishes, Christine, and I am stunned to discover my huge collection of stolen books has done someone some good. How much money did you get for them, by the way?
I didn't sell them all. I "returned" ones that I thought they still carried and sold some of the religious ones used. I only sold a third, maybe, and got about $350 for them (I think).