good week

so...i read the "green sky trilogy" this weekend. It's kinda hard to find but by an award winning kid's author Zilpha Keatly Snyder. I read it years and years ago when i was a kid and bought it on ebay recently. What an awesome trilogy! I want to live in green sky. I want to teach my kids not to fight and have spirit-gifts instead. If you haven't read it...do! the titles are:
Below the Root, And all Between, and Until the Celebration. Fabulously fun and well written. Plus, they weave their houses out of vines! So cool!

Ecovillage...who knows? I think land has been found but J isn't interested in doing this.

spinning? I've been producing more but for the last two to three months the value of *Yarn Bouquets* seems to have gone down rather radically! I don't get it. I guess the novelty is worn off and the yarn gurus are on to something new! something! I feel sort of like 1929. 3 months ago they were selling for $75 a pop, now i can hardly get one to sell. One bid, that's it...Oh well.

the kids don't have school tomorrow. I sometimes wonder why i am sending them to school at all. Jeeze. Last week. No school Monday (Martin Luther King Day), Tuesday: normal class, Wednesday: early release ("s" did nothing but play games for end of quarter) Thursday: normal class (band concert at 7--wow was that sad), Friday: normal day but "a" didn't have classes because of end of quarter. Now: Monday: no school.

When i was teaching i hated 4 day weeks. Every week felt like this : Monday: work to get kids back on track, no learning occurs, Tuesday: kids still not quite on track, some learning occurs; Wednesday: kids are here, their brain is engaged, full learning occurs; Thursday: same as Wed.; Friday: kids brains leave school early and not much learning occurs.

NOW if you move that down by a day and toss in that because of the long weekend the week before is altered and Thursday turns into Friday because of the upcoming weekend and Friday is worse than a typical Friday because there will be a holiday: the week before one day of learning occurs. and the week of the holiday Mon. is gone, Tues is worse than a normal Monday, Wed. is worse than a normal Tue., Thursday is sort of like a normal Tuesday, Frid is normal (very little learning) you now have blown two whole weeks to give ONE day of Vacation! How teachers can function with so many days off i can't figure out. Wednesday Early release blows a whole week i would guess! any, we're not doing anything today but playing games probably blows a whole day or two before it!

well anyway: i believe that longer vacations are better because of the "getting kids back on school mode" problem. taking a week off once a quarter would work better than taking a day every other week off because if you do that you never get up to full learning! Just what i think, not of much consequence but....