That was fast!

Wow,
Just one more project to do and my semester at Nevada State is finished. In fact the semester ends on May 7th if you can believe that. The nice thing is that after Monday I can concentrate on teaching until at least Memorial Day when the person I am filling in for is supposed to come back. But she may not because her baby (and boy is he CUTE) is having some health issues. Either way for a few weeks I simply get to teach.

Speaking of teaching I'm trying for a paid internship at the Andre Agassi (yes him) school. Andre built this private school in the heart of North Las Vegas to give kids in the poorest part of town a shot at a good education. They got a grant to give teaching students a paid ($18000) internship which includes paying for student teaching. Now just because I dropped off my application does not mean much because there is one class (literary theory) I need to take that I can't get until the Spring of 2009, which is supposed to be the semester I student teach. The issue is that the rule at Nevada State says that you can only take student teaching, and no other classes. Now I did try to see if UNLV has the class I need but they have it at times I can't take it, (middle of day) and the head of the English Department says no independent studies will be available at all. So my Wednesday meeting with my advisor will be very interesting to say the least.

Finally, I do have one good story to tell about my week. I was Dr. Detention for the 8th graders on Wednesday and I decided that they could use some culture. So I found my daughter's soundtrack to the musical 'Cats' and brought that to school with me. When the students arrived for their time with me I popped the CD in and turned it up. I wish WISH I had a camera to record their reactions. First it was confusion because it didn't register in their minds what they were hearing. Then it was a dawning realization that I had put on show tunes. Then a combination of misery and disgust as they were forced to stare at the white board for thirty minutes and listen to the music. After thirty minutes I told them they better start doing their homework, and no I didn't turn the music off, in fact I turned it up a bit, just to get the point across. The high point was when disc 1 ended and the music stopped, the students breathed an audible sigh of relief that the torture was over... Then I popped in disc 2, yes it's a 2 disc set. Talk about crushing their spirits, it was truly a thing of feline beauty.