It's Been a Blog Time Since I Posted....

Hi, All!

I hope you all enjoyed your holidays and time off from the regular day to day of TPJA.

I must say while I felt I could have used another week of "down time," I was thrilled to come back to school today and be back in the classroom with all my students. I truly missed them!

We started off the week by "kissing" 2009 goodbye, literally. With chocolate Kisses in hand, we each took a turn throwing our Hershey Kiss in a waste basket and stating what we wanted to say goodbye to. Several students mentioned low grades, some expressed behaviors they wanted to leave behind, while I think a couple of them mentioned siblings (must've been quite a year!).

In Language Arts the students worked individually on a partnered art project. The month of January was named after the Roman god, Janus, who oversaw doorways. Janus was typically depicted with two heads: one looking back at the past, the other looking forward to the present. Using one side of a folded piece of paper, each student sketched out a profile looking toward the past. They then exhanged their paper with someone else, handing off their work with the drawing facing downward. Once the other person received the folded paper, blank-side up, they began to draw a profile looking toward the future. Then the paper was exchanged to more times in order to complete the drawings. When the exercise was over, the papers were then unfolded to reveal a two-headed person at the "gateway" of the new year: the crossroads of the past and the future.

Our next unit in Social Studies is ancient Greece, but there is so much history between (and over-lapping) ancient Egypt and ancient Greece, that it seemed wise to give the students a taste of it. Today the students began part one of a one-week, three part assignment that will give them the opportunity to get to know a bit about ancient India, China, and the Hebrews and the history of Judaism. Each student was given the task of becoming the "expert" of the week in one of these cultures. On Friday, they will be sharing with the other two groups of students what they learned.

Just as we said goodbye to 2009 this morning, at the end of the day we welcomed in 2010. We toasted with a cup of Sparkling grape juice and stated individual aspirations for ourselves in the upcoming semester in unison. We then cheered and blew party blowers to celebrate.

As we ease back into a regular routine once again, the students will be bringing home with them this week newly revised classroom expectations and guidelines to share with you. Please take some time to look them over, and if you have any questions, don't hesitate to cal or email me with them.

Student evaluations should be posted for you to view. While TPJA/TPA won't offer formal conferences again this semester, if you would like to set up a conference time with me, Mrs. Stoyanoff and Mrs. Hipple, just let me know so that we can make arrangements.

Again, I would like to invite you to stop by our classroom anytime. Our door is open and parents are always welcome.

I extend apologies for lapsing on my weekly postings. The semester became quite busy for me between prepping/grading for TPJA classes as well as juggling three of my own grad school classes online. My aspiration is to be more diligent and begin posting again weekly.

While there is so much to say about last semester, I am going to be brief and simply say how grateful I am to work with your students. I may sometimes get a little dizzy-eyed with them (they will not let me eat sugar any more during the school day as they know it makes me grumpy), but every day I feel blessed, honored and humbled working with them. Thank you for trusting me with your children.

Since pictures paint a 1000 words, I will offer you the following...

Cheers to 2010,
Ms. Nicky Pitman