Spirit Week!

This week was a fantastic week.  During the school year, possibly in elementary/middle school but definitely in high school, you probably went through a week where each day is themed and everyone dresses up-- you know, Spirit Week!  Usually for high schools, spirit week ends in Homecoming, both a dance and a football game, but at Breakthrough, we have a very unique way of capping off Spirit Week.  But I'll get to that in a bit.

Here is the line-up from this week:

• Monday: Twin Day
• Tuesday: Sports Day
• Wednesday: Formal Day/Prom
• Thursday: Pajama Day
• Friday: Crazy Hair, Crazy Wear

I participated in all but Friday, as far as dressing up goes.  Normally I don't like participating in days like this, but it's totally different when you're dressing up for Spirit Week during high school than it is for Spirit Week at Breakthrough.  I've gotten used to looking very silly and making dumb mistakes in front of my kids this summer.  I've learned to not resist the silly.  If you can't beat the silly, join in!  So I did.  On Monday, for Twin Day, I was a dragon with my elective co-teacher Tanner.

Tuesday I borrowed a Minnesota Twins baseball shirt from my mom, Wednesday I wore a dress that I wore to a high school dance (one that actually still fit me), and Thursday I had on pajama bottoms with stars and moons on them.

The women of BTC in their nice clothes/prom dresses :)

And then Spirit Day happened.

The kids had all four of their classes for 45 minutes like every Friday, they did ASM, had lunch, and then spent the rest of the day in their colleges.  They went and played games to earn points against the other colleges!  There were games like Lilypad, where you had to get your entire college across the "pond" while always having one foot or more on each "lilypad" or else an alligator could take it from them making it harder to cross the "pond."  There was also an obstacle course, mat races (don't get me started... such an unsafe activity), Jeopardy, and some others.

Mat races... a game that I hope we don't play again for safety reasons-- Courtesy of the BTC Photographers

Jeopardy-- Courtesy of the BTC Photographers

After the games were over, everyone came outside and picked a spot in the amphitheater so that we could take another BTC-MPA picture.  Silver College is in the front on the right.

And then the fun began.  The college with the most points was announced and so was the college with the most spirit.  Their reward... they got to pie a teacher.  Each student in the college got to choose which teacher they wanted to pie and the teachers couldn't say no unless they said no before that day.  One of the ninth graders in my college pied me in the face.  It's a weird sort of affirmation, being pied in the face because you're liked by the kids you work with.

Pictures courtesy of BTC Photographers

It's been a day and I can still smell the whipped cream-sitting-in-the-sun-for-a-while smell on my skin, although it's subtle.

So spirit week was a lot of fun.  I had an absolutely amazing week!

But I still had classes to teach.  We had some amazing moments and victories there as well that made my entire week.  My literature kids have started their celebration project, which is to recreate scenes from Of Mice and Men in film.  I have two classes and I have both classes working to make one movie each, since there are only seven kids in each class.  Each class chose which scenes they wanted to do, so I have my Class A doing the beginning of the book where George and Lennie talk about their dream of owning land and living on their own.  My Class C chose the end where Curley's wife dies and where Lennie dies (sorry, spoilers).  I've been very impressed by both of these groups.  They've been working on scripting and have learned about storyboarding.  On Monday, they'll have their (supposedly) last day filming for their movie.  Later this week, they'll learn to edit videos and they'll get everything ready for Celebration, which takes place on Saturday.  I'm very excited for Saturday, but also dreading it.  I love working with these kids so much.

George and Lennie in my Class A :)

Class C figuring out how to best film the death of Curley's wife.

I was especially impressed because both of my classes tend to get quite distracted and during this project, all of them just focused in, even if they weren't the ones actively being filmed.  Behind the scenes work is absolutely fascinating.  It's amazing the amount of work that goes into one movie, even a short one.  I can't wait to share their videos at Celebration and also on this blog.

I have one more week of teaching and then one more week of wrap-up.  This six weeks of teaching and nine weeks total of Breakthrough has been life-changing.  I'm sad to see it come to an end for the summer.  But I'll save my sad for next week.  I need to keep it together this week, at least until Saturday.

Thanks for Reading!

--Jude