The last day of preparation. I really didn't do too much work in my room today, but spent most of the day preparing several documents: a teacher handbook (required under the new reforms), clean copies of teacher programs and class programs, class lists, and a lunch duty schedule. We set up our staff mailboxes, which was very, very exciting. I kept telling people, "It's in your box!" "Check your box!" Maybe my next job should be office manager.

A few things have gone missing during the past week or so. What with so much moving, it's very hard to tell whether they've just been misplaced, or someone walked off with them. AWOL are a small vacuum, one class-set of "Motion, Forces, and Energy" textbooks, and a box of dirt. The textbooks are middle school level and the school that we share our building with is elementary school, and anyway I have a good relationship with their science teacher, so it puzzles me why anyone would have taken those books. Also, much more valuable stuff was in the room with them - why would you choose 30 physical science textbooks and a box of dirt over a bunch of microscopes? Still, three days of searching for them has turned up nothing.

One of our students came in to help out and talk a bit this afternoon. He brought his violin and played us a few pieces. He has only been playing for a few months, but he can play several real songs, like "America the Beautiful." This is a very motivated boy with a chaotic family life who has talked his way into free violin lessons, a free violin, and two free summer camps. He also taught himself French from a set of language tapes. I bought those for him after I saw him trying to learn from a French-English dictionary. Anyway, the violin was really out of tune this afternoon, so the songs sounded pretty dreadful. Another teacher who used to play the violin taught him how to tune using one string as a reference. By the end, real music was coming out of that instrument! He was so proud of himself.