The upper elementary class went to Luray Caverns yesterday. I had the pleasure of accompanying them. First of all, EARTH! It's an amazing place. Even with the intense commercialization (handicap accessible! pretty lighting!), the caverns inspired a lot of respect for the power of time, water, and minerals. Wow.

Second of all, the kids were great. They listened attentively to our guide, they stayed in a group as well as could be expected, and they retained a ton of information when we quizzed them later. The bus ride was long, though; two hours each way. They did pretty well with that, except that one of them puked when we were about 5 minutes away from arriving back at school. Being the assistant (and the one not driving), I had the pleasure of cleaning that up.

Me: Do we have any paper towels? No? Umm... ok... let me look through the first aid kid. Uhh... it looks like the best thing we have is a diaper. It's clean and absorbent, right?
Kid who hurled: What? Ew! Don't touch me with a diaper!
Me: Would you rather be covered in vomit? Come on.

I feel like an official teacher now, like I've been through some rite of passage. I'm basically the coolest person you know.

Speaking of being the coolest teacher, I did two things in the recent past that I think a) improve the classroom and b) show that I'm awesome.

1. I introduced elements of consensus based meetings to our biweekly class meetings! Some of it has already carried over into one-on-one/small group mediation. I'm so pumped. We take stack and do that wiggly finger agreement hand signal. (Don't call it sparkles or twinkles; the sixth grade boys would probably refuse to do it then.) Other hand signals may be introduced later. We shall see.

2. I got the ball rolling on implementing a sex ed curriculum. I found out/realized last week that we do not currently offer sex ed. Come on, people, this is upper elementary! 4th-6th grade! They're totally going through puberty, or will soon! I did some homework during my planning time today to find a comprehensive curriculum for exactly our age group, sent an email to my lead teacher, received her enthusiastic support, and went ahead and ordered it. We'll look it over when it arrives and decide on our next steps then. Yeah! Sex ed! Raising a sex positive generation, one class at a time!

Outside of the classroom, I've been having a great time, too. Some highlights:

-I'm continuing to get my legs used to these minimalist running shoes. They're starting to complain less. I went for a run in them on Tuesday and was limping/waddling a bit when it came time for belly dance that night. By today, they were feeling pretty manageable and I decided to go for another run. I ended up walking a bit at the end, but I don't think I'll have to descend the stairs backwards tomorrow or anything. Hooray! You go, body!

-I'm totally becoming a person who cooks. I cooked two dishes last night. Count 'em. Two. That's right. I also learned that cutting up fresh butternut squash does crazy things to the skin of one's hands. Huh.

-I hung out until very late on Monday night with one of my friends from college. Hadn't really had a chance to talk with her in forever; it was great to catch up. She lives in the area now and is in my neck of the woods every Monday for a tutoring gig. Perhaps this will become a regular hangout. I would like that.

Yup. Life is good.