1) Tuesday’s word of the day was “Renaissance,” and one of my 5th grade boys (who shall go unnamed, but he is the cutest thing on two legs) raised his hand proudly and announced that “Renaissance” was a kind of salad dressing.

(My boss smiled and wrote “salad dressing” on the board in between “rebirth” and “rebirth of art and knowledge.”)

2) As I was setting up in my girls’ class in the afternoon yesterday, one of them told me “I like your boots,” and then a little chorus of 11 year old girls said “Me, too!” In a homework assignment where they had to write about what they thought of the school so far, one of them wrote “I like my teacher’s boots.”

3) When asked what he thought we would study in the Humanities, one of my students starts his list with “People, History, Litrature…” So far so good (except for not being able to spell Literature). Then I announced that I would be giving a small reward to the person with the most items on his list of possible topics of study — which is why, I am pretty sure, this particular kid’s list suddenly turns into an inventory of questionable relevance.

“…dogs, birds, cat, ships, cars, bags, bees, ants, fireflies, red ants, centipeds, ladybugs, flies, honey bees…..”

Yes, it’s going well. It’s completely and utterly insane, and we don’t have a cafeteria, and we don’t have a list of all the kids who are actually coming to our school, but it’s going well.