Hopes and Fears

Thank you all for being here and on top of your work. It's wonderful to see and read your writing in your Writer's Notebooks.

Let's start with a video. Take a look.

Today we're going to take a little detour because you've all had much better luck with the computers than other classes (which I know is a little unbelievable considering how many problems we've encountered), and we need to refrain from getting ahead of them.

Hopefully this detour will help us achieve a few goals as a classroom:

• It'll give you more ideas for your personal essays
• It'll give each of us a voice in the room - every single one of us has something we can teach each other.
• It'll challenge us to listen to each other, which is sometimes difficult.
• It'll help us all learn names.... well. Mostly it'll allow you to quiz me on your names. Sincerely, please quiz me every time I talk to you. You have the right to a teacher that knows your name.

So I have a question for you:

What are your hopes/fears?