My day at home school co-op

As many of you know, our family is enrolled in a home school co-op with about 25 other families. We attend classes all day on Mondays each week. I teach middle school English, which I absolutely love, and I've been subbing in the 5th-6th grade history class for the past few weeks as well.

My daughter Mary mentioned the other day that she is filling out a job application for a private school teacher placement service, and needs three references of people who have seen her teach. So I arranged for her to come and teach segments of three classes in our co-op and had some of the other teachers come in to observe so they could write the references. She is also getting a reference from a charter school teacher whose class she guest-taught a year and a half ago.

The history class has been studying Russia, and Mary is taking a course in Russian history this semester at UCF, so that was an obvious choice. She taught them about 19th century serfs and czars for almost 20 minutes. Then, later in the day, she taught my English class about journalism, giving a 30 minute overview on how to be a good journalist, and what her experience has been with internships. After that, she went into the high school English class and gave them a ramped up version of the same presentation. I must say that she did an excellent job in all three classes! And I didn't need to prepare as much material myself.

Since today is St. Patrick's Day, I found an article, Will the Real St. Patrick Please Stand Up?, on the web about him, as well as the poem "St. Patrick's Breastplate." I read both pieces to the history and English classes, with a little (OK, a lot) of my commentary along the way. And I also brought in a Yo-Yo Ma CD with a cello concerto by Antonin Dvorak, a Czech composer, since the history class is also studying the rest of Eastern Europe. So I had a pretty good time at co-op today. Actually, every week I go home and say, "That was another good day at Providence!" I haven't had a bad day there yet, and we're almost done with our second year.