student teaching week eleven

This was my last week at the middle school. They were doing practice TCAP testing all week, so it was pretty light on children where we were. I mostly spent it cataloging the new books Carole had pulled from the book fair and weeding. Carole is stressing just a little bit over having less time for inventory than usual, especially since she'll be out of school the week before inventory to go to the coolest workshop EVER in Memphis with me (it's from NASA and is fully funded and I'm excited), so we went on a big campaign to clear out as much stuff as possible. That stuff needed gone anyway, and this way she has more than ten boxes fewer books to scan and account for. :) Carole has been at GMS for four years now, but is still having to work pretty hard to clean up after her predecessor, who left her a seriously crummy nonfiction section. Too many things over there are ancient to go around pulling things just because they're way old (there aren't enough newer sources to replace them), so I've pretty much been thumbing through almost every book to see if it still had value or not despite its age, and only pulling the ones that were out-of-date to the point of uselessness. Some of the ancient stuff was fantastic, like a series on what the world was like when a bunch of famous people were alive (John Smith, George Washington, etc.), but I also found some real jewels to pull, particularly in the American Indians section. Other than that it was pretty quiet, no big news to report. Next week is elementary school, so I'm pretty excited about that!