OK … since my adventures on Route 66 last weekend, I’ve been pretty going pretty much hell-for-leather every single day: ballgame after school Monday, kempo on Tuesday, boatloads of grading on Wednesday, homework night on Thursday, ballgame Friday, honey harvest and a neighborhood block party today.
Thursday was our first homework night of the year. I’ve done this since I started teaching, and it’s probably the best thing I’ve come up with. About once a month, I’ll look at my calendar and the kids’ grades and call a “homework night,” which is really more of a catching-up session for the kids whose grades are suffering because of missing assignments. I provide after-school snacks and stay late — usually until 6 p.m. — helping kids catch up on their missing work. Anything they turn in at that time is graded and recorded on the spot so they can see how it affects their grade. I also do some tutoring in other subjects if time allows and the kids need it.
We set a record for homework night attendance on Thursday: 30 kids signed in, and I think I had two or three others who forgot to sign the sheet. I wound up staying until 7 p.m. Four kids were still working on things at 6:30, and two girls stuck around to shoot the bull and help me clean up the classroom. It was great.
I spent most of today harvesting honey, extracting it, and rendering beeswax. We ended up with about 35 pounds of honey, which wasn’t quite as much as I’d hoped, but probably more than I had any right to expect after the heat wave and monthlong drought we had this summer.
Hope your week was good.
Emily
Red Fork Hippie 
We set out three new crepe myrtles this morning and the ground was dry all the way to the bottom of the holes your dad dug. I don’t know why anything is still alive.