Convocation and Meetings

Tuesday we had Convocation, which is the opening "Hoorah" for all the school district employees. We had some musical performances by students and former students, introduced all the schools and "groups" like custodians, technology, etc. Then former American Idol participant Scott MacSomething (I can't remember his last name) spoke and played the piano. It was pretty inspirational.

After that, I was supposed to teach an inservice to all the Elementary PE teachers on how to incorporate dance into their classes. I was super nervous but really excited. It was supposed to start at 1:00. I wanted to get there early to set up, but not a soul was on the campus. Everything was locked and I had a feeling everyone was still out getting lunch after Convocation. I didn't want to sit outside without AC so I drove over to the ballet to wait 20 minutes. I got back to the school aroun 12:40 and now the only person there was another inservice teacher (she does all the technology trainigs for the district). We waited and chatted until 12:58 when the bus pulled up with all the Fort Concho Elementary people on it. I quickly started asking people where I was supposed to be, if I could use their copy machine, how many PE teachers were coming, etc... and through asking these questions discovered that the PE teachers were told to go to another campus for training. YIKES! We found the principal, the awesom pro-arts lady who asked me to come teach this in the first place, and she said, "Oh no, didn't you get my email this morning?! I talked to the person in charge of the PE teachers this morning and somehow they didn't know you were coming so they made plans to meet and talk about something else."

I was so disappointed. She was awesome and it totally wasn't her fault - the PE people hadn't understood what she had discussed with them or were flaky or something. She feels really strongly about using dance as a teaching tool and is determined to have me work with them (or maybe even academic teachers in the future) sometime, but at the moment I was so nervous/excited that it was a pretty big let-down.

The good news is that this mistake (or tender mercy) cleared up my schedule so that I could attend the Special Ed training where I was really supposed to be. It turns out that they asked Ashley to come as a guest speaker. She kept it a secret and I had just found out earlier that morning, so I was really glad to make it and hear her speak. She was AWESOME. She has a really hard time writing - she can never think of what to say has a really hard time elaborating. We tried to work on it last year, but its just hard for her to use a lot of words in her writing when she usually doesn't speak at all. Well, she wrote this speech entirely by herself that was witty, moving and well-organized. She had the whole thing typed into her dynavox so she could wheel up to the front, push play, and just smile at everyone. People were so touched. I was so proud!! It was fun to chat with her for a few minutes and give her a big hug. How's that for a good ending to a bad afternoon?!