Back at it... sort of

Almost two weeks without classes for me! We had vacation in April and my family and I went to Orlando, FL and visited Legoland, Medieval Times, and Universal Studios. It was very hot and we had a good time. It was hard to leave behind the sun and the 85 degree temperatures.

(Legoland has a Miniland section with cool creations like these)

(Medieval Times features food and a great show form the 11th Century!)

(Me, Wolverine, and my son at Universal Studios)

(Hogwarts at Universal is impressive!)

At the end of my vacation, I still wasn't back to school. I had been asked by Educational Testing Services to consult with them on the Social Studies portion of the HiSET which Maine and many other states will be offering instead of the GED for folks looking to get a High School Diploma. I am not allowed to discuss the content of my work, but I did find it interesting getting to know teachers from around the country. I did learn some things that I can use in my teaching as far as how to think about assessments. ETS covered all costs for the trip including paying my school for the substitute the first 2 days of the week. ETS is located in Princeton, NJ. As a result we got to spend some time on the campus of Princeton University which was very interesting!

(All of these are from the campus of Princeton)

While doing our work we stay at the Chauncey Hotel. The Hotel is very nice, but a little misleading. I doubt many folks form the public actually stay here. It's more like a fancy dormitory in some ways. The whole time we were there we saw only those of us participating in the work for ETS. In fact the ETS logo is all over the hotel!

By Tuesday afternoon, everyone was ready to go home. Unfortunately really bad weather was plaguing the south and some of my colleagues were really concerned about getting home. A storm producing strong winds, rain and tornadoes was sweeping across the country. How naive of me to think it wouldn't impact my journey home!! I was scheduled (along with 2 other Maine teachers I soon found out) for a 6:15 pm flight from Philadelphia to Portland that should have had me in my home by 9:30pm. At 3 a Shuttle was scheduled to take a large group of us from Princeton to the Philadelphia airport. At 2:45 I decided to check my flight status one final time. I was disappointed to find it "Cancelled". So I immediately called US Airways to confirm this (they sent me no email, text, nor did they call me) which they did. Despite my insistence they said "Due to weather" they could do nothing for me except to reschedule on the next flight they could find which was the next day at 6:15. I then saw the 2 other teachers from Maine and told them. They also hadn't been contacted about the cancellation. Now we were supposed to board the bus for Philadelphia in theory. So I called our contact at ETS. She was extremely helpful! She immediately said "no, we will get you home tonight". Then she got on the phone with the travel company they use and within minutes had all 3 of us on a flight at 10:49 pm from JFK in New York City to Portland. She then told me a limousine would come pick us up and take us to that airport. Though we were disappointed, we were so grateful for how helpful ETS was being. The limo arrived within 15 minutes and we got in. I asked the driver how long the ride would be. He laughed and said "its hard to know what traffic will be like. Could be 2 hours, could be 6." Either scenario would still get us to the airport on time as it was now 3:45. As it turned out, the traffic wasn't all that bad. About 3 hours later we arrived at JFK. We were puzzled as we noticed by looking at the Philadelphia airport website our colleagues who were flying to Boston and Manchester, NH all left on time. How does weather cancel our flight and not theirs? All we could come up with was that the plane we were supposed to take was grounded wherever the weather was bad and hadn't made it to Philadelphia. The other possibility is that they lied to us and canceled for some other reason. Both are very likely! We had arrived very early, but that was ok as it gave us time to eat and settle in. Sometime around 7:30 we decided to eat dinner and noticed on the big board at JetBlue that our 10:49 pm flight had been cancelled. Twice in the same day at two different airport. We immediately got in line at the JetBlue counter. The other 2 teachers knew each other and had said they would stick together no matter what. So when the agent said he had only 1 ticket to Portland for the next day, they insisted that I take it. Because he said he could get them to Boston and they could take a bus from there (they live in the southernmost part of Maine) I agreed to this. I was happy we got in line when we did as there were now 40 or so people behind us waiting. So they had boarding passes for a 10:45am flight to Boston and I had one for a 10:00am fight to Portland. I called ETS once again and they were very good to us! They apologized and told us to get a hotel room and ETS would cover it. So we found the closest one we could get and reserved rooms over the phone. I then had to call folks from my school to arrange a sub for the next day (ETS said they would pay for this as well). After waiting for an hour for them to find the check bag of one of the other teachers, we then walked about 15 minutes to a subway like train. Took a train ride for several stops, and then waited for the hotel shuttle to pick us up. 15 minutes after that we were finally at the hotel. I suddenly realized I had left my jacket at the JetBlue gate. Luckily nothing was in it! We had heard the weather might be worse the next day in New York, but there was nothing we could do at this point. I took some time ot submit sub plans and then tried to sleep a few hours. A short night of anxious sleep (what happens if this flight gets canceled?) and we were on the shuttle bound for the airport. After going through security, we separated for our gates and wished each other luck. I was surprised to find my jacket near the spot where I had left it the night before! So I grabbed it and waited patiently. I got more optimistic with each passing minute that I may actually get home. Sure enough we boarded on time and took off. It was by far the roughest take off I have ever had. The pilot warned us that because of the winds it would be rough, luckily it only lasted 5 - 10 minutes. I heard from the other 2 teachers who made it to Boston without incident and were quickly on a bus for home. I noticed later that day, the 6:15 flight from Philadelphia that US Airways had re-booked me on because of the cancellation the night before, was once again cancelled. This time they emailed me the next morning and said because of the cancellation they had re-booked me on the next flight they could get me on which was Friday at 4pm. If not for ETS and its swift service, I would either have been in Philadelphia until Friday or taken a horrific 10 hour bus ride home from Philadelphia. So now I understand why they charge people so much for those standardized tests and I thank all the test takers out there for paying!

On Thursday, I finally went to school! My students in Psychology presented their research projects and my U.S. History students worked on the Civil Rights movement and other social upheavals in the 60's. More will come from this work next week! On Friday I was out once again to wrap up my literacy work this year through the Cross Discipline Literacy Network sponsored by the Maine Department of Education. The grant work continues for next year and so I hope some teachers from my district will participate. Next year we are going to emphasize the connections to the common core and the new teacher evaluation system. Perhaps this will encourage more participation?

Next week we are looking at Turning Points in the Civil Rights movement, AP U.S. History Exam prep, a guest speaker in Ethics, and we have the Model UN conference in Boston coming up the 16th and 17th. The end is in sight as we are looking at about 6 weeks left in the school year!