Where is Summer Going?

I can't believe that summer is flying by so quickly. I haven't been able to accomplish half of what I wanted to, but I don't know what I have been doing instead. This week I had three days of Core Academy workshops at the high school. They are always informative and a great way to get 3 days of professional development, but did I learn anything new? I don't think so. It was just reviews and different ways to introduce the same things. I've always been open to new ideas and ways to teach, but this year was really just more of the same. I hope they start getting something new....but when I am teaching the same thing for 25 years, unless there is a big change in the core I don't know what else could be new. But I am always open to new ideas. I don't want to do the same thing the same way every year. Each year I am challenged to meet the needs of the individual students, but the curriculum is basically the same.
On Monday we had a day to work on teacher websites. I helped the teachers learn more about the district websites and how to set theirs up. I don't know if they will be using them, but it is something I like to have up and going for each year. Now I am looking at a day for third-grade teachers, then testing my students for the new year, setting up my room and before you know it, school will be starting.

I am showing this picture because it is the only one I can find that shows the park with the old grandstand. It wasn't really so "grand", really quite rickety. But in my younger years I spend so many hours walking back and forth, up the back, playing on these seats. We would play like we were in beauty pageants and practice our pageant waves while we walked across the top seat, stepped down to the next seat and back across, all the way down to the bottom, then hurried around behind and climbed back up to the top again. In the back you had to climb up the slanted boards and pull yourself up to get back to the top, then climb over the top board and start all over again. I don't know why we thought that was so fun, but we spent many hours on hot summer days there at the park playing. At first the "ballfield" you see in this picture was a rodeo ground with the chutes and pens on the other end. We would climb through those spaces, up the logs, and all around as well. We were really quite active kids back in those days. You don't see kids out climbing around today. This space is now being changed again. Orangeville is getting a skate park for all those kids who like to ride their skateboards. It will be nice for them and they will now have a space where they can create memories of their childhoods.

I realize I need to post pictures of our trip to Missouri and our time with our grandchildren. But for now, I need to get busy so I can get something done before we are off again.