Well, yesterday was my last day teaching in Moore. It was also my last day of a five-day assignment teaching English at Westmoore High School. It was an interesting five days. I gave the End of Instruction test to a remedial group of juniors on Tuesday, then the semester test to English II students yesterday. The remedial group was the best class, but they were totally unprepared for the final. The English II students … a lot of them were more rowdy than they should have been, and there was a group of boys in the sixth hour class that had some discipline issues. All in all, though, it was a good assignment. It was kind of sad leaving Westmoore at the end of the day; there are a lot of kids there I’ll miss seeing now.

Today I went to Western Heights and filled out a mountain of paperwork. Well, I thought it was a mountain … until my mentor teacher gave me my books and class material. Two stacks of text books, notebooks, workbooks and CDs, each about 18 inches tall. I had to use a cart to get them to the car. I wonder what I’ll be doing during the break.

While at the school today I also learned I’ll very likely be teaching a creative writing class. That is very cool. Not just because I love creative writing, but also because it’ll be an elective, so the kids in that class will be there because they want to be there. That’s such a big advantage. There were no books for that class, so I have to make it all up. Shouldn’t be too hard to do. I’m going to try to cover a fiction, poetry, script writing and creative non-fiction.

Speaking of creative writing, I’m hoping to get some done over the break. To celebrate getting the job, I bought myself a Christmas present — a new laptop computer. It’s been increasingly difficult to get to this desktop lately because Sara, and especially Alex, are always wanting to use it. Even Amanda wants on. She wants on now, as a matter of fact, to play Zoo Tycoon. But I digress. I expect that having a new laptop will give me more time for writing. The fantasy bug has bitten me again, making me want to work on The Puppet King some more. Although edited pages from the first section of The Fetch are staring at me as I type this.

I’ve been in the mood to read a good, bloody seafaring tale. Something like Conan on the high seas. Anybody have any suggestions?