End of Year Four

I have officially ended my "senior" year as a full-time teacher and my second year at WEDJ and working in DC. It seems weird to me, at this point, that I ever worked, or lived, anywhere else. It also seems unreal that so much has changed, for the better, since my having come here. I only hope I can continue the trend indefinitely.

Our students ended the year on a bright note. The middle/high school students put on "WEDJ Side Story", and, no, that is not a typo. It was basically a musical revue that explored interpretations of scenes from various shows including "Grease," "Porgy and Bess," "Titus Andronicus," and, of course, "West Side Story." We were also able to include quite a bit of original student work in the form of original rap and hip hop. It was overall pretty interesting and I am extremely proud to see how far the middle/high school student have come from the beginning of the year.

One week from today I will be leaving on my trip to Paris, France. I am looking very much forward to immersing myself in the history, culture, and artistic environment Paris is so famous for. Of course, I know that in only a week I will hardly get to experience the true Parisian experience, but I'd like to think I'll get a decent taste. My wife and I are hard at work, already, planning out every detail of our seven day excursion!

I've already been working hard on things for the WEDJ Summer Program. This summer, I have a lot of unique opportunities in the works. The theme is "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" and I'm trying to make it more of a sports/nature/arts/academia kind of thing. I have some unique programming that I'm bringing to the table, so I hope that students and teachers alike will have an enjoyable and meaningful experience!

One of the things I'm beginning to realize in having a public blog is, while it is great to have a forum to publically express things, often times, because it is public, I have to think it through so much that by the time I get around to even posting it, I've almost forgotten what my originaly intention was. So, that's my most recent excuse for not posting. However, I will try to be more religious about it in the future.

I have to keep a detailed journal for summer school this summer as part of my GW internship, so perhaps a few nuggets of inspiration will come from that and magically post itself onto here. We shall see!