Fundraising for the school

Today we launched our candy sale. Over the next two weeks our high school students need to sell $150 worth of chocolate bars (each). There are all sorts of prizes to give them incentives, including getting a half day off school if you sell $100 worth before next Friday, breakfast from McDonalds for the homeroom that sells the most, and a regular raffle of $10 and $20 bills for the highest sellers each second day. If the school hits its average of $150 dollars per student we will all get an entire day off in November. Finally, whichever grade sells the most will have their nominated candidate made 'Homecoming Queen'. We have been balloted all week and there are four girls nominated for queen. Most years we have a senior (S6) queen -but there is always the chance that another year group will sell enough to have their queen 'enthroned'.

As a homeroom teacher (registration teacher)who incidentally can win $100 if my homeroom sells the most candy, I am expected to give my students plenty of encouragement. My freshman homeroom (S3) are geared up to start selling the chocolate bars this weekend. I wonder how they will get on?I have promised I will wear my 'See you Jimmy' hat all day if they sell more than the other homeroom.

I have to admit to a little culture shock over all this. I am struck by the way this event plays to the American love of 'being the best' or winning something. It's also fascinating to see how much these young people value salesmanship. Students seemed eager to take their sales pitch out on the streets, ball games and bowling alleys. I appreciate the need to fundraise for our school but I find the actual idea of having students out there selling stuff oddly uncomfortable.

On the other hand is it any different from the school fetes, sponsored walks and book fairs we have in the UK? The students seem to enjoy it and the school is well... chocolatey.

She's back. And this time she's serious.

Back to school for a second year of the American education system.

US schools like to use the grade point system to give their students an idea of how they are doing. Being concerned about their grade gives some focus to pupils. They can't just coast along hoping to do well in final exams. The athletes for example, need to have done their homework in other subjects if they are to attend training. To me that can potentially teach a good lesson on the importance of having an all round education. But the downside of all this is the focus on summative assessment. So much of what they do is graded, so students become obsessed with their grade. They are always asking what it is, and worrying over it. Sounds good? Well you'd think so. Just to make any impact on kids is great! (even if they become neurotic in the process…) But all the grading seems to be based on an idea about how learning works which just isn't right.

The grade system assumes learning is cumulative and ordered. A chart of a students progress over a year should look like a gradual gradient which settles into a nice plateau (hopefully on a A?). In reality we don't learn like that. Learning is messy. Sometimes the grade reflects that -a big drop one week whilst certain techniques are being mastered, or a high grade when a teacher tests students about what they already know. It affects my teaching too because I feel pressure to provide more 'quizzes' and tests, or resort to the horrible multiple choice tests. Grappling with that issue has been the biggest challenge of my teaching in the USA.

Three more days to go...

I haven't blogged for ages... The term is now winding down and I am almost at the end of my first academic year here in St Paul. One thing I need to do is work out what I am doing with my blog. I need to reconnect with my old blog friends and hopefully find some new blog friends -people who are also teaching 'over here' and willing to share their expertise.

In the meantime here are some of my highlights from this year.

1. Most surreal moment - Getting to see a real American High School Homecoming complete with Queens, Kings and decorated thrones.

2. Most enlightening moment -My first American football game. I now understand why it is such a popular social event. The crowd seem to be there to catch up with one another and are only occasionally distracted by what is happening on the field.

3. Favorite moment in class. The students impress me with their wonderful attempt at my accent. My catchphrase which they beg me to say - 'That's brilliant!' (Thaats Brullyunt)

4. Most challenging moment – getting my electronic grade book to make sense.

5. New experience – temperatures are cold enough for a snowman built on Christmas eve to survive -in a slightly stooped form- until March.

6. Unexpectedly gratifying moment - Students graduation ceremony when they all throw their caps in the air. Corny but somehow quite good fun.

7. Most confusion caused to other member of staff. I am asked my weight by school secretary and give it in stones.

8. Annoying Americans by telling them how much gas (petrol) costs in the UK when they are scandalized at the $4 a gallon they are paying this summer.
   

Can't believe how fast the first year of teaching here has gone.

Backspell

We are back to school after Spring Break and I am enjoying warmer weather. Yesterday it was around 60 F (about 16 degrees celsius). It's been hovering around freezing, for the last few weeks, so this felt like summer, albeit a Scottish one.

Many of my students are starting to ask me if we can 'go outside' for lessons. I suppose they have cabin fever after all these months. I have fond memories of sitting outside on warm days, even in secondary school. Unfortunately it's not very practical and tends to lead to a breakdown in discipline as other classes see you heading out and feel aggrieved.

Having said that, like most teachers, I love making school fun for students. It seems to me that we should build on their natural high spirits without letting up on discipline. Is that unrealistic?

Here in America a 'quiz' is actually a test and students groan when you announce one. You are testing memory in many cases, not understanding.

With this in mind I am trying to put together some genuinely enjoyable word games for end of class or Friday afternoons. Spelling bees can get a bit intense. That's why I use 'Backspell' which is easy to play and quite often has unexpected experts. Two players, five rounds. You begin with a short word -spell it backwards and the person who shouts out the correct answer gets a point. As soon as a student reaches three points you have a winner. They can then challenge someone else.

Any other tried and tested games?

Why no seatbelts on school bus?

Last week was a sad one in Minnesota. On Tuesday a school bus was knocked over by a van which went through a red light. Sadly four students were killed in the crash with a further 14 injured. The children belonged to Lakeview School in Cottonwood which is about 140 miles west of Minneapolis.

The big yellow buses which carry kids to school in the US are everywhere in commuting times. The fact that they are so noticeable is a help to drivers. School Bus Laws exist which make it illegal in certain circumstances to pass a bus that's stopping to drop off or pick up passengers. Bus companies pride themselves on employing drivers who know their road safety. It's important after all. It has been estimated that 54 % of students attending K-12 (kindergarten to final year high school) ride on a school bus each day.

But the question that I can't help asking is: Why are these school buses not fitted with seat-belts? The news reports quote the authorities as saying that seat belts would not have made a significant difference to the injuries. The children are protected by a system called 'compartmentalization' which is considered roughly as safe as seat-belting. I find this difficult to believe. Is all the research about seat-belts faulty? What about those campaigns to get us to wear seat-belts? Is the data wrong?

A quick internet search brings me to the National Coalition for School Bus Safety. Here you can look at an account of some of the testing that has been done on the need for seat belts. The coalition also claims that the compartmentalization system does not provide adequate protection. In fact according to them current bus designs do not even merit the protection which compartmentalization engineers claim for it, as they do not follow all their the original recommendations.

Do seat-belts make us safer on buses? I can't imagine there are many people willing to say that seat-belts in other vehicles don't generally give us greater protection. So why not school buses?

One other issue I would like to know more about - the stability of the big yellow bus. The bus in this accident was knocked over onto another vehicle. Is this not a little surprising? I don't remember seeing a bus knocked over by a car or truck before. I'd be interested if anyone knew any statistics on that. Is the US School bus more likely to be knocked over?

As a teacher and a parent I'd be the first person to say we are over-protective of our kids. But in this one instance I cannot understand why a school bus wouldn't have the same safety features as a normal automobile.

St Valentine's Day Massacre

Tomorrow is (of course) St Valentine's Day and I am not sure I can stand the tension. Tonight as I left school several (male) students were carefully filling their beloveds' lockers with pink balloons, flowers and heart shaped candy. It was all being done very carefully and with a sort of thoroughness that suggested a great deal of prior planning. I will find out tomorrow if it is appreciated.

This week concludes with a big dance for the high school students 'The Sno Daze' and we have already been celebrating it with a series of out of uniform days. Monday was 'Celebrity couples' and my next classroom neighbor teachers dressed as Sponge Bob and Patrick. On Tuesday I took part in 'Twins day' by dressing like all the other teachers in white t-shirts and jeans. Rather bulky because I had my thermals on underneath, school spirit or no school spirit I promised my mum I'd wear my vest... It's 23 C below outside.

Today was 'Retro day' and we had the 40's, 50's, 80's and 90's. Lots of girls wearing wide skirts and bobby socks, being jostled by Bananarama and Depeche Mode. I thought it might prove difficult to teach Shaft, James Dean and Marty McFly but they settled down quite nicely to Kafka and Huckleberry Finn. Next week is going to seem quite tame.

Teachers: their use and misuse

It's come to that time in the year when students are starting to feel they know me well enough to tell me what they think of me. They also begin to tell stories of their previous teachers. I always take the 'old mad teacher' stories with a pinch of salt. That's low sodium, organic, naturally sourced salt; I am in America.

My predecessor's worst habit was 'bringing coke into the classroom'.

Me: What? Crack? Snow? C-dust? Nieve? Bernie? Er... I really do read those articles about drugs in school that you find in staffrooms. The kids stare at me as if I had produced the aforementioned articles.

No, it turns out the reprobate was regularly to be found sipping from a can of coke. Talk about debauched. For all we know she might have laced it with something else, I suppose.

I read John Connell's article recently on the testing times that America is going through. The following day I came across this BusinessWeek article –
'I can get your kid into an Ivy' - from October 2007. It's about the work of Michele Hernandez who calls herself "America's Premiere College Consultant."

Hernandez coaches students in how to make an application which will achieve acceptance at the country's top (Ivy League) universities.

Her advice -which can cost up to $40 000 ranges from the sort of stuff you would have thought anyone sensible could offer about prioritizing your time, to the kinds of courses you should be taking to impress application officers. Nothing wrong with helping students prioritise. We've all had conversations with - let's call her Ashley - bright enough to get top grades but missing crucial homework and classes because of her hours at the supermarket.

But choosing subjects simply because of the impression they make irks me. The BusinessWeek article quotes her talking about a student she helped, "I helped in ways that would look good and let him be true to himself." Great soundbyte, but you can't help feeling that being true to oneself shouldn't involve being packaged and marketed by an image consultant.

Arguably Hernandez is just stepping in with a piece of wisdom, at a crucial time in a young person's life. The young person in question isn't what we might call disadvantaged, unless like me, you consider having the kind of parents who are willing to fork out $40,000 to someone like Hernandez a negative.

I can't help but feel the whole experience will teach those students a very powerful and corrupt life-lesson: if you have money you can circumvent any system or manipulate any test. Life isn't like that. There are plenty of 'tests' which you cannot buy your way out of...

Just one that comes to mind – illness. If you want to read about how real people face tests, you might want to visit guineapigmum's blog. Here the qualities under display are honesty, good humour, courage and knowing your own limitations.

The BusinessWeek article also feeds into my own concerns about what it means to be a good teacher. Am I going to educate young people or show them how to pass manufactured tests? Although the two things might not be mutually exclusive the balance is hard to find. Especially in America.

Let's all help one another...

I've been inspired by this post from Shaun's blog to think a bit more about student motivation. Here in the USA, I see students dealing with the same issues as I saw students deal with in Scotland. To work or not to work, to study or not to study? Shaun muses on the different ways teachers help students to study or to get motivated.

I was especially interested in his comment about a teacher (good old Harry Keery!) who uses a bit of healthy competition to get students on board. This week I used a similar technique by having my two hons American lit classes swap essays and peer evaluate. They both wrote their essays on the same question and book, in preparation for their semester finals which come up next week.

I tried where possible to match up students in the two classes who would benefit from seeing one another's work. In some cases this meant swapping the work of two fairly ambitious and skilled writers , so that they could be spurred on by one another. But I also found myself carefully matching students who were balanced in ability but not effort to get one of them to see what they could achieve with more work. I hoped the student who made more of an effort could also see that they were achieving more.

The thing that impressed me was the zeal with which they attacked the task. In both classes students initially admitted that they were reluctant to criticize. Then after receiving and reading papers they quickly got into the swing of picking faults with them. I explained that they had to offer specific criticism, and that they had to include clear praise where it was due.
They were allowed to write their names on the evaluation or not. Many of them did.

I checked the critiques before I gave them back.

Some of the comments included things like: 'You had a good point here but I was disappointed that you didn't say more about it.' Don't think you have correct spelling for this word - I don't know how to spell it either, but feel sure it isn't this.' 'You use 'fantasy' and 'fantasize' too much -do you know another word for this? -I would like to know too as I used it too much in my paper.' There were few overly harsh comments. Thankfully I had instructed them not to write on the essays but to write their comments on a separate sheet of paper, just in case.

Most students said that they found the first part of the exercise, which was reading and criticizing another student's work, useful. The second part of the exercise will be receiving back their own essays and peer evaluation. I hope that when they read each other's comments they will find them of use too. I also hope that it will initiate a healthy competition.

Back to the subject of motivation. Can teachers actually motivate or are they just a catalyst for students motivating each other? Do students need to rely on their own motivation?

I lost my voice...

Last hour of 2007...

So many new experiences this last while... that my brain is in a kind of overload. Just as I compose a post about something I change my mind. I don't want to commit myself to an opinion on something based on my own limited experiences, and yet I do want to continue blogging as a way of reflecting on my own teaching.

The first semester technically finishes midway through January, but I can't help feeling that I have actually completed my first term in an American school.

I spent the first week of my holidays catching up on all the family stuff that had gone to the wall over this hectic time. This week I have been starting to think again about school and what I can do differently in my second semester. At least this time round I will know a little more about what is expected of me.

Challenges I want to take up:

Introducing formative assessment in a system that revolves around regular and (getting off the fence here) somewhat ineffective assessment. Students are obsessed with their GPA's (Grade Point Averages) and constantly ask 'how am I doing...'
I have been trying to use comment only marking first just to get their attention, but they do find it scary... I must find new ways to get the little darlings thinking more about learning than grading.

Find out more about AiFl in the States. Is there anyone else using these methods and having success with them?

Cut down on my prep and marking so that I have time to blog and read too...

Find out where to get decent bread. I genuinely try not to be one of those expats who searches supermarkets for British food, but I have to eat bread that isn't sweet again...

And snow it begins...

At last the snow has started and we are starting to find out why there are 'snow plow' signs on all of the streets. I haven't actually had to drive in the snow yet, but I am going to have to sooner or later. Many of our students who became drivers this year, are talking about their first attempts to drive in the snow and admitting that they find it a bit challenging.

Advice abounds. Drive normally. Drive much more carefully. Pump your brakes. Don't pump your brakes. Take you foot off the gas if you skid. Put your foot gently on the gas so that you can drive out of the skid.

The most difficult thing to deal with so far? Where to park the car when a snow emergency is called and snow plows (yes that's the spelling) must have access. The rules are simple. The first night, from 9 p.m. until about 6 a.m: No Parking on Night Plow Routes until the street is plowed to the 'curb'. You can however park on the non night plow route of residential streets (one side of the street that is helpfully not marked at all). The following day, from 8 a.m. until about 5 p.m: No Parking on Day Plow Routes until the street is plowed to the curb. Except you can park on the side marked Night Plow on residential streets which run north-south. You can't park during the day on streets which run east to west. Clear?

As someone wearily remarked... 'You have to be born in Minnesota to understand it.' I wasn't remotely surprised to learn via the local news channel that on Day One of the Snow Emergency the city towed over 700 cars. So it's not just me scratching my head over the rules.

Still... the snow really does make if feel as if Christmas is coming.

What is Thanksgiving?

I’ve been looking forward to my first US Thanksgiving for quite some time - admittedly because I get two-and-a-half days off school… However this week my speech class have been regaling me with their definitions of this truly American holiday. In amongst the clichés you can discern a genuine fondness for the rituals and routines…and a touchingly gruff and bashful belief that it is a time to ‘be grateful for what you’ve got’. How does it compare with Christmas? ‘Much better’ was the general consensus.

Inspired by my foreigner-type enquiries, another non American student asked permission to put some questions which had obviously been bothering him. What were cranberries? Were sweet potatoes regular potatoes with sugar? Did everyone sit at the same table? Could you eat anything other than turkey? The rush to educate him was very gratifying.

The mood turned a little sour when he asked, ‘What is stuffing?’ because it became very clear that the Americans have exceptionally strong views on the actual sourcing, ingredients, weight and cooking methods of the aforementioned substance. I had to physically separate two normally somnabulent football players who were personally aggrieved at the disparate approaches favoured by their families.

In an attempt to change the subject I asked about the vegetarian experience of Thanksgiving. Big mistake. I had to reassure them that I was simply asking, and not actually a vegetarian myself, just a foreigner.

We pondered the issue in silence for a moment. A vegetarian Thanksgiving hadn’t been considered. A few timid girls admitted knowing some vegetarians but they weren’t sure what they did at Thanksgiving. ‘What did they get for dessert?’ asked my fellow foreigner. Then it was ‘pumpkin pie’ versus ‘pecan pie’ until the welcome relief of the bell.
‘We will continue this tomorrow,’ I said to disperse the rabid pumpkinites, privately planning to have tomorrow sewn up in a very different direction.

Really High School

This morning’s speech class was supposed to focus on the speeches of Franklin D Roosevelt. We did manage to cover one of the speeches. Personally I found it really interesting to see the longevity of political rhetoric. I’m pretty sure my enthusiasm for the subject was a mystery to my class. Possibly this was because they were the most excited and distracted they have ever been. Rather strange at eight o’clock in the morning. Six of the class (just over 25 percent) were sitting in their American football gear –as is normal here, on a game day. The rest of the class (including me on school directive!) were dressed in the school colours of red and white… Husband kept calling me ‘Sweeney Todd’.

Tonight’s game is a bit of a milestone – if we win it, the school moves forward to the state championships. This will be the first time we have progressed this far in ten years –a long time in the life of a school.

What with Halloween just over, and the school still swilling in candy and pumpkins, today’s pre-game excitement seethed and boiled like a saucepan of raspberry jam…

I lurched through my classes (‘How Homer creates tension in the Odyssey’, ‘Understanding the characterization of Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman’ and ‘Appreciating the language techniques in The Great Gatsby’) to a good-natured but frankly uninterested student body. During final hour - the school day finished with another assembly or ‘pep rally’ to give the football team a big send off.

Emotionally exhausted I returned to the blessed silence of my classroom to finish ‘doing my grades’ for the quarter. Next week we have parents’ conferences. Why does that sound more ominous than parents’ night? Never mind –we have a full day off, following the conferences. Before you start getting jealous –this will be my second day off school since it started back in August.

The late news –just posted on a local tv station website is that our football team have been well and truly trounced. Oh well, the dream is over (until next year).

Me and the natives

I’ve been teaching the Iliad and the Odyssey to classes this last while and – enjoying it too, somewhat to my surprise… Last week I had set students the task of writing a soliloquy for Achilles. They delivered their speeches this week, and to be honest I was flabbergasted by how confident they were. Considering that it is a mixed ability class, and that the Iliad isn’t an easy text, it was an eye opener for me. Only one pupil asked me if he could give his speech before a smaller audience, and even then he was willing to come in after class three days running to practice it before a small audience until it was ‘good enough’ to be graded. The point is, they took ‘the talk bit’ seriously.

I couldn’t help feeling that I have underestimated the role of talk up until now. These students have been giving speeches and talking before their classmates for years, and frankly, it shows. Added to that, many of them admitted not really understanding the Iliad until they had to imagine what Achilles was thinking, and then perform it.

Buoyed up with my success, I gave a somewhat disaffected student the words of the song ‘She moved through the fair’ and asked him if he would read it, not as a school text, but as if he had just found it on the ground. He read it in the stressed rhythm of a subdued rap poem. The hairs were standing up on the back of my neck by the time he was finished, and the class loved it.

I was brought back down from my American dream in the teacher’s lounge when I enthused about the speeches, and commented on the difference between American and Scottish kids in this respect. ‘The thing is,’ one colleague explained brightly, ‘You will notice a difference, because now you are teaching native English speakers…’

I am slightly overcome with the American experience, and just getting through each day by nodding wisely when I am particularly confused. As a result the student impersonation of me includes an unintelligible accent (or brogue as they insist on calling it) and lots of head nodding...
It's a great experience seeing another education system from the inside. It's the small things you notice first. I regularly forget that 'foolscap' is called 'looseleaf' and that you don't 'take the register' you 'take attendance'.

I'm still looking out for ways I can use new technologies and actually add something by doing that. Our school does have a site for teachers to post lesson plans and homework to, which is great, but I am not aware yet of how much teachers here use the internet for, apart from that.

The students are doing that thing they do, of pretending that the Internet doesn’t exist for them in the context that I describe. They look vaguely embarrassed if I mention facebook or myspace in the sort of way we did when teachers asked us if we liked ‘The Stranglers or whatever they are called’.

Meanwhile back in Stranraer one of my previous pupils is writing away, blogging about all of these issues and wondering if teachers are planning to use them.

So inspired by Jemma I am looking out for a good project for a wiki.

Homecoming Week

This has been a great week at school with lots of excitement about the homecoming game. Today we had a big homecoming assembly at 11.30, and then the entire school was given a half day. The homecoming assembly was a surreal experience for me.

It’s difficult to describe. We assembled in the gym which was decorated last night by a large number of pupils wielding acres of paper, dozens of cans of silver spray paint and carte blanche to design thrones for the princesses. Each year group, 9th Grade (freshmen) 10th grade (sophomores) 11th grade (juniors) and 12th grade (seniors) had their own throne to design and build. After singing ‘The Star-spangled banner’, and various other songs accompanied with dancing cheerleaders, several girls were crowned as ‘princesses’ and escorted to their thrones by their ‘princes’. Finally our ‘queen’ was crowned, the crown going to the princess whose homeroom (sort of like their registration class) had sold the most candy bars for our big fundraising effort.
After that we were introduced to our football team (there seemed to be about 100 of them). Finally the school broke up. I had to pinch myself several times to make sure I wasn’t just imagining it all. So frustrating having no-one else to nudge!

Tonight is the football game. We are playing at a local stadium against another high school. As far as I can tell most of our pupils will go along, and they will be joined by past pupils (alumni) and parents.

The thing that struck me the most about all of this: the pupils loved every minute of it. Think I might have underestimated their love of seasonal rituals.

Asking for feedback

I bit the bullet this week and asked my students to let me know how they were finding my teaching. I explained that I didn’t mean personal remarks just whether they felt I was helping them to learn, and what I might do better. I asked them to respond in particular to my 'comment only' marking on their last assignment. They duly took out a sheet of loose leaf -after we had discovered that ‘foolscap’ is not a term used in this part of the US.

I was worried they might be either too hard on me, or less helpfully, too nice. There were a few responses of the worryingly ambiguous type - 'I can't think of anything you could do to be a better teacher'. But they were also quite direct too –which was refreshing. The following is fairly typical of the responses I got.

‘Thank you for saying that you liked my introduction. I didn't think this one was any good. Why did you?'

'I agree that I need to work on my paragraphing. To be honest I don’t understand how paragraphs work. I never did them at my last school either.’

‘I rushed this homework because I wanted to go out to a movie with friends. That won’t happen again.’

‘I liked what you did with not giving us our grades right away. I would like if you wrote more comments.’

‘What is juxtaposition?’ (Er… my favourite word?)

‘You didn’t explain that we needed to have more than one example’ (I hadn’t either!)

and my personal favourite:

‘I like your accent. I wish I had one.’

I’ve found out what ‘Homecoming’ is. It’s the first home game of our school football team –and it takes place next week. We have been fundraising, voting for princesses and decorating our classroom doors all week. More about this soon.

Access at last!

Finally we negotiate the peculiarities of internet access for foreigners in the USA. I must admit I was surprised to find that getting properly connected was so complicated.

Life is still a bit messy. We are living out of suitcases and borrowings at the moment.

But school has been going for a couple of weeks and I am just starting to take a deep breath. Making sense of homerooms and grading systems, semesters and sophomores has been pretty challenging. I’m in the early stages of translation (things go through the Scottish filter: sophomores -that’s fourth years, attendance that’s registration.)

Grades are very important. Pupils, sorry students, constantly ask for their grade.

I’m determined not to lose some of the AifL skills I’ve learnt over the last while. I have actually managed to get a couple of classes to read my ‘comment only’ marking. They have been told they will get their grades later in the week when I am happy they know what to do to improve. They can hardly wait…

In the staffroom (sorry teacher's lounge)I try to refrain from asking too many silly questions. What is homecoming for example? I will be finding out tomorrow. Apparently I will be selling candy bars until then. Is this a metaphor for something else?

Where am I?

I'm not sure how to explain this -and since I've only got around five minutes access I will have to be brief. But here's the thing. I've changed my job.

I'm still teaching, but I've made quite a big move. This summer when we came to St Paul for a holiday I applied for a job which I saw on the Internet. I'm teaching in a K-12 school in inner city St Paul.

The last few weeks have been... homeric.

I'm not sure quite what to do with the blog. Keep on blogging as a teacher in the USA
or start a new blog?

Anyway my time is up...

Hopefully will get connected soon.

Bridge Disaster on the Mississippi River

We were sitting eating takeaway pizza tonight and talking about the noisy sirens out in the street. Must be some sort of fire we speculated. Not a surprise given how dry and hot it was. I tried unsuccessfully to contact my brother in law Tony about our plans to take a boat trip on the Mississippi. The cell phone service was unavailable.

We decided, despite the heat, to go out for a walk along nearby Summit Avenue - a beautiful tree lined street that was home to F Scott Fitzgerald for a little while. The street seemed unusually quiet. Normally there are loads of people walking dogs, roller skating or just walking in the warm evening air.

A car drew up alongside us and a man leaned out. ‘Hey!’ he shouted, ‘Have you heard the news? Bridge on 35 has just fallen into the river. The whole thing! Right into the river!’

He drove on leaving us looking at one another. What was that about? We walked home and turned on the TV. And there it was –news that a bridge had come down during rush hour on one of the bridges that links Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Several people thought dead, many injured.

The 'phone rang and it was Tony. 'We're fine! You okay too?'

It was sobering and we felt sad for other families, who were probably coming in for evening meals and wondering why someone was late.

Life is fragile.

The O'Neills are in Minnesota

My blog has been rather quiet over the last couple of weeks and for good reason... School didn't stop until the 6th July and on that date I moved house. Or at least I moved out of my old house, put everything in storage and then went on holiday.

We arrived in Saint Paul on Tuesday. We're here for five whole weeks.

I am hopefully going to blog about my holiday on my seawall blog which you can find on Summer Blogs. I am blogging there with a couple of fifth year pupils from my school - so far their blogs are a lot more interesting than mine, so please have a look.

I hope to continue blogging here about education issues. The picture above was taken enroute to Saint Paul when we stopped off in Iceland. It's me and my two boys at The Blue Lagoon. Icelandair provide a free tour to the lagoon whilst you are between flights. Nice but a bit surreal.