Welcome Thanksgiving Break!

As of 3:40 this afternoon, the students were officially on Thanksgiving break. They were quite excited all day, but we managed to get some work out of them. In my classes, we did a critical thinking activity that NASA produced. You may have seen it before. The students are acting out the following scenario.

You are a member of a space crew originally scheduled to rendezvous with a mother ship
on the lighted surface of the Moon. Due to mechanical difficulties, however, your ship
crash- landed on a lighted spot some 320 kilometers from the rendezvous point. During
landing, much of the equipment aboard was damaged, and since survival depends on
reaching the mother ship, the most critical items available must be chosen for the trip.
Below are listed the 15 items left intact and undamaged after landing. Your task is to rank
them in terms of their importance to your crew in allowing them to reach the rendezvous
point. Place the number 1 by the most important item, the number 2 by the second most
important, and so on, through number 15, the least important.
• Box of matches
• Food concentrate
• 50 meters of nylon rope
• Parachute silk
• Solar-powered, portable heating unit
• Two .45-caliber pistols
• One case of dehydrated milk
• Two 50 kg-tanks of oxygen
• Stellar map of Moon’s constellations
• Self- inflating life raft
• Magnetic compass
• Fifty liters of water
• Signal flares
• First-aid kit including injection needles
• Solar-powered fm receiver/transmitter

The students did the activity twice. The first time by themselves and the second time with a group. After that, we went over what the NASA engineers thought were the correct answers. They are located here.

The students love to talk about space and were very engaged in the activity. In just about every class, the students asked about why the flag is shaking in this picture.


We had a good discussion on it and they understood the explanation. I liked the fact that they are asking questions about things that seem unusual, such as a flag waving when there is no air!

I also have a mentoring class that meets once a week. Last week we discussed the history of Thanksgiving, defined what being Thanksgiving meant, and made a list of things we were thankful for. This week they made collages of what they were thankful for. Some made theirs serious, others made theirs humorous.

Most afternoons I volunteer to work on the bus run. Our primary job is to keep people who are off campus, off campus and the kids on campus safe. A few of us teachers volunteer for it because we have a lot of fun doing it. We get to visit with our students, visit with other teachers, kick some students around, and it makes a great stress relief. Today was one of our many days when we become "actively engaged" with students. We had a few students who had left campus and attempt to return. We stopped the students and attempted to send them off campus. One of the students finally left when his friend came up behind me. As I turned and told him to leave campus, he hit my arm and began yelling about how I couldn't touch him. I stepped up into him and told him to leave campus. One of the police officers was walking up from behind the student. The student stepped back and pushed off the cop who at that point grabbed the student and said "don't you dare touch me. I will take you down and arrest you." He was escorted across the street. The officer said he was hoping to see me get in a scrap. I told him that he stopped the fun too soon!

Tomorrow I will be finally getting some of my personal errands done. My dry cleaning will finally get done, the recycling will be taken in, and I will get my hair cut. Have an enjoyable Thanksgiving and remember to give thanks for the many blessing God provides us daily.