Early Mornings

Most people who know me know that I'm not much of a morning person. I love to sleep in and be lazy any chance I get. Isn't it funny that getting a puppy has completely changed that...? Every morning the dogs are up a few minutes (or hours, as in the case of today) before our alarms go off, and when they're up, I'm up. I used to have this uncanny ability to fall back to sleep even after wandering the house for awhile, but that seems to have fled. Sadly.

The funny thing is, as irritated as I would have been even a few months ago by this behavior, I don't seem to mind it too much. I mean, last Wednesday when I stayed home sick and the dogs woke me up at 4:30 a.m. I minded...but most of the time I don't. On Saturday, Tundra woke me up at 6:30--waaay too early for a Saturday. But as I stood in the kitchen while the dogs ate, I watched a beautiful sunrise from our kitchen window. And then I got to do that again on Sunday. Soooo...I guess morning isn't all that bad.

Though if the dogs wanted to sleep until seven, that would be okay too.

I'm excited about the fact that I'm trying to start a new book club at school. I've extended the invitation to all of the English teachers at the middle and high school, and added the Spanish and French teachers at the middle school, as well. It's become clearer to me that hooking kids for literacy is difficult across ALL languages, and the "foreign language" teachers might have an interest in those kinds of book discussions. (I don't know why it took so many years of teaching to realize that, but hopefully it's a case of better late than never...) We're starting with Reading Don't Fix No Chevy's by Wilhelm and Smith, since boys and literacy is a hot topic at our school right now. I have two definite takers so far, and hopefully a few more will join too. It would be so great to have a professional community to be part of!