Rainy Sunday

Erin Walters - Irving Park Chicago International Charter School

Happy rainy Sunday, CSers!

We had a short week in school for Easter this past week, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t busy! Time is going so quickly here, and each week seems to get faster as it gets busier.

To start my week, I went to watch the sunrise over Lake Michigan on Sunday. One thing I have found with waking up early during the week is that it becomes hard to sleep late on the weekends as well. This might sound bad, but it’s actually nice if you can manage to be productive, or if you take advantage of things like sunrises!

On Monday, Molly and I decided to treat ourselves after coaching Girls on the Run after school. We went to a place in Belmont, which is a stop on the red line, called Cheesie’s. The main thing that they serve is grilled cheese, but there are so many different options of it that I think you could eat there every week and never get bored with grilled cheese. That would be a lot of grilled cheese, though. Molly and I both got The Mac, which is stuffed with mac and cheese. It was delicious, and definitely made my Monday much better.

In school, my students are starting to prepare for the PARCC test, which is a countrywide standardized test that starts once students are in 3^rd grade. I am already nervous for my students as this begins, as they haven’t done a test like this before, and I can see that sitting and doing a paper test for an hour or more is not going to go well. We did a practice test on Thursday and most of my students lost concentration after fifteen minutes. If you’re the praying type, my students could definitely use it! On top of this, we are learning about fractions which can be challenging.

Then on Thursday I got to go home for the long weekend. My sister bought me a train ticket to surprise my family, and then I got to be home for almost three days. It was good to get out of the city for a while and see them again, as well as to spend Easter together. It was a necessary break to help me reenergize to work through these next few weeks.

I hope the holiday was great for you too!

Until next time,

Erin.