I'm Back!

Maybe.
It's been about 1 1/2 years since I last set fingers to keyboard to post to this blog, and I'm not sure if I'll be sufficiently motivated to post regularly now, but for the moment, anyway, here I am.
It's been an interesting time since I've last posted: my wife has ridden a roller coaster of elation and frustration in her principal-ship, the boys have grown up, and I have learned a ton. A brief summary:
** Teachers are never satisfied with the discipline handed out by administrators. If you give a kid detention, they want more detention. Give her Saturday School, they want her suspended. Suspend him, they want him expelled.
** 13 is the new 16. Where not long ago kids would generally begin their experimentations with drugs, alcohol, and sex as 16- or 17-year-olds now start at 13 or 14. "Early bloomers" might start in 5th or 6th grade. Scary.
** Kids today are the "Communication Generation." (Feel free to use the term; I don't think I stole it from anyone.) Cell phones and text messaging are the modern equivalent of the notes we used to pass one another on sheets of notebook paper. Trying to ban phones from the classroom is an exercise in futility, so we need to find a way to manage them.
** It's all about relationships with people: kids, parents, teachers, community, school board, everyone. You get nothing done if you can't establish relationships with those around you.
** Junior high kids are nuts, but I love them.

I'll post again if I get inspired!