Hot Child in the City

It's hard to believe that July is over and I'll be back to work in a month with all of my rock-star colleagues.  I lost June to work and travel, one of which was painful and drawn out and the other went to quickly, even though I was homesick toward the end.  I'll let you guess which is which.

Yesterday I met with a colleague who will also be teaching Honors 10 this year to plan.  With the schedule change, it's a little tougher to figure out the flow, but I'm looking forward to having more time with the kids.  One of the things I'm focused on is front-loading community building so we all still like each other by the end of the year.  We're planning our studies around the theme "Defining Identity."

Right now I'm listening to the book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us while I'm in the car.  While the end of the book focuses in on how to apply motivation theory to kids (I'm still wrapping up that section and didn't have to drive anywhere today), what's got me wound up is how totally wrong-headed performance pay is.  AArgh!  Even monkeys don't like to do puzzles for raisins.