Saturday, November 11, 2006

I should be in bed

... but I figured you'd want some kind of blog. It was another very long speech tournament day. I am lucky that our bus driver (who is another teacher that volunteers without pay) was kind enough to allow me to drive my car back from Hereford this morning so I wouldn't have to ride the bus there and back today. My kids did o.k. for such a large and very competitive tournament. We didn't get any sweepstakes, but we were probably close. I had at least one student in finals of all but 6 of the 18 events. We had a situation where another coach that was in charge of the extemp draw room tried to say that my students left the room without permission (which they're not supposed to do when they've drawn their topic.) They were going to disqualify them for it. When I talked to them, they assured me that they hadn't left. We went back to the tournament director and told him that they hadn't and it came down to what my students said (which I trust them as seniors that have done this for a while... and they're trustworthy kids... if they did leave, they'd own up to it) and the other coach. The tournament director wanted some time to make a decision. He finally verified it with another student from another team that was also in the room and had seen my student in there.
We had planned to go out to eat after the tournament at a local restaurant, but it was so late that we just had to go to Wendy's.

This was Josh's first tournament as well. He did well for his first time. He broke to semi-finals in both his events which were oratory and novice extemp. I think he had a good time.

At Wendy's my students gave Josh and I a little cake for our birthdays and cookies for the rest of the team. Then everyone in the restaurant sang happy birthday to us. I think maybe Josh might have been surprised at the fact that my kids seem to really like and appreciate me. (but why not??? I'm so darn loveable aren't I???)

Overall it wasn't too bad but I'm still just tired. I wanted to go to the 8:30 Mass so I could hear the children's choir, but I may sleep in a little longer and just go to the Sunday School class and the later Mass.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't think we have any equivalent to speech tournaments in France (at least, none I've ever heard of)
Thanks for allowing me to catch a glimpse in your education system!
On a different note... a very Happy birthday to you and Josh, if I may say so! :)))
Marie

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a good time by all. I am so glad that you stood by your students.