Up to our armpits...

Not in quicksand.  We were in Steph's class again today.  She did not warn us until we were already there, and up to our armpits in adolescents: the day after Valentine's Day; the last day of their school week - they have Friday and Monday off this week for the President's Day Holiday.  This was the last day before a break... the kids are crazy.  We've heard Steph talk about this; if we've been through it, I don't recall.  Concentration and focus were elusive... not with the adults, but we were outnumbered.

Joan worked with them on the construction of their Gravity Cruisers in the room, I was in the hall supervising their testing, and giving them official distances.  When their Cruiser didn't work, or didn't perform up to expectations, I was supposed to ask them questions to lead them to figuring out the problem on their own.  Apparently, I was speaking a different language from most of them since there were a lot of blank stares.  To be fair, some of them understand.  To be honest, some of them don't... "Do you think it would make a difference if you pointed your car in the right direction?"  You probably think I'm kidding.

There were glorious victories when some of the cars went a decent distance; crushing blows when an ill-conceived design simply fell over.

The goal today was to get 3 consistent distance runs, then they are allowed to put bigger wheels on their cars... after logging the changes they made after each run.  "Did you log your changes?"

"Huh?"  There were a lot of "Huh"s today.  ;-)

As we were leaving school today, I said to Joan, "I fear for our future."  I'm hoping there will be better concentration after their break.

On the bright side: Steph is making them better people as well as making them smarter.  No discipline issues.  She maintains good control... and that isn't easy to do when working on group projects like this... more than once I heard her say, "No hogs and no logs - work together as a group."

We had a late lunch after getting out of the school just before their release.  A few errands, and then it was back to Rufus around 3:30 (you didn't think this would be a whole day without a Rufus mention, did you?).  That meant he was "home alone" for about 3 1/2 hours.  I held my breath when I opened the door, hoping to find everything in the coach intact.  Yep - he was a good boy.  And happy to see us when we came in.

Come to your own conclusions regarding behavior and focus of adolescents vs felines.  LOL

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No photos - we were busy the whole time we were at school, and I just didn't have a chance to capture anything for posterity.