Earthquake, Curriculum, and Chinese, Oh My!

We had an earthquake in Maryland! The epicenter was in Virginia, but we certainly felt it up here. I was in a large meeting room, and it felt like I had vertigo... just swaying and moving around. It was a trippy feeling, made me wonder if something was wrong with me. But everyone else was feeling it!

The teachers in my county (probably whole state) are FREAKING OUT. New curriculum! Aaaagh! I am loving it, because the new curriculum is much better than the current one--it's language based. All about thinking and reasoning.

And I might be learning Chinese this fall! My elementary school is participating in a pilot program with immersion world languages instruction. All of the students (yes, even my deaf darlings) will have an hour each week of Chinese in the fall and Spanish in the spring. I may decide to go in with them. Certainly at the beginning of the school year I will, to help them understand the concept of language. I'm afraid they'll think it's just more speaking that they don't understand. Chinese, English, it's all Greek to them.