FLETCHER reports on Odds and Ends

Well, I tallied up everybody's posts last night, and woke up with a headache. Sometimes I feel like a bean counter.

General information: There are 80 kids on the blog, but fewer than a third are regularly posting. As the deadline approaches, there will be a flurry of activity -- we have 101 posts (this one is 102); last year's summer blog ended with over 300 posts. So everything that has happened to date...it's just the beginning.

Your bright insights are balanced by spectacular errors in your writing and reasoning. If it were all bright insight, you wouldn't need me; if it were all spectacular error, I would dig a hole and stick my head inside. [William O: if you are reading this -- what is the name of the rhetorical move I just employed in that sentence??] [No really; I can't remember.] [J/K!]

Congratulations to Ms. Amy Routt, who is completely finished with all blog threads and posts. She gets e-confetti tossed at her: woohoo!

I realize you are not really planning to wait until the last minute, and that you all have your very legitimate reasons for taking it slow, but may I make an appeal: I am going to get slammed at the end of the summer, just when I'm trying to get my golf team going, collecting notebooks, and so forth. Even if you ALL were finished posting here, your notebooks represent about 20 hours of work. Anything you can do to help me spread the work out will help.

Speaking of that...if anyone is FINISHED WITH THE NOTEBOOK, I will accept it with mucho gusto. I will be at Mayfair on Thursday to put my notebook collection box in the front office, and I will be fooling around in my classroom for several hours in the morning. If you're on campus, stop in and say hello.

Have you seen the annotated webography assignment? Does everybody realize that they are supposed to finish that by the first day of class?

Remember: if you are thinking that maybe AP is not for you, the best thing is to email me and let me know. If you don't want to do that, all you have to do is -- nothing. Just don't finish the work or turn in a notebook. I will automatically transfer you to College Prep somewhere around August 25-27.

The AP results for 2008: We had a good year. 54 kids sat for the exam (my test is the biggest), and 33 kids passed (61%). Almost 40% of the kids who passed earned 4s and 5s, which is excellent. So I'm pleased and proud of the class of '09, and I'm looking forward to another good year with you.