To recap, this is the first year my school has built a thirty minute advisory period into its weekly schedule. But we’re five weeks into the school year and our advisory binder still has us untangling human knots, breaking ice between students who have known each other longer than I have known my wifeNods at Chris..

So we’re veering wildly off script but the product hasn’t been too ugly. The same kid who called this the most pointless class on her schedule at the start of the year just last week volunteered it as the highlight of her Wednesdays.

What we’ve been about the last few weeks:

1. We voted on a name for advisory period. The finalists were: a) Purple People Eaters, b) Wombats, and c) Buhemoth, from which Buhemoth was selected somewhat, um, un-democratically. (For the record, my student didn’t intend the misspelling but we all took it with an anti-establishment post-spelling stance like, “Yeah, we know, and we don’t carecf. Wyld Stallyns..”)
2. We brainstormed a logo/mascot for Buhemoth. The exploratory committee first suggested adjectives that best described (to them) the essence of Buhemoth. We decided on “fierce” and “terrifying” while rejecting “cuddly” and “sensual.” (I swear.) The logo status is “in process.”
3. We researched designs for our cardboard regatta competitionRelegated to a footnote since I’m positive 99% of this blog’s audience knows what I’m talking about: you are allowed two rolls of duct tape and unlimited cardboard to make a boat that will conduct a student across a school pool. Prizes for fastest time, etc. with a few YouTube queries. Perhaps you’ve heard that Jon Pedersen (not the one you’re thinking about) and I won this competition at Ukiah High School, circa. 2000. This nation would not see the kind of intense, brother-waged-against-brother controversy that surrounded our boat design until Ohio, circa. 2004. Gonna be really difficult, in other words, to keep my mouth shut and let my students take full ownership of the design process.
4. We ate doughnuts.

Next up:

1. We will push our logo process along by viewing a montage of contemporary logos and classifying them as “Buhemoth” or “Not Buhemoth.”
2. We will create a “Buhemoth code”, drawing on the Mafia’s recently revealed ten commandments for inspirationI mean, or not, if that’s a totally stupid idea..
3. In general, we will stay as far away from the binder as possible.