April was extremely busy for me. On top of my normal work, I marked 212 World Literature essays for the IBO, an educational but exhausting undertaking. I also put the finishing touches on my book manuscript, Good Habits, Good Students, which is now in the hands of the designers and typesetters. My Grade 6 students created ‘heart maps’ (another great idea from Nancie Atwell), picked one item, and wrote ‘heart stories’ which I am still working to post online. Then they turned their heart stories into speeches. In Grade 9, students worked mostly outside of class to complete a biography of some acquaintance or family member who is at least 60 years old. In class, we studied To Kill a Mockingbird. When we finished, they wrote comparison-contrast essays based on Harper Lee’s novel and Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country, which they had read independently. My Grade 11s have been working on developing topics and doing practice essays preparing for their own World Lit papers (our three WL texts for Assignment 1 are Oedipus, The Odyssey, and Agamemnon). My Grade 12s worked on practice exams and are as I write sitting their IB examinations. Meanwhile, the tempo in the Garden Project picked up as warm weather arrived and seeds began jumping out of the ground. And did I mention that I have a family? Ah yes, the easy life of a teacher . . . .