Today at School and "Merchant of Venice"

Tonight's Agenda: Going to see "Merchant of Venice", the new Al Pacino movie. This is a prescreening that is being hosted by some Jewish groups. I'll post my review later possibly. A FEW HOURS LATER: I just got in from seeing "Merchant of Venice". Let me say simply that this movie is phenomenal, from the cinematography to the music; from the choice of actors (Al Pacino is amazing) to the believability they portray on screen. I must say the movie is saddening to me. A man doing business, seemingly honest, a dead wife, a daughter who runs off with a non-Jew, a battle in court which leads to him being forced to choose between life and conversion...and the ultimate sadness...his finally agreeing to convert. This moment in the movie made me gasp. A natural reaction I suppose. In honesty, it made me shed a tear. I can't imagine giving up my faith for anything. Finally, towards the end (and I'm not giving anything away here, I mean, it is a Shakespeare play), a daughter symbolic of the choices many make to leave their faith, only to reflect on it later while drowning in a sea of emptiness. In my opinion, I say go see this movie when it comes out. Yes, Shakespeare can be hard to understand, but I guarantee you, you will laugh and cry and well, go watch it and find out for yourself!

Today at School:
Parent Shadow Day at Helix Charter High school is an experience in and of itself. First, the percentage of parents that come is horrible. I think out of my 81 students, I had 8 parents. 8! You do the math! So, parents come to school, teachers dress a little nicer, plan lessons that are more fun and academic, students have an unnerving amount of excitement because parents are around and because they have a shortened day. To top it off, Wednesday's are teacher meetings, tutorials and advisories. UGH, what a day. I had to "go off" on my advisory class. I won't go into that though. :) So, today was long, tiresome and frankly, going to a movie will be nice.