Travel is in the Air

As part of the Teachers for Global Classrooms program I will be heading to Washington, DC on Thursday.  When I applied for this program I knew that there would be a DC trip before the international expedition as well as another DC trip next fall.  What was a surprise to the teachers in the program was that immediately following our 8-week online course this past Fall, TGC invited our principals to attend with us.

This trip will be the first time that my head principal, Roy Smith, has had the opportunity to travel to our nation's capital.  His wife and at least one of his sons have been.  So I guess on Thursday "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington".

In prep for this trip I had to make a mad dash to finish the initial rough draft of my "Capstone" project for the TGC program.  I've been compiling items over the course of most of this semester, but spent all day yesterday getting it formatted together and filling in some of the gaps.  I then e-mailed off "the mess" around 9:30 last night.

Now...the final preparations must be made for the trip:

1. Laundry and packing...too long of a trip for a carry-on, but too short for a full check bag...WHAT TO DO?
2. Lesson plans for Thursday plus a set of "just in case" plans for Tuesday of next week (Friday is a professional day for teachers in my district & Monday is slated as a "snow day" if we haven't used it yet for actual snow/ice)
3. Identifying three samples of student work for exploring "Global Competence"
4. Make sure I have hard copies of flight schedules, hotel reservations, Capital tour tickets, subway maps, etc. etc. etc.
5. Make sure there is enough dog food for Tori (my Yorkie)
6. Get Tori to my mom's house in time for mom to get me to the airport on time

As much as I do love to roam the roads of lands remote, the prep work can be so daunting!  But it's all worth it, right?