March 19th, 2008 -- Posted in Education |
What is the worst thing that you can do on evaluation day? The worst thing that can happen to you or, in my case, you can do to yourself? Think…
Go on, I’ll wait.
Got something?
OK, let me share.
Yesterday was “one of those” days. I
didn’t sleep the night before. I spent the night tossing and turning, worrying about my NC license requirements. If I wasn’t worrying about that I was having sinus and congestion issues. I’ll spare you the details. FINALLY sleep was had, but it made getting up very difficult.
I crawl out of bed a little after 6:30. I harass the kids to get a move on. Shower and figure out what to wear. Make-up, dry the hair. Grab coffee and something for a snack later. Out the door I go. It’s a little later than normal but surely I will make it. Hmmm, do I turn right and hope traffic isn’t too bad or go straight and come in the back lot? I chose to go straight and take the boulevard. BIG mistake. Everyone else apparently had the same idea. TRAFFIC!!!! Crud. I get to school right. at. time. Oh my. Stop by my end of day room, grab the text and off to my first period room, two minutes late.
uh. freakin. oh.
The room owner is there as usual and beside her…admin.
My face had to say “oh $#!^^”
What do you do? I just walked in talking. Said something about giving them a lesson on driving rules, but it wasn’t the best time given the mood. Told them to open books to page 397 and I taught like mad. It was a great lesson and I am told that admin liked it. But DAMN! Of ALL days! Grrr. Crap. Crud. I did not need that. ugh.
To submit my post observation questions I went to admin later in the day. At that point I addressed the tardy issue. He sort of waved it off and said he wasn’t going to pretend he had been on time 100%.
Crap. Seriously. crap.
March 11th, 2008 -- Posted in Ramblings |
Looks like NC will be our next step. I am all kinds of excited about the prospects. Unfortunately I am at a disadvantage because I have nothing to go by for choosing a school. There are several charter schools expanding. There is one that I would LOVE to be a part of. *oh please please please let things work out and be a smooth transition*
February 10th, 2008 -- Posted in Education, Meme |
Stealing a meme from Tense Teacher. Three questions about higher ed and personal goals.
1. Would you ever go (back) to college in your mature adult life?
Absolutely. I completed my MA in ‘05 and am contemplating PhD work.
2. If yes, what would you study?
American History, emphasis on the South or the role of women in industrial development
3. If you’ve already been, what were your favorite/least favorite classes and why?
I will have to come back to this one. I hated historiography. Loved Civil War studies and Colonial development.
January 8th, 2008 -- Posted in Education, History |
For the past several nights I have been working my tush off on a PowerPoint of the French Revolution. Here’s the deal, it may or may not get used in class. Not all of the rooms I float to have the capability to project. Sometime when I’m not having to correct every other spelling error b/c I’m so wiped out I will share why. I worked and I worked and I worked and I worked…Then I made my first publish to slideshare.net
My current message:
I hope it posts b/c I would love to be able to post the thing on my school site. Here’s my big issue. I create in Office 2007, but have to save in then 2003 format. Crudmuffins, it always messes up the fonts or spacing. This means that if I desire to continue publishing on slideshare.net I will have modify all my publications to accommodate for their lack of updating. Is it really worth it?
OOOEEEE guess what! It worked and I don’t have to edit the spacing! This makes me very happy.
Now I shall share…It is rather simple, but VERY wordy. Students will have a printout that does not include all slides. They will have to condense the information, based on the “so what does this mean” slides that they will not be given in the handout. Watching, listening, and notetaking will be key activities.
Since this is for the purpose of review I lifted the content from a Sparknotes summary and will be adding to it in class. woo-hoo.
March 20th, 2006 -- Posted in Education, Ramblings |
Today is grade day. Third quarter grades have to be in by 3:30 today. I have several grades to enter! So why am I writing on my blog about it and not entering grades??? BECAUSE I GOT HERE AT 7 AM TO PUT GRADES IN THE !@^^ COMPUTER AND SAM WENT DOWN!!!!!! Yes, the program that maintains all of our grades and attendance is down. YET AGAIN! Will they give us extra time for grades? Doubt it. We weren’t able to put grades in the Friday before spring break b/c of a problem and no extension was given on grades so I don’t expect they will be sympathetic b/c of today’s problem either. Grrrrr. Technology can suck, but you know what? I hate doing this junk by hand so I really shouldn’t complain. Just get it fixed!!!!! This too shall pass. Hope those of you on break are having a good one!!!
BTW, Happy Spring!
February 28th, 2006 -- Posted in Education, Ramblings |
I am losing my freakin mind! Just about to start a documentation process and needed to get this out so that I do not put it on the “official” record. NCLB needs to DIE!!! The required documentation, call it CYA if you will, is unbelievable! Good job Johnny, (write that down). Get your head up Ryan. (write that down) Document everything and then graph it in comparison with other students. There is also the charting/graphing of an individual students grade compared to that of the rest of the class, as well as the charting/graphing of the class average to the average of all classes. SO much time is spent documenting, charting, plotting, graphing, and such that teaching seems to fall by the wayside! I’m all about teacher accountability, but the extent of this is SO time consuming that teachers fall short in other areas. Your high achieving students are going to do well. They are determined to do so. The low achieving students are low achieving for a reason and that reason DOES need to be identified, however NOT at the expense of those in the middle…THESE are the students who will be left behind. So much time is spent trying to get lazy Lucy to do her work, turn it in, and pay attention that the student who truly needs help is left out in the cold. Motivation is my key issue. I can not do the homework for the student. At some point students AND parents are going to have to be accountable. Teachers need to be able to teach, to educate! I did not get a degree in documentation/stats and measures. BS in Secondary education, Social Science with an emphasis in American History. MA in American History.
Rant over. Please go back to your regularly scheduled blog hopping.
