Long time no type...
Things are beginning to settle down a little and I am feeling like I am just starting to get my head above water – or at least get little gasps of air now and then. Our schedules are finally sorted out at school and the class sizes have evened out. What a fiasco that was…I caused some trouble there, but it was worth it. I had a class of 23 and a class of 10 (way too small – who would have thought that would be a problem!). The guidance counselor told us three weeks ago that our team was the only one that had that kind of imbalance and that he would look at it again in a few days. After two weeks I asked him about it and he said that he didn’t think he would be able to fix it because of the advanced math, SPED, and ESL kids. I decided to try on my own and was able to even out not only my classes, but the Science and Math classes on our team as well. I emailed him and wrote out the 8 schedules that would have to change and asked if it would be possible to make those changes. He said no. Hmmm…why not? He’s too busy and I don’t understand how complicated these things are. Hmmm…can you explain then? No. Can we make the changes on paper and then have the computer program catch up with us later? No. Thank you for your assistance.
I talked to the AP and aksed if I could handwrite the 8 schedules. She said she wasn’t sure about writing out paper schedules and since the principal wasn’t in, we would have to wait until Monday to ask about that. But miraculously the changes I sent him were made by the end of the day. Guess it wasn’t all that complicated after all! Monday morning Mary (the Principal) asked me to come in and see her. Uh oh! She was just worried because she heard I was frustrated and she wanted to check on me. She is so nice! Too nice actually…had she yelled at me I would have been okay, but she was nice…so I cried! Yippee…my lovely habit of crying in the boss’s office has followed me around the world! Apparently Mary is used to this because she said there are other teachers who do the same thing and one who will burst into tears if she just looks at her. She handed me Kleenex, hugged me, and told me to stop apologizing. She then proceeded to ask what she could do to help with the Josh situation and what I had done to get him on my orders. We went over all of that and she had some ideas, so that looks like there is some hope there. All in all it was great to talk to her.
In general, work seems to be getting into a groove and that is really nice. Now all I have to do is figure out how to teach by standards rather than by the textbook. Since I don’t understand some of the standards, it could be challenging to teach them to students. I’m sure I’ll figure it out, but my “mentor” has cancelled three meetings we set up, so that has been a problem. The other two World Geography teachers don’t do anything even remotely similar to each other, and one doesn’t seem to teach geography at all, but instead does Economics and Government studies on random countries in the world. I am basically doing map skills and the five themes of geography while I figure out the rest of things. Our team finally decided to buy an Excel gradebook that would do weighting and that was okayed by the administration. It is pathetic and I miss Gradequick!!! At least it is something though because the official gradebook that we all must use doesn’t work at all and I can’t even log in. Progress reports are coming up (though no one knows the date they are supposed to be sent) so we had to have something. I finally caught up on my grading and input grades. I hate being behind!!! We’d had several conferences with parents where I was guessing about averages (faking it well though) and it was driving me crazy. I really think that once I figure out what the heck I am supposed to teach, I will be able to do the job almost completely at school during school hours. That point may come sometime in March, but the possibility is there.
It’s a good thing that the school thing is manageable because the home –school thing is hard! It would be hard if you had a great student who was motivated to learn. I don’t have one of those, so instead, he tries to argue on a daily basis about how much work he has to do each day. I think Josh is finally starting to see that I mean what I say and I can’t be talked out of the deadlines, but he loves to push the limits. Fun, fun! We were on a pretty good roll for a while and then he got a cold. We took a few days off this week and now I have a cold.
The house is starting to be a little organized. The downstairs is all set, and most of the upstairs…except for the middle bedroom and my closets. It looks good on the surface though, so I am working hard to forget what is behind those closed doors. Josh is pretty good about helping with the dishes, but he has an annoying habit of wanting to eat a real dinner every night…AND he thinks I should cook him a grand breakfast on weekend mornings. I’ve noticed that he gets crabby if I don’t feed him, so I try to keep up with that. J I should have learned to cook at some point though, because he doesn’t seem to think that crackers and cheese is a good dinner. On the other hand, he does think that Hamburger Helper is a real meal, so it’s not too hard to please him.
Well, I really should be doing lesson plans or something constructive, but it had been a while since I’d written anything. We haven’t been doing anything outrageously exciting, but all is well. I was really hoping that we would get a typhoon day tomorrow, but it hit today instead. They closed the base and cancelled all of the church services. We had invited Duke, Debra, and Evelyn over for dinner but that got put off because Debra and Evelyn are sick. Hmmm…all of us new teachers seem to be getting the same lovely cold. Instead, Josh invited Victoria’s kids over to play video games. I made spaghetti for them and they are so shy they didn’t say a word the whole time we ate. Josh proceeded to talk enough for all of us and they just giggled the whole time. An interesting meal to say the least.
Okay…gotta go. Konnichiwa!
I talked to the AP and aksed if I could handwrite the 8 schedules. She said she wasn’t sure about writing out paper schedules and since the principal wasn’t in, we would have to wait until Monday to ask about that. But miraculously the changes I sent him were made by the end of the day. Guess it wasn’t all that complicated after all! Monday morning Mary (the Principal) asked me to come in and see her. Uh oh! She was just worried because she heard I was frustrated and she wanted to check on me. She is so nice! Too nice actually…had she yelled at me I would have been okay, but she was nice…so I cried! Yippee…my lovely habit of crying in the boss’s office has followed me around the world! Apparently Mary is used to this because she said there are other teachers who do the same thing and one who will burst into tears if she just looks at her. She handed me Kleenex, hugged me, and told me to stop apologizing. She then proceeded to ask what she could do to help with the Josh situation and what I had done to get him on my orders. We went over all of that and she had some ideas, so that looks like there is some hope there. All in all it was great to talk to her.
In general, work seems to be getting into a groove and that is really nice. Now all I have to do is figure out how to teach by standards rather than by the textbook. Since I don’t understand some of the standards, it could be challenging to teach them to students. I’m sure I’ll figure it out, but my “mentor” has cancelled three meetings we set up, so that has been a problem. The other two World Geography teachers don’t do anything even remotely similar to each other, and one doesn’t seem to teach geography at all, but instead does Economics and Government studies on random countries in the world. I am basically doing map skills and the five themes of geography while I figure out the rest of things. Our team finally decided to buy an Excel gradebook that would do weighting and that was okayed by the administration. It is pathetic and I miss Gradequick!!! At least it is something though because the official gradebook that we all must use doesn’t work at all and I can’t even log in. Progress reports are coming up (though no one knows the date they are supposed to be sent) so we had to have something. I finally caught up on my grading and input grades. I hate being behind!!! We’d had several conferences with parents where I was guessing about averages (faking it well though) and it was driving me crazy. I really think that once I figure out what the heck I am supposed to teach, I will be able to do the job almost completely at school during school hours. That point may come sometime in March, but the possibility is there.
It’s a good thing that the school thing is manageable because the home –school thing is hard! It would be hard if you had a great student who was motivated to learn. I don’t have one of those, so instead, he tries to argue on a daily basis about how much work he has to do each day. I think Josh is finally starting to see that I mean what I say and I can’t be talked out of the deadlines, but he loves to push the limits. Fun, fun! We were on a pretty good roll for a while and then he got a cold. We took a few days off this week and now I have a cold.
The house is starting to be a little organized. The downstairs is all set, and most of the upstairs…except for the middle bedroom and my closets. It looks good on the surface though, so I am working hard to forget what is behind those closed doors. Josh is pretty good about helping with the dishes, but he has an annoying habit of wanting to eat a real dinner every night…AND he thinks I should cook him a grand breakfast on weekend mornings. I’ve noticed that he gets crabby if I don’t feed him, so I try to keep up with that. J I should have learned to cook at some point though, because he doesn’t seem to think that crackers and cheese is a good dinner. On the other hand, he does think that Hamburger Helper is a real meal, so it’s not too hard to please him.
Well, I really should be doing lesson plans or something constructive, but it had been a while since I’d written anything. We haven’t been doing anything outrageously exciting, but all is well. I was really hoping that we would get a typhoon day tomorrow, but it hit today instead. They closed the base and cancelled all of the church services. We had invited Duke, Debra, and Evelyn over for dinner but that got put off because Debra and Evelyn are sick. Hmmm…all of us new teachers seem to be getting the same lovely cold. Instead, Josh invited Victoria’s kids over to play video games. I made spaghetti for them and they are so shy they didn’t say a word the whole time we ate. Josh proceeded to talk enough for all of us and they just giggled the whole time. An interesting meal to say the least.
Okay…gotta go. Konnichiwa!
1 Comments:
Jennell, I loved that part about the grading systems! It seems that every school you go to needs help, and here I sit twiddling my thumbs! Maybe I need to publish my own program or go into sales for Grade Quick, or something!
The closets piece made me wonder if your computer and mine in the bedroom are secretly communicating, and you had captured pictures of my own closets. There's just something about taking up time organizing small areas of space where you house things you don't need for a long time (or maybe never) when you could be at the pool. I did think, though, that that was a very biblical thing to refer to the work as "forgetting what lies behind" and pressing on to the goal of getting the closets organized! Very punny. Maybe we can have a little competition to see who can stop all the other fun long enough to get the job done....
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