The blog of Luther M. Siler, teacher, author and local curmudgeon
Okay. I got grades caught up today, and only a quarter of them are failing! Still too many although I’ve certainly seen worse. I’m going to try and do a catch-up day tomorrow; we’ll see how that goes.
All that said, I’ve been grading for three hours, and I would like some time for recreation tonight, so this is all y’all get for tonight. Something cool should be happening tomorrow though so you may eagerly anticipate that if you like.
One more day and a three day weekend.
Guess how many classes I had to say that to today?
Okay, not in those words, but I did tell one of my classes that two different adults had described their time with them as a “shitshow” yesterday, and yes, I used that exact word.
I’m tired.
Okay, maybe that wasn’t as complicated as I thought it was going to be:
Basically all I did was add the “Is the number a fraction?” step there, and we’ll have to review converting fractions to decimals a bit, but it’ll do and they need to remember how to do that anyway.
In the meantime, I actually called out sick today; my Mounjaro (I assume) got on top of me hard in the last couple of days and I spent less of last night sleeping than I generally like to do, in favor of activities that generally aren’t meant to be described in polite company. So I slept most of the day away once it passed. I may have to have a review day for my kids on Friday already, though, which feels awfully early, although if I remember right we probably had about one a month last year anyway so maybe not. We’ll see how the next couple of days go, assuming I can drag my ass out of bed.
Look at this flowchart:
I am not a digital artist, as you can probably tell, and I put this together in Sheets, which is certainly really far from the best way to do it, but it gets the job done. Here’s the question: how do I best include the existence of fractions? Fractions are always rational, but depending on what the fraction is, it can be any of the rational number sub-categories as well. I could just include an instruction after the first question to convert fractions to decimals, but 1) that feels inelegant, and 2) it sort of introduces another source of error, but that source is there anyway, I suppose– a kid that doesn’t recognize 1/3 as a repeating decimal is probably also not going to realize that 12/4 is a natural number.
Can you figure out a way to work fractions into this without adding a ton of qualifiers and disclaimers or extra questions? One or two is fine but I don’t want this to get much messier than it already is.
Hmm.
Holy shit, y’all. I applied for my high school math licensure literally yesterday and I got an email today that my addition had been approved and my license was updated. This from, remember, sending them test results from a test that took forty days to get official score results on, and in what is almost certainly their busiest time of the year.
I’ve talked my fair amount of shit about the IDOE during my time working here, but they’re absolutely on point with getting licenses up to date. Damn.
And, yes, that’s seven different content areas I’m licensed for. I really should get my science licensure just for the hell of it.
Adding to the level of today’s miraculousness, of three meetings I was expected to attend today, two ended early– one by forty-five minutes, and that was the one I was fully expecting to eat every single second of its allotted time– and the third took within a minute of precisely the time it was planned for. Tomorrow is going to be a crazy-long day because it’s parent-teacher night, and I have to dress like a grown-up and everything, but Wednesday should be pretty chill and then on Thursday the children arrive.
We are still missing two math teachers– a department that should be five people is only three– so I got another overage approved today. It went fine last year, so unless this group of kids is markedly more evil than last year’s– cross your fingers– I should be able to manage it just fine. I would always rather have an overage and soak up the enormous amount of extra money you get paid for it than be constantly getting phone calls to cover random classes during my prep period anyway.
That said, because I’ll be at work for twelve hours tomorrow, expect a video update at best. I will be in full no-brain-only-sleep mode by the time I get home, especially since I got no meaningful sleep at all last night and am kind of running on fumes already.
Here we go here we go here we go.
I passed my Math test, officially, with exactly the same score I had “unofficially” on July 1st. Delayed fully 40 days for no Goddamn reason at all. Remember, kids, ETS is the devil.
That’s all I’ve got for today, as we have family in town and we will have more family in town tomorrow. Must sleep.
The Supreme Court ruled last week that it was legal to bribe them and today ruled that the President can legally order them killed, so I’m investigating just how the fuck I can get out of this miserable fucking shithole that we’re pretending is a functioning country. I’m going to do the paperwork today to get my passport renewed; my wife and son need theirs for the first time, and I’m going to have to talk my dad into getting his as well.
I think I can apply for German citizenship via descent from German nationals, and it has not escaped my notice that fleeing to Germany to avoid the Nazis is … somewhat ironic.
Anyway, the good news is that I unofficially passed my Praxis test; the score was 182/200, which is a quite comfortable margin. Higher than both of my practice tests, too; I was especially pleased to discover that several of the questions I specifically made sure to review had analogues on the official test, so I absolutely picked up some points during the studying process.
Oh, and in the process of showing off my drivers’ license to my online proctor I discovered that it was expiring in four days, and I went and got it renewed at the DMV in less than 20 minutes this afternoon.
The bad news — because of course there’s more bad news — is that despite the entire test being multiple choice, my official score report won’t be available until August 9, because ETS is the scum of the Earth. There is literally no reason this should take more than a couple of hours. It’s fucking 2024. This means that it’s unlikely that I’ll have the licensure in hand by the time school starts. Will that matter? Maybe, maybe not; the class I’m getting the licensure to teach in the first place hasn’t been confirmed yet, so all of this may have been for nothing. Right now I’m not stressing about it.
Oh, and check this fuckshit out:
Now: those two supplementary monitors are disconnected from the computer, because it won’t let you start the testing software if it detects that you have more than one monitor running. Was that good enough for my proctor? No! I had to point them away from me and cover them with towels. The disconnected monitors, which were not capable of receiving a signal from my computer. I also had to show the camera my glasses and confirm that I wasn’t wearing earrings, because … I guess I might have been wearing Google Glass and had secret spy earrings or some shit.
Don’t miss the whiteboard there; you aren’t allowed to use paper while taking the fucking test. I blatantly violated two of these assholes’ rules; one, I made no attempt whatsoever to disconnect every device in the house other than my computer from the internet, because give me a fucking break, and two, I discovered in the fine print of the rules I was agreeing to in order to take the test the requirement that if I was in a room with a door, that the door must not only be closed (fine) but that the computer I was testing on be placed in such a way that the closed door was visible to the proctor at all times.
Which would require wholesale rearranging of my office, and again, was not a requirement that anyone told me about prior to five minutes before taking the test. I was fully prepared to lie about this one if necessary, and had he given me any bullshit about it, I’d have removed the fucking door from the hinges. Christ, I fucking hate ETS. Like, the Supreme Court ruled today that the President is a king and I still think I hate ETS more than I hate them.
That said, it’s legal for Biden to order Roberts, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Thomas and Alito executed and Trump sent to Guantanamo Bay now, and I think he should strongly consider it.
Monthly Reads is still coming later today, if (yeah, right) you’re waiting for it.
Woke up this morning with my head swimming, and while I’m not unused to occasional dizziness first thing in the morning, holy shit— this, with no other symptoms, knocked me flat on my ass for almost the entire day, and I took a four hour nap this afternoon. That didn’t really leave a lot of time for much else; I’ve been reading a book that I’m not enjoying very much, and I’m trying to decide whether I dislike it enough to review it after I finish it or if I should just put it down and not worry about it. Advice, to future writers: you are not allowed to introduce time travel as a plot element with only a hundred pages left in your book. Don’t do that. Please.
Tomorrow I go back to studying in the mornings, after taking a couple of weeks off– my test is July 1st, and I am bound and determined to pass this damned thing on the first try. I have one more practice test handy, so I’ll start going through my last remaining study guide tomorrow, and take that test Wednesday, maybe, and then use the last couple of days to make sure of things like “I know how to use the calculator” and “my computer will run the software without a hitch.” I have no reason to leave the house next week other than a handful of tasks to take care of on Wednesday, so I have plenty of time to get myself ready. I popped into my classroom for a few minutes last week, and told my boss that I was about to take the test, and she didn’t say “Oh, that class isn’t happening,” which I’m hoping means that there’s still at least a good chance.
I dunno, that’s what I’ve got. How was your Sunday?