Tag: school year

And we’re backish, 2025 edition

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

Pictured: a fuzzlewumpywuggins, because they always make everything better.

Tomorrow is the first teacher day back. Morning rah-rah nonsense until 10, then some classroom time, lunch and our first staff meeting. I could do without the rah-rah meeting, but whatever. Tuesday I have training for the new curriculum (as far as I know, we still don’t have textbooks, and we’ve been instructed to bring the teacher manuals that we also don’t have to the meeting) and then four hours of Open House, which is going to make a whole lot of people completely crazy because their rooms are not gonna be done yet. It’ll be a twelve hour day.

Wednesday, as far as I know right now, is entirely in-classroom work. I am wholly certain that I will find plenty to do. Then, presuming the bathrooms are ready, the kids are back Thursday and Friday.

Physically, I’m ready. Emotionally, it’s been a weird weekend. I’ll be fine, I always am, but I’m in full-blown “wasted the whole summer” mode right now and I don’t really want to be there.

Three weeks and three days

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I’m worried that my kids think that the rest of the school year is going to go like ILEARN time did, with short classes and minimal work. It will not. My 8th graders have two tests and a final in the next three weeks, and my Algebra class currently only has the final, but tests are seventy percent of their grade, and they’ve only had two, so I probably ought to work at least one more in there somewhere. ILEARN ate April, is the problem, so I’m behind everywhere. I told all of them we were back to work f’real f’real on Monday, but we’ll see if they seem to believe it or not.

It’s 7:30. Twenty minutes ago, every person in the house was asleep. That kind of Friday night. We’re a high-energy family, what can I say?

I may cave and just go to bed soon, or I might dive back into Khazan, which I’ve ignored over the last couple of days in favor of … whatever the hell else I was doing with my last two days. The last two weeks have kind of been a blur, if I’m being honest– I knew they’d go by fast and they did. Now it’s just a matter of seeing if the rest of the school year follows suit. Let’s all cross our fingers.

Let’s see

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I didn’t take any pictures at work today, but the classroom is coming along nicely even if it’s chewing holes in my bank account along the way. I really like the new room, though, and the first year in a new room is always more expensive, so hopefully what I’ve bought will last a while. I did discover, to my vague embarrassment and deep chagrin, that I managed to order rope lights twice, once very early in the summer and– and this was my critical mistake– brought to my classroom in June, and once in late July and brought to my classroom yesterday. I didn’t even notice the first set of lights yesterday since they were in the closet in my original classroom; I had a great moment when I found six boxes in my closet as I was moving stuff from one room to the other and for a few minutes couldn’t remember what the hell was in them. Then I remembered that at one point I’d been thinking I needed a powered USB hub, and I couldn’t figure out why I needed that, since the rope lights I just brought in plug in with a regular plug, and … shit.

Then I had to order a damn powered USB hub.

I have so many packages coming this weekend, y’all.

(You can still help me out with school supplies if you want, by the way. I’ll love you forever if you do!)

I am going to end up starting a fire in this room once everything is plugged in, y’all. I did find two more plugs in the room I hadn’t initially noticed, up near the ceiling next to a truly ancient tube TV that definitely doesn’t need to be plugged in and I’m going to see if I can get them to remove altogether. That brings the total to ten, two of which are simultaneously nearly inaccessible and somehow still perfect for a couple of the things I was going to stick in that corner anyway. Those ten plugs will have to power approximately fourteen thousand different things. I’m, uh, gonna have to do some extensive cable management.

I may not be able to make it over on Monday, but I’ll definitely be in my room every other day next week, since I also have a ton of curricular work to do and I want the room completely ready to go by the time I’m officially on the clock.

Anyway, in lieu of a classroom picture, please enjoy this cat.

In which I love you, really, I swear

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching1 Comment

20130816-163401.jpgEffective immediately, there is going to be a large and angry Viking armed with several sharp and spiky implements of bodily destruction guarding the door to my classroom. If you happen to need or want anything from me, that’s fine; you just have to get by Sven. His name will be Sven; I just decided that. I may feed him some LSD from time to time, too; don’t worry about that. Norsemen don’t get addicted to things.

This is honest truth: I don’t mind helping people in my building with things. It’s part of my damn job. But holy shit. I got nothing at all done yesterday, and with two work days left until the school year starts (after which point, as every teacher knows, nothing organizational will get done until December) I am seriously running up against the limits of how much any sensible human being can get done in the time I have left, and I have much much more to do this year than I ordinarily would at the beginning of the school year. I’ve said it before, many times: the week before school starts is my busiest week of the year, and this week has been substantially worse than usual in terms of how much I’ve had to do and how few hours I’ve had to do it in. The crowning moment of yesterday’s ridiculousness came when my former assistant principal called me from his new job to ask me something about a spreadsheet I’d created for him to keep track of disciplinary issues. While I was answering his questions for him (which quickly devolved into me saying “email it to me; I’ll fix it and send it back, because that will be quicker”) my current assistant principal came into my room… to ask me about the exact same spreadsheet.

And, again, because 1) it’s true and 2) I know my co-workers read this: I don’t mind. I really truly honestly and totally am happy to help people when they need help from me. But I also don’t want my kids skinning me and dancing on my corpse next week because I didn’t manage to get ready for the new school year properly, and I’m down to two days to get about four days of work done. Thus: my new friend Sven.

He’ll be answering the phone and handling my email, too, by the way.

(For real, though: I was in my classroom for about 2 1/2 hours today, because I was on Daddy Duty this morning and couldn’t get in before early afternoon, and then had to cut out before I wanted to because it’s Friday and the building was closing a bit earlier than usual. In that two and a half hours I got about six hours of work done, and still looked around before I left my room and could only see shit that I still had left to do. And, unfortunately, money that I had to spend, too. Christ, the last few weeks have been expensive.)

UPDATE: About fifteen minutes ago I took advantage of it being slow time at OtherJob, opened up Wunderlist on the iPad, and started putting together a to-do list for Monday and Tuesday. It is currently at 38 items, and that is not because I went crazy breaking things up into subtasks. Fifteen. Minutes. Ago. I’m sure it will increase in size by at least 50% by the end of the night.

SECOND UPDATE: Item #39? “Write lesson plans.” Oh, right, I have to do that too.