Tag: school

Sunday me day work for free day!

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

I think I’m ready for tomorrow, maybe.

I have spent today setting up spreadsheets, looking at IEPs, looking at 504 plans (not done with either of those tasks by a long shot,) setting up my Canvas classes, editing last year’s How My Class Works presentations, putting together an explainer so that new staff know how to sync grades between Canvas and PowerTeacher, redoing seating charts, planning out next week, and somehow, despite the fact that tomorrow will only be the third day of school, grading. I’m not even teaching until Wednesday, guys, and right now Tuesday in my plans is reserved entirely for physical tasks like “give everyone their workbooks and notes folders” and “name calculators,” which is a real thing all of my classes have to do. There is also a section that just says “Whatever else I forgot about.”

Mental note: I need cotton balls and alcohol to remove last year’s names from the calculators. I’m told that erases paint marker nicely. We shall see.

Also: learn 137 names.

Whee!

Another one in the books

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My 23rd first day of school– I counted, I know I’m right this time– is done and dusted. One down, 179 left to go.

I have been talking for seven and a half hours, and I’m exhausted. I’m changing my plans for tomorrow so that I don’t have to talk as much. I’ll make Monday another big talky-talky day; these kids are gonna have to move around tomorrow. It was pretty nondescript as these things go; I have no immediate problem kids and the handful I had an eye on at least managed to come off as friendly and approachable. No obvious rage beasts just yet, which is good. I said “You will either be my favorite student or my nemesis” to at least two different kids, and of those two, I’m pretty sure I got lucky by having him in first hour. The kid who was widely regarded as the biggest discipline problem in the 7th grade last year is in my fourth hour and did not draw attention to himself today.

All positives, basically. That said, I’m so tired I could die, so I’m going to go do that.

Two more hours

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A double shift of Open House was already going to be bad enough— 1:00-3:00 and then 5:00-7:00– but I was not prepared for a fucking tornado warning to happen during the first half. Not fun.

Gonna die the moment I get home. Today started out with moving the cars away from the hail, so I’ve pretty much had enough of everything at this point.

How does this happen

On By Luther M. SilerIn ParentingLeave a comment

That absurdly tall, gloriously-haired kid on the right there— who is the same kid as this kid— graduated from 8th grade today. Which means that he is somehow a high school student now. Sooner than you might think, as he’s taking summer school classes right away and they start in a bit over a week.

That fat bastard on the left is going to be fifty in a month. He is somehow still alive.

I am feeling my mortality a bit more than usual this week, if you haven’t figured that out.

And my god have I been writing on this site for a long time.

Door number 3

On By Luther M. SilerIn BlogwankingLeave a comment

I had two different possible plans for tonight’s post, and I’m putting both of them away for the time being– one of them because, well, it’s a book review and because of a family event tonight I haven’t finished the book yet (and, to be honest, I may need to ruminate on this one for a minute before writing it anyway) and the second because there is another related family event in a couple of days that might be a more appropriate venue for it.

Unfortunately, that leaves me with “Damn, it was hot today! One more day of school! I’m weirdly anxious about summer school!” and I kinda wrote most of that three times this week. I told the kids I had a game planned for tomorrow, one where I was going to let them throw things at one another, and it didn’t hit me until late in the day that overseeing kids throwing things at one another was going to make getting all of the end-of-the-year shit that I have to do done a bit more complicated. So that will be interesting, and I’m expecting a late night tomorrow night.

I did get confirmation that they are definitely planning on me teaching two grades at once for summer school. So that’ll be interesting.

Anyway, I gotta go find a bunch of activity pages for the sub on Friday before I can sleep. So I’ll catch y’all tomorrow.

How did that happen?

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching3 Comments

Completely lost track of time tonight; I had my club kids after school, one didn’t get picked up for forever, and then I think I melted in my chair for a little while, maybe? Either way, whatever I had planned for tonight clearly isn’t happening because I plan on being thoroughly asleep in an hour. I’ve already decided I’m not teaching tomorrow, ILEARN review be damned; the kids are out of their minds and I’m exhausted so to hell with it. I’m going to pass out progress reports and tell them to get something done then hide under my desk for the rest of the day. The math test is next Tuesday and after that the school year gets a lot easier.

(Also, is $6400 for five weeks of four-hour days worth it? Yes, right? Obviously yes? I should definitely do summer school.)

Some good news

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Today— not that this is a hard bar to exceed— was much better than yesterday.

Honestly, I have no real complaints at all. The cafeteria was calm despite the presence of a lot of the same kids (the one who started all the nonsense in the morning wasn’t at school, and I’m at the point where I’m genuinely hoping his parents transfer him), my classes were at least as functional if not more functional than normal, and I didn’t have to cover a class during my prep. The next few days ought to fly by; I’ve more or less got them planned out and a lot of the stuff we’re doing is autopilot by now.

That said, I’m having a formal observation in the morning— these things always go fine but they’re stressful nonetheless— and I got an email from the district’s head of secondary Math instruction that he wants to observe in my Algebra class on Friday for some reason. It’s not a problem, mind you; my Algebra kids are my angels, but it feels kind of unfair having it two days after my formal.

Seven days of school until Spring Break. We can do this.

On a slightly different note: the new laptop had a system software update today, which did not solve the issues I’ve been having with Gutenberg, but it seems that simply turning Gutenberg off fixes the problem without creating any differences that I can see in how I interact with WordPress. So I’m going to assume that this is Gutenberg’s fault somehow, and that eventually they will update it in the background and I probably won’t even notice when the problem gets fixed. All’s well that ends well, I suppose.

Too tired to type

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Teaching1 Comment

I had one of the worst days of my career today, I think, and absolutely the worst single day of the year; I had gone the entire school year without breaking up a fight and today I had to prevent one, break up another, and then put up with some absolutely fucking unhinged and immature behavior from parents that very much should have gotten them arrested and trespassed and somehow resulted in neither thing happening. Then tonight was the literal last band concert I ever have to go to, which I was far too exhausted to properly appreciate, and during which I had to put up with even more shit parenting from what appeared to be two different families in the row in front of us who were bound and determined to ignore their feral-assed children.

I have had more than enough, I really don’t want to go to work tomorrow, I don’t know how I’m going to interact with the kid whose parents showed their asses (“I never realized you were the adult in the house” is probably something I shouldn’t say) and I still have a statement to write about all of that in which I am not allowed to cuss or impugn the parenting, intelligence or sanity of the other individuals involved.

Christ, I have never hated a year as much as I hate 2026.