Tag: teaching

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.

Wheel of Time fans can’t be real

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, TeachingLeave a comment

Come on, guys. It’s okay. It’s your old pal Luther, here. You can admit it. This is all one giant, decades-long piss-take, right?

I finished Book Eight of this nonsense last night, nearly seven hundred pages in which absolutely nothing happens until the last twenty pages and then not much happens in the climax. I am going to finish this series this year, powered by pure spite and nothing else, and you should all be very proud of me for how little whining I have done about it here. Even if you feel like I’ve complained about these books a lot, you have no idea how much I have held back. Book Eight begins what even fans of the series call “The Slog.” Or maybe it’s Book Seven! They can’t agree.

I owe the publishers of the book I’m reading now a review, and I’m really wondering if I’m not being fair to the new book by putting it after a WoT book. Because oh man did I go straight to I Bet It Would Be Fun to Annotate This and Rip It to Shreds mode.

Anyway. For the record, I genuinely don’t care if you’ve enjoyed these books or not, and there are multiple people I really respect (such as, for example, my actual wife) who are fans of them, I just … I don’t get it, and I don’t think I ever will at this point. I’m still finishing the God damned things one way or another, though.

Had a weird moment during my prep/lunch period at work today, where a whole bunch of shit all piled up on me at once and I damn near had a meltdown over a bizarre assortment of objectively minor inconveniences. I’m still not used to the new glasses. I made bad lunch decisions, and on top of that I was given a Diet Coke instead of a Coke, or maybe it was just super low on syrup. I’ve bitten my lower lip in the exact same spot roughly seventy times in the last few days. My classroom hasn’t been vacuumed in several days, and the cruft that is still on the floor is resistant to my broom. And the anxiety over this summer school thing continues to ramp up; I looked a little bit more closely at what little information I have and I’m now definitively convinced they’ve handed me two grades at the same time.(*) And probably a few other things that I’m not remembering at the moment. And … man. I managed to work my way out of it before the kids showed up, which was good, especially since I had to double up my advisory again. Nobody wants Mr. Siler to lose his mind and go home early during the last week of school, especially since I just remembered another one of those little inconveniences and it was being handed yet another piece of essential paperwork that I needed to do about taking the last day of school off– which, remember, I told my boss about in January.

One good thing is I do think I’ve actually convinced myself that next year’s eighth graders should be fine. There’s still a billion ways that could go wrong, and my partner teacher continues to stubbornly refuse to admit that she’s jumping to the high school next year.

I would appreciate knowing something about anything involving the next few months within the next couple of days, thanks.

(*) Does this mean that both groups are tiny, and I’ll have a tiny group? Or are both groups normal sized, and I’ll have a huge group? What even is a huge group in this context, since they’ve told us nothing about the kids we have coming? Am I doing math and reading for both groups– so four preps in three hours? Is anyone ever going to respond to any of my emails?

Second verse, same as the first

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

Today has been more or less identical to yesterday, except with an hour or so of school stuff thrown in, the last hour of school stuff I’ll have to do on my own time for 2025-26. Thursday is my last day at work, and Friday is the last day of the school year– yes, I’m missing the last day of school for the first time in my career (forgive me if I’ve mentioned this; I don’t think I have, but who knows) because my son’s 8th grade graduation is right smack in the middle of the day. Ordinarily I look down my nose a bit at the concept of 8th grade graduations, but as he’s been at this same school for eleven years, I figure I’ll allow it, especially since it’s not as if I have any actual choice in the matter.

Hm. That looks familiar; I bet I have talked about this at some point.

Oh well.

I’ll follow my usual pattern for the next few days; the kids are getting lists of missing assignments tomorrow, and they can choose to use their time wisely or not depending on 1) whether they, personally, are wise or not and 2) whether they are pleased with their current grade. A bunch of them will have nothing to do! Some of them will do missing work that will have no effect on their grade, only because they want all the points. A somewhat larger number will do no work over the next few days because failure is fine now and they know nothing will happen to them.

As a society, we really need to bring back being ashamed of being stupid. People should know when they are stupid, and they should feel bad about it, all the time, until they do something about it. But whatever; I’m not succumbing to negativity this week, God damn it, no matter how reasonable it might be. I’m going to live through tomorrow one way or another, use Wednesday and Thursday to tear my room down, and then walk out of the door with a spring in my step Thursday afternoon. At some point during that time I’ll write lesson plans for my sub– unbelievably, I have a sub right now for the last day– that will basically say “no blood, no foul, and if there is blood, make sure it’s not your fault.” I’ll leave them a stack of various things the kids can color or draw on and a small stack of pencils and remind them to simply send away any child that displeases them because the office will be sending everyone home as fast as they possibly can. And if it goes poorly? Oh well.

Then I have a week of trainings and such, and … maybe I’m teaching summer school after that? Or maybe I’m leaving somebody in the lurch at the last second? Probably the first thing; I’d like to think I’m not that big of a jerk, but there are some blinking alarm lights about this summer program. Surely the pay will make it all worth it, right? Surely.

Anyway, I have a Wheel of Time book to finish, so I’m going to go do that. Go have a cheeseburger or something.

This is why I don’t leave the house

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy2 Comments

I made a quick run after dinner, to the very same grocery store that I got a senior citizen discount at yesterday, because I needed even more shit for school that I should have just bought yesterday. I pulled into a parking spot and put the car in park, and at that precise moment the car next to me and the car facing them on the other side of the aisle both started pulling out of their spots at the same time.

My sense of proprioception went absolutely batshit, and I was completely convinced my car was moving. Have you ever slammed on the brakes on a car while it’s in park? I don’t recommend it, especially if the car already wasn’t moving, because it won’t help. I had a couple of seconds of full-on panic, trying to figure out why my car was moving when I wasn’t moving it, before it clicked what was going on.

I went inside and immediately walked past a former student, who did not acknowledge me– possibly because I had her in class fifteen or sixteen years ago and she didn’t recognize me, which is reasonable. I remember liking the kid well enough, and the last I heard about her she was doing fine, but man did she look like hammered shit today. Like, possibly unhoused and with the flu. Really, really rough.

I collected my various purchases, noting with some irritation that some of them were literally twice the cost that they would have been had I gone to Target, but fuck it, I was already there. I bought everything and went back out to my car, checked my mirrors and my back-up camera and started backing out of my spot, like a normal, responsible driver, and just before I got to the point where I’d take the car out of reverse the car behind me (so on the other side of the lane) starts pulling out of their spot, clearly not looking to see if the way was clear. I slammed on the horn and came within an inch or two of getting hit, but they stopped in time and pulled back into their parking spot so I could leave.

As I was driving away, I saw a large man in a Punisher shirt and bright red shorts standing on the side of the entrance to the parking lot. A moment later I realized that this man, at 6:30 PM on a Thursday night, in broad daylight and in public, was energetically masturbating.

I once watched from my fourth-floor apartment window in Chicago as a woman squatted in the entrance to a business across the street and took a piss on the sidewalk, but I’m almost certain I’ve never seen somebody just randomly jerking off on the side of the road at passing cars before.

On the other hand, hey, it got me a blog post.

A disappointing fact

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, TeachingLeave a comment

I finished the Tesla book last night, and the most interesting thing I learned about Nikola Tesla is that J.P. Morgan had rhinophyma and was apparently (and unsurprisingly) a colossal asshole about it. Unfortunately, that isn’t a fact about Nikola Tesla!

Anyway, I started Soraya Bouazzaoui’s Aicha last night, and based on the first chapter I suspect I’m going to like it quite a bit.

… and after staring at my screen for five minutes without writing a word, that might be the most interesting thing I have to say tonight. We had a field trip this morning; the 8th grade split up and went to three different colleges, and apparently everyone had very different experiences. We had a campus walking tour and that was basically it. Not bad, necessarily, but not worth the large amount of legwork and nonsense that a field trip requires. Tomorrow I have a study session after school for however many of my algebra kids want to stay after school to prepare for their final on Thursday. Thursday I have the last meeting of my weird little gay kids club. And after that, I’m basically done, except for the part where I have five more days of actual school to survive.

Well, I’ll survive it; I’m fairly confident of that, having done it many times before. The operative question is how many of them will survive it. Hopefully all of them, but I’m not making any promises. The words “If you two idiots don’t sit down I’m going to set the entire room on fire” came out of my mouth today, so I may be nearing the end of my patience.

I mean “idiots” in the most loving way possible, and “set the entire room on fire” as a metaphor for the power of my love, of course.

Help me out here

On By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized1 Comment

Does anybody know what this thing is? Several of them have popped up on intersections near me; I’m pretty certain they aren’t cameras because, well, they don’t look like cameras and some of them are on intersections that definitely do already have obvious cameras. There also tend to be just one or two per intersection and so they aren’t covering all four directions. I mean, it looks like a bell, but as far as I can tell they don’t make any noise and why the hell would anyone be mounting bells on the roads at intersections anyway?

I was dead to the world by 8:00 PM last night, and considered making it twice in a row tonight. I can’t explain it; I am genuinely not having bad days at work by any standard but my god am I coming home exhausted. I’m back to wondering if signing up for summer school was a mistake again, but I still feel like passing up all that money for a job I’ll be done with by noon every day is a horrendously poor decision.

In other news, I got an email today that is almost certainly a scam. I’m following up on it; if it’s a scam, it’s a quite detailed one and I’m going to follow it down the rabbit hole until the part where they ask me for money just for the lulz. If I’m wrong and it’s not a scam, it’s big news, but obviously nothing I can share just yet.

(It’s gonna be a scam. It’s definitely a scam. But at least I’ll get a post or two out of it.)

Fair warning

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

Coming home and dying on Fridays seems to have been a thing lately, and indeed, that’s what I did tonight, and we are going to be at a wedding out of town tomorrow night, so don’t expect much more than a hotel picture unless I can con the bride into something vaguely compromising. Luckily, I don’t have a lot of planning to do for Monday, because I suspect once we get back on Sunday all three of us are going to collapse into separate rooms and not speak again for a while.

I quit

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

All of it. Forever. Forever and ever, and ever and ever.

This is a review of a local high school, and I hope the author steps on a Lego every time she gets out of bed for the rest of her stupid life, and I hope her mattress is lumpy and her pillow is fifteen degrees warmer than her room:

Also, guess what LMS my district uses?

There’s currently a screen up saying Canvas is undergoing “scheduled” maintenance, which … no. No, it isn’t.