Tuesday, March 04, 2014

laissez les bon temps...

Today was a day of many whacks, if not to the head exactly, at least to the pysche.

In chronological order, then: One of my dear students very casually mentioned that many students really don't like me.  While I would love to be able to say it doesn't bother me, it does... and of course I would love to explore the reasons and discount whatever tween-age logic is dominating their thoughts, but the reality is, I have a job to do, and doing my job is exactly the kind of thing that some 7th- and 8th-graders are going to resent.

Some short but indeterminate amount of time later, I was meeting with another teacher and recapping events from our recent science fair, which was mostly horrible but ended on a somewhat high note.  The downer from this meeting was learning that many of the elementary school parents think, "We had all this new science fair stuff because we have a new science teacher," me.  Reality: we had all this new, and barely workable, science fair stuff because our district imposed it on us.  I had a chance to look over the packet briefly, but not to give any input, and can honestly say it had nothing to do with me: don't shoot the messenger.

Of course, I'm left with ~320 assessments to do, so if I spent only a minute on each it would still take me more than 5 hours, but given the rubrics I'm supposed to be using, it will be more like 5 minutes each, and I am (not so strangely) resistant to spending a  huge chunk of my upcoming spring break on grading science fair projects.  I need to come up with a solution, but I'm not sure what it will be.

Today was a testing day for my students, and my 8th graders continue to underperform, with a dismal 45% passing rate on a unit so easy they really should have been able to pass in their sleep.

And last but not least, when I finally left campus at about 5PM, I had a voicemail from my endo: my appeal for the PET scan was denied.  No other information, just that, and if I had any questions, please call  What are the next steps?  I have to call to find out.

Today is Mardi Gras.  I defrosted jambalaya for dinner and mixed up some Kentucky mules when I got home, and then moved on to Pancake's Big Day White.  Some part of me warns against self-medicating with alcohol, but it's not as if I'm actually drunk... it just took the edge off.  And now I'll go finish grading my tests and putting those grades in, and preparing lesson materials for tomorrow, because even though I have about 30 hours of grading hanging over my head, curriculum instruction continues.  Friday can't come soon enough.


1 comment:

nina said...

Oh Joan -- total yuk. Well, wait: not total. The list of things that could go wrong but did not go wrong is long. Still, when you describe your day, all I can think of is how hard the working world is on the soul (and therefore the body) and how unfair life can be (and how unfair students can be!).
To spring, to summer, to better days!