back to the crunch...

My students may be done with the science fair, but I'm not.

I want to present the unit at my district meeting and recommend we roll it out district-wide, integrated into the seventh grade curriculum.  The only problem with that is, my district meeting is set for March 1.  So in order for this to be given any kind of consideration, I need to write it up at least somewhat coherently this week and get it out to all the interested parties.

Sheesh.  Just when I thought I could relax.

I need some data to back up my recommendations, and I have grades from last year and this, so that's one perspective.  But I wanted feedback from students and parents, too, so I put together two surveys last night, one for the parents online, and one for the students, on paper.  I administered the paper surveys today and will spend time tomorrow tallying them.  Fortunately SurveyMonkey has great analysis tools for the online survey, if only the parents would click through and respond!

On top of that, we're heading to Savannah this weekend for our niece's wedding, so I'll be missing school Friday.  That means sub plans, which always have to be excruciatingly detailed -- finished those tonight.  I also meant to make spectroscopes for my 7th graders out of the refraction grating I bought, but I didn't get to that.

It was just one of those days.  DD has really been struggling with optimization in calculus for the last week or so and today she just had a complete meltdown.  She called me at work (nothing quite grips the heart as seeing your child's school pop up in the caller ID on your own classroom phone -- Everyone knows they shouldn't be calling me here, during school hours...) and I told her of course she could go home.  She slept, and spent an hour on the phone with her brother, and feels better.  I hope.

So that was worrying, and something that hadn't happened before, so we'll have to keep an eye on her.  She puts so much pressure on herself to get all As.  It makes no sense.

What really derailed tonight was getting yet another round of deficiency notices for DS2.  Hey, we're not going to give back any assignments or give you any feedback at all until we tell you you're in danger of failing!  That's a seriously wrong model of education, and it's the one thing I would change about my kids' school if I could.

I spent about 45 minutes composing an email to his humane letters teacher basically telling him I don't buy it.  Don't tell me my kids is failing because he missed 2 reading checks, which are only supposed to be part of the participation grade!  We'll see what happens there, but here, it was horrible, because I completely lost any hope of the kid developing any sense of self-control while he has electronics in his possession, so I took them all away, even his phone.

He says he wants to stay at his school.  He says he'll do all the work now, since he doesn't have anything else to do, except piano and reading.  We'll see.  My heart is broken again for the millionth time over this.  I wish I could be hopeful, but I'm not.

It's just too bad that this is coming before our long weekend away, too.  It'll be casting its shadow over everything for quite a while.   Adding the last straw to my already overburdened psyche?  DD and I watched this week's episode of the X-Files, and let's just say Scully's situation hit way too close to home for me.

Now it's very late, again, and it's Ash Wednesday.  Can I give up being upset for Lent?