Commencing Countdown, Engines On

Ok, I’ll just keep breathing and waiting for the one    more      day of school before break.  One day!  One!

And I have so much to do tomorrow that I can’t even leave right after the bell rings along with the fraction of the student body that comes to school tomorrow.  I have to clean up my room (piles of papers that are graded but not handed back), make detailed plans for the sub that’s coming in after break (I’m on extended vacation), put away a bunch of lab equipment, maybe even grade a class set of tests.  Yes, because I’m evil and giving a test the day before winter break.  I’d rather give the test tomorrow than teach them everything and wait two weeks.  Might as well get it done and move on.

Today was frustrating because I still had about 75 quizzes to grade on top of making a small make-up quiz and having students show up after school.  I gave them the opportunity to take a make-up quiz if they did horribly on the last test.  Out of the 15 students I invited, six showed up.  The ones that didn’t show up were the ones that basically received a zero on the test.  Two 2/40 and one 3/40.  I give them a chance to gain points back and they DON’T SHOW UP.  How am I supposed to help a student who has no interest in helping himself?  Anyway, I was so tired by the end of the day and the students were bothering me so much (“But I still don’t know how to do this stuff!”) that I had a mini psychotic break and started drawing on a student’s nose with a red pen.  Of course he let me, so now I have two cell phone pictures, one of the guy with a big red dot on his nose and the other of a girl with a big red dot and a red moustache.  We were laughing hysterically and it felt so amazingly good to let loose and have a good time.  They looked kinda silly, I must say.  I’ll see if I can manage to post the pictures without revealing identity.

New addition to the blog:  Since I’m usually listening to music while I’m posting, I’ll post what I’m listening to.  If you have any suggestions or questions, leave a comment!

Music:  A Kiss To Send Us Off by Incubus off of Light Grenades.  This album has the “new” Incubus song Love Hurts that came out in 2006 but only gets radio play recently.  My third Incubus album and pretty solid stuff.  Also bought the new Killers album (going to see them in January) and Kings of Leon’s second album Aha Shake Heartbeat.

Another note:  Thanks a million to www.alphainventions.com for driving traffic to the blog.  If you like what you see, add me to your blog reader or come back often.  Tell a friend (or many) and leave a comment.

Confusing Teachers & Students

I know I planned on posting on this blog every day.  But, of course, I’m in extreme procrastination mode right now.  How can I not be…we’re only a couple of days away from winter break.  WINTER BREAK. VACATION. So I have piles of papers to be graded on my desk (two sets of labs and 100 quizzes) that I’d like to get done before break.  Why?  So I can come back and not have to grade anything.  I’ve been counting down to break for about two weeks.  Ok, I’ll be honest, since Thanksgiving.  I’ve also been checking the school website every morning just in case there’s a delay due to ice or something like that.  No luck there yet.

Today I had two girls come in for extra help after school.  Usually after-school help on Friday’s is a big no-no.  But I tried to get them on Thursday and they couldn’t.  So there they were on Friday afternoon.  Instead of working, they gossiped and drew on the chalk board.  Each and every time I got them to sit down and work, it lasted about 3 minutes before they got distracted and went off on some ridiculous story about their lives.  This is why they need help to begin with, they can’t pay attention for more than a couple minutes.  At this point I had given up trying to get them working, because I saw it was an impossible endeavor and I wanted to leave.  So they may not have learned any physics, but I now know all about their boyfriends and their ex-boyfriends.  Isn’t that exciting?

A friend asked if and when I was going to comment on Obama’s Secretary of Education.  My answer is that I will, but that’s a long post full of my educational beliefs.  I’ll get to it soon (although I missed the chance to link it to the cnn.com article and have it link to my blog).