perspicacious.org

Tomorrow is April Fools Day, and I haven't got anything planned. I had thought that I was going to have to show my house at a neighborhood open house. (It is technically on the market right now, not that there are any takers.) I was going to booby trap the house, maybe set loose a rat or two. But, the open house is next weekend. I'm thinking I may call my parents and tell them I'm lost, or got in an accident, or the car broke down or something. It probably wouldn't work, anyway. Well, it might work if I actually started crying.

I went to a dinner for members of my dad's Civitan club tonight. The dinner was alright, I had a huge plateful of stuffed sopapillas and rice. Then we went as a group to a new observatory that was built next to the natural history museum. There was a kind of planetarium showing first, and then we went outside to look through several telescopes that were set up outside, including the big one inside of the observatory itself. I didn't see anything too exciting, just the moon and Jupiter and Saturn. The moon was really the coolest- you could see all of the craters really well. It looked like one of the photos taken by from space. The planetarium thingy was OK, except that the woman explaining everything had the most annoying voice. She did say that beetlegeuse, the star that makes one of the shoulders in the constellation Orion, is Arabic for "armpit of the giant." That amused me. She also said that because the planet Saturn is the lest dense of all of the planets, and it's density is less than water, it would float in your bathtub. I leaned over to my mom and whispered, "Yeah, but it would leave a terrible ring." Ba-dum-ching.

Tomorrow my parents are coming over to help move so furniture so that if someone actually does come to the open house on Sunday they might buy the house. That would mean I'd have to move and start paying rent, so I hope it doesn't happen too soon. After than I have to go and (surprise!) do a bunch of work in my classroom. I have to get ready for poetry month, which starts on Monday. Only 7 more school days until spring break…

I'm sick again thanks to the germ-carrying vessels that are my students. I don't feel too bad, but I have a viciously painful sore throat. So sore that the pain woke me up in the middle of the night. I've been taking aspirin and tylenol in varying amounts, but nothing seems to get rid of the pain. They say it takes a year for your immune system to adjust to being around germy children. I was just sick two weeks ago, which seems pretty damn recent to me. What can I do but wash my hands and take my vitamin C, though?

Last week my class built "Leprechaun traps" with a first grade class. The traps were really cute- the 1st graders had great ideas. We helped them set the traps up, and then I had my kids write notes from the Leprechaun- things like "You almost caught me but I got away!" Yesterday while the first grade class was at lunch we left the notes along with some green glitter, scraps of green cloth, and those gold coins with chocolate inside. The first graders were so excited. It was really cute. The only sad things was this- two of the boys in my class were asking me about setting up the leprechaun traps, and wasn't that like we were lying to the first graders? I told them that maybe it was, but that there are some things, like Santa Claus and the tooth fairy, that you get to enjoy when you are a little kid. Then you have those memories and fun time to look back on when you grow up. One of the boys said, "You mean there's no Santa Claus?" Oops. I would never have thought that I had 5th graders who still believed in Santa Claus. I hope I didn't ruin it for him.

So, I needed to write a quiz tonight but I left the book at school. I guess I'll have to write the quiz at lunch tomorrow and give it verbally. Ooops. I also have to write a new math quiz- we do a math facts test every week (multiplication and division facts, they have 4 minutes to take it,) and once they get 100% they move up a level. I just haven't written the new level yet.

I'm way behind on grading, I stayed at school until almost 6PM, and then I just couldn't be there any longer. So I went and cried to my mom aboyt how I was sick and had so much stuff to do and I couldn't catch up. She's going to come help me grade papers tomorrow afternoon. That's really nice of her. I'd never get it all done otherwise.

I'm hoping that my sore throat will feel better tomorrow. Nothing seems to help it. Aspirin helps a little. I'm supposed to crush two aspirin and add the powder to water, and then gargle with that. It sounds horrible, but I'll do it if it will help my throat feel better. Tomorrow they kids will have to do a lot of book work because I am not up for leading any big activities. I try to not use the workbooks very often, but sometimes there's nothing else I can do. Life goes on, and I won't be a bad teacher for making them do workbook pages. Will I?

I know, I know, I haven't posted an update in over a month. But, to say that I have been busy is something of an understatement. I don't know when I have ever been this busy. It is a good kind of busy, though. I don't feel that my time is wasted. I feel like I am doing something worthwhile (how could it not be worthwhile?) and even though the money is basically crap it is more money than I have made at any previous job. Yes, I know that was an atrocious sentence, and I don't care. I give myself a D in grammar/mechanics.

Anyway, teaching is going well. Most days I would give it a 7 or 8 out of a possible 10. That's as high as I would expect any job to be rated, save swimming with dolphins at sea world or something like that. It is an unbelievable amount of work. I know that over time the workload gets smaller- you learn how to manage your free time well, you have a good file of lessons to use, etc. But right now I am essentially doing everything for the first time. So, while everything is interesting and new for me and for the kids, it takes a lot of work and planning on my part.

Last week was ITBS testing, and it took most of the instructional time for the week. We used the rest of the time to do activities that let the kids move around a lot- we measured trees out on the playground, measured things around the classroom using base 10 blocks, did some weaving, etc. I also let the kids watch some Little Rascals movies. I got a lot of grading done while the kids were testing, and I didn't have to do nearly so much planning, but the week was still very tiring for me and for the kids. I'll be glad to get back on track this week. In a while here I'll go over to the classroom and write my lessons plans and do the last of the grading.

Friday was an inservice for all of the Catholic school teachers in Albuquerque. We went up to St. Pius, the Catholic high school, and sat through a very long seminar. Mind you, it was relatively interesting, but still long. The speaker was a 60ish nun with a background in teaching. She now travels around the country speaking to parents and teachers. Our seminar was on character education, and it was pretty interesting. I think that she also speaks about identity formation. She kept mentioning that she could come back next year if we were interested. In fact, I think that she mentioned it at lest 6 or 8 times over the course of the day.

I didn't learn anything particularly earth-shattering, but I did get some ideas for character lessons in my classroom. It sometimes seems like a waste of time to talk about virtue and character, but it is important. I think I could justify half an hour per week discussion of something related to character. We could read "Chicken Soup" type stories and discuss, that kind of thing. The second thing I realized is that I need to try harder to be friendly with my students. I'm not really an affectionate person, so it does take a lot for me to be friendly all of the time. I do think that I could do better. There is a line between being friends with the kids and being friendly with them, and I guess I've been worried about crossing it. I try to be really democratic, and let the kids make some choices in the classroom. It does backfire sometimes- they think that because I give the choices sometimes they should get choices all of the time. We're working on it. I'm still learning and so are the kids. None of us are perfect.

I'll try to update more often. I think that I need to write and reflect more often, it helps me to learn from my mistakes. My time is more valuable than it used to be, though. I'm trying.