perspicacious.org

No school tomorrow, I'm going to an inservice for this project I'm doing in the spring. It's called the Marsville project. My students will be building Mars habitats and (this is the cool part,) in March we will join up with all of the other participating schools and create this structure of bubbles linked together. Each class will have one bubble, and they will be connected by tunnels. Um, I'll see if I can get some pics, because I know that isn't going to make any sense to you otherwise.

School is good. On Friday we had our Halloween parade and dress up- I dressed as Viola Swamp, a character from the book Miss Nelson is Missing. The point of the story is that the teacher, Miss Nelson, is really nice to her students even though they misbehave. She finally has enough, and Viola Swamp comes to take her place. It was kind of an inside joke between me and my kids. I think they thought it was funny. (?)

Saturday was the school Halloween Carnival. My room parents arranged our booth, so I didn't have to do anything. I dropped in for a while, and then left to do some lesson planning. I didn't think the carnival was anything too exciting, but I'm sure I would feel different if I were 10 years old.

I have been shopping for a new PC. Actually, it will probably be a used PC. Since I have a smokin' 133 mHz Pentium, anything will be a step up. I also have other assorted computer parts lying around, including a 486 that I swear I am going to turn into a linux box one day. I just need to get a CD-ROM drive for it. Anyway, I saw some used PCs around 500 mHz and 140 megs RAM, Win 98, modem, sound card, etc. for around $500. I think I'll wait a month or so for holiday sales, and then maybe get one. My dad says he'll come shopping with me.

Isn't my life exciting? I'm trying to figure out if I can fly to NJ to go to Eric's boot camp graduation. Logistically, I'd probably have to fly into Baltimore/Washington, which is 3 hours from Cape May. Then I'd, I dunno, take the bus to Cape May? I'd better decide quickly, I guess. But not right now, because I'm going to go read my book and watch Headlines.

Sunday always feels like it's not quite part of the weekend. Monday morning is always creeping up on me and I have lessons to plan and papers to grade. Yes, I could do these things on Friday afternoon, but I usually opt to go home and take a nap on Fridays instead. These are the choices that I have to make. lol.

Conferences last week went pretty well, I didn't get yelled at or anything. Only two of my conefercnes were mediocre. One was super overachiever kid, or more accurately, super pushy mom. This kid is new this year, and very smart (but not a hard worker. He rushes through everything.) Mom is really pushing for him to extra work and accellerated stuff, which he is certainly capable of. I have been giving him accelerated math work, but that's as far as I will go. I would much prefer that he work hard on the work that the rest of the class is doing rather than rushing through everything and sitting uninvolved with his book. Also, I think that he needs to just be a kid without being pushed into doing lots of extra stuff. 10 year olds don't need that. There is time for that in high school. I'd rather he made friends and was more involved in the class.

The other mediocre conference was for super lazy kid. The one who does nothing unless I am watching him all of the time. He is on the right track to flunk out next year. Grandma is paying his tuition, and she is a really strong person. I have a feeling she'll knock some sense into this kid or he'll be in public school. Bummer for the kid, though. I think that he really could benefit from an environment of hard-working and considerate kids. I dunno. Over the past week, since the conference, this kid did none of his homework at home. He did complete some things in class during catch up time, but nothing was done at home. He will fail next year if he keeps this up. I hate to do it, but I think I need to start keeping him in at recess. Blegh, that's like punishing me. Still, if it helps him to get his work done at home where it should be done then it's worth it.

The reason that this all bothers me is that I really don't give much homework. Maybe one assignment per night and usually nothing on weekends. I know that the parents think that I don't give enough, but I'm not going to give more work just to appease the parents. Yes, I think that they need to do some work at home, but I'm not going to give more because the parents want something to occupy their children.

So, that's what's going on in my life. This last week was pretty good, all things considered. We did a lot of work in science for our plant study, including planting bulbs and making chromatograms. I also taught the kids how to do base 5. They really enjoyed it, even the kids who usually don't like math. I was surprised how much they got into it. I taught them how to add, subtract, and multiply in base 5, too. Then we tried binary and hex. Neither worked as well as base 5, though.

All for now, I need to get started on work for next week. Time keeps moving forward…

So, this is really happening. We really are bombing Afghanistan. We are supposedly bombing at night and dropping food during the day, which I guess is supposed to make our efforts noble. It will take a lot more than a few "smart bombs" to defeat Bin Laden and the Taliban, and more imporatntly to begin to rebuild the country of Afghanistan. I hope that our puposes are clear and not rooted in vengeance. I think that's all I can ask for.

Here is a funny quote I found:

"Heard on the news today that bin Laden is actually “a common Saudi name.” Read the other day that Osama means “Tiger,” or some such supersized feline. Which means that his name could strike the native speaker’s ear as “Big Cat Jones,” which is certainly macho enough. I’m going to think of him as Pussy Smith. Or perhaps Kitty Johnson."
– James Lileks

In other news, I have parent-teacher conferences tomorrow. Yikes! I think I'm ready. I hope I'm ready. I have grades averaged, obviously. I also have a file of work from each kid, and reading and math assignments to show. I'm kind of nervous about it, but I think it will go alright. Nobody has yelled at me yet, so I doubt they'll start tomorrow. Most of my kids are doing fine. There are only 2 kids, really, who have some problems I need to discuss with the parents. One has an 'F'- the only one in my class, due to missing work. The other is kind of lazy (really lazy, but I'm being nice here,) and throws a lot of attitude. I just realized today that this kids is 11, and is older than the next-oldest kid by more than 6 months. That's kind of a big deal. He will be 12 in April.

Well, wish me luck, anyway.