I know everyone is hanging on the edge of his/her seat (everyone is a singular pronoun, and the currently correct usage is either his/her or to alternate now and then; everyone should take out his book, everyone remembered her pencil, and etc.), waiting for the First Day Quiz answers. First Day Quiz Question One: What was the most common computer issue your gallant narrator had to fix for people yesterday, during our one prep day? a) printer not working b) mouse not working c) software that used to be there isn’t any more d) monitor resolution e) can’t play dvd’s Answer: d. While all of the above were things I had to deal with, believe it or not, screen resolution was my number one complaint. When IST reimaged our computers over the summer, they must have changed the default desktop size. All day long it was, “How do I make my fonts bigger? I can’t see my icons.” Guess our staff IS getting a bit long in the tooth. First Day Quiz Question Two: How many kids whom I flagged for needing (a lot of) extra reading help, were also recommended for AVID (in 7th grade for Pete’s sake)? a) 0
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OK. This time for real. Daily, baby. Well maybe… It seems like I wait longer and longer each year to get ready for school. We started today. I went in Monday and started hooking things up, but most of that day was spent in meetings, checking out our district’s latest software purchase, DataDirector (more on this later in the post), and hounding IST to fix all the stuff they broke over the summer (they were actually very nice about it…except for…well anyway…) First Day Quiz Question One: What was the most common computer issue your gallant narrator had to fix for people yesterday, during our one prep day? a) printer not working b) mouse not working c) software that used to be there isn’t any more d) monitor resolution e) can’t play dvd’s You’d think I might have started earlier this year, what with teaching eighth grade for the first time since 03/04 and all, but you’d be wrong. I was at Refugio Beach all last week, instead of getting ready. Oh well. Our district has subscribed to a new web-based data service. IST, it seems, has been spending their a good portion of their time entering three years’ worth
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Ok. I’m back. Took a whole month off, plus I wasn’t exactly prolific during June either. But it’s time to start thinking about bidness again. School starts on the 25th. Not exactly tomorrow, but I do have a new prep this year (8th grade!), and I think I might see some friction this fall as I’m thinking about staging a coup and becoming department head. More on this soon. I’m sort of starting to regret that extra week of spring break. Plus, we all know how quickly vacations can slip away. Especially when they go like this: “On the first day of my summer vacation…I woke up. Then I went downtown…to look for a job. Then I hung around in front of the drug store. On the second day of my summer vacation…I woke up. Then I went downtown…to look for a job. Then I hung around in front of the drug store. On the third day…” Sister Mary Elephant (I share this one with the kids every year. It makes them feel naughty that we’re listening to Cheech and Chong. Plus, then they get it it when I say, “Thank You” in that voice.) Notice
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(Friday Flashback – Last Year) “Mrs. G” has been teaching in our district for over 40 years. She’s been at our school since it opened in 1980. She’s taught English, art, social studies, music, and much more. She is literally an immovable object, and doesn’t need to rise from her chair to strike fear (well, not exactly fear any more, but…) into 8th graders’ hearts. She doesn’t care what people (parents, admins, other teachers) think of her, and speaks her mind whether it’s “appropriate” or not. She currently teaches 8th grade US history, and has been going toe to toe with a particularly pesky student I had last year. Now, this “Steve” sends me e-mails about how the posts he’s reading in the discussion forums on our Moodle don’t have enough thought behind them, and he has a real brain. But he’s a loud-mouthed pain in the rear, whose parents it seems, are wrapped around his finger. I was probably the only teacher he got along with…until Mrs. G. He’s still a pain, and though, like me she recognizes and likes the Steve underneath, she’s not afeared of giving what she gets. So… Food is not allowed in our classooms. [...]
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That reminds me of those great SNL skits about the Sofa King. You know, how the prices are "Sofa King" low, the deals are "Sofa King" great, etc. (You obviously have to say those phrases out loud to get the joke.)