Wednesday, April 30, 2008

By 5's

25 more days! Our SOL's start on 3/12 - so we are in the throes of review. Gak.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Yeah, OK

I'm bored. School is turning into a SS/DD thing, and I'm bored. It will only get worse as we head toward the SOL countdown. I start reviewing for the SOL next Wednesday, and will continue to do so until the middle of May. GAK!

30 more days - and I'm bored with this, as well. I think I'll go to 5-day intervals.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Tuesday

31 days.

Remediation day. Yippee-skippee. I have a student in my resource class who, bless his heart, (said with a southern twang, and my hand over my heart) moved here from New York state this fall. He took the regent's exams in NY for several courses - including Earth Science. According to his mom (haven't seen his records) he passed those exams. Evidently, they don't transfer to the Commonwealth. So, he has to take the SOLs for courses he had in NY. Get this - he passed Earth Science, he passed World History, but he has to take the SOLs in these courses before he can graduate in VA. He took Earth Science 2 years ago, and remembers little. In my resource class, he's been reading the Earth Science text, and taking released tests. (and not doing very well on them) His mom asked if he could be put in remediation to better prepare him for the SOL. Not a problem, we are accommodating people. He was put on the other remediation teacher's list about 6 weeks ago. He's made it to remediation TWICE - and one time, he was escorted. He has many excuses - none of which hold water. On Friday, he was called in to the office to explain why he's missing remediation. After spinning his tales, he evidently realized the admin wasn't buying any of it. So, he pulled the "that teacher isn't teaching me anything. Can I be in Mrs. Lowe's remediation instead?" PTB said, "sure, and you can attend after-school detention this Thursday for skipping remediation for the past few weeks." So, he's on my list. This comes under the heading of: be careful what you wish for. I guess he thought I would be a) easier, or 2) more forgiving.

I saw him in the hall before homeroom today, and said "see you in remediation, right?" He looked surprised, said "is that today?", and scurried off to homeroom. He did show up in my class for remediation, looking extremely dejected. As I started reviewing released test items, he said "that's what we were doing in Mrs. ________'s room!" Duh. She and I plan our remediation together in order to ensure we are covering all bases.

Did I mention - 31 days?

Monday, April 21, 2008

Rain

rain, and more rain. Makes me want to go home and go to bed!

I looked at the calendar this morning, and not only do we have 32 days of school left, we only have 14 days until SOL testing begins. I have about 6 more days of real teaching to do, and then I start reviewing for the SOL. After the SOL? Still have to teach...something. Thirteen more days of school after that week of testing, and we are expected to continue teaching. The students are expected to come to school. We have to give final exams - although there are a boatload of reasons why a student can be exempt from a final. It's a shame that my most interesting and exciting lessons will probably be after the SOL. I can't take the time to be too creative and out of the box before the test. Grrr...

Friday, April 18, 2008

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Another sign

Our attendance lady rode her motorcycle to school today - leathers and all!

BTW---
34

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Is it...

too soon to be counting down? I think not!

36

Thursday, April 10, 2008

A Spring first


Beautiful day! We have a picnic table in a little courtyard next to my wing of the school, so the lunch bunch ate outside. The only problem with doing this - we don't want to come back in. I got my dose of Vitamin D for the day.

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

In case you're keeping score

  • New computer? aAlthough I don't get the wireless signal as strongly as I should. The geeks are still working on it.
  • Garage door fixed? a(Karen - mom says this one is hers - so your faith in the order of the universe is restored. The rule is still '3.' Which is a good thing, because according to a friend of mine, otherwise I would still be looking for 2 more things to go wrong to get to 6. Did that make any sense?)
  • Refrigerator fixed? x The refrigerator is still under warranty, so the appliance store does not get the $$ they usually would for labor and such. They are really dragging their feet, and being uncooperative. The part is in - I get a call on Monday to set up a time to come over and install the part. Can't do it Tuesday or Wednesday, because everyone in the shop (??) is going for training in Richmond both days. They can come on Thursday. Cool - What time? Can't tell me that. Between 10:00 and 5:00. That's no good, no one can be home all day. How about Friday? Nope - they won't be anywhere in the area on Friday. We can leave them a key (?) and they can just waltz in on Thursday when no one is home and fix the fridge. Yeah, not too comfortable with that. Mom says she can stay home on Thursday and wait for the guy, but she shouldn't have to do that. So - I'm going to call tomorrow morning after 8:30, and see if they can be more precise in the time frame. If they say morning, then I'll go home and wait for the guy. I have a meeting at 1:30 I can't miss, so maybe I can do both.

Saturday, April 05, 2008

New 'Puter!


I lured mom over to look at my new computer, and took her picture with the webcam. Tee Hee...
I look like I smell something bad.

Thursday, April 03, 2008

No good deed goes unpunished, or why bad things happen to good people

Back from Spring Break - and I have a headache.

The beach was nice - pretty good weather, very windy and cool most days. It was really nice to see Robin and Beverly - they caught me up on all the gossip.

Dusty enjoyed the beach - until Wednesday evening. Over the last few weeks, he's been growling at mom at random times, mostly when she was walking in the hall or into the kitchen. He gave out mixed signals - wagging his tail while growling, and then wanting to sit next to her on the couch. On Wednesday night, as mom was coming to the dinner table, Dusty growled, barked, and bit. I threw him out on the deck and called local animal control. Needless to say, Dusty is still at the beach. So, we are once again dog-less. I don't think I'm going to adopt another dog from a shelter. We were lucky with Lady and Missy, but I'm not keen on taking a chance again unless the shelter knows a dog's history.

On Monday, my last day of break, my computer started acting squirrelly. The display was turning a pretty shade of fuchsia, and jumping around like a bad TV picture. I shut it down, and toted it over to the computer geeks in town. The guy plugged it into another monitor, and the picture seemed fine. But (and lately, there's always a but), an error message started popping up about corrupt files. Uh - oh...that's never good. Sure enough, it looks like my hard drive is going bad. To send the laptop off for repairs on the display and a new hard drive would cost upward of $500, and take several weeks. I have two UOP classes going on, and a new one starting this week. If I have to cancel the one just starting, (because I have no access to my laptop for several weeks) it's going to cost me around $900. So, net cost of fixing the computer = $1400. No brainer - I ask the geeks to order me a new laptop. The new computer should be in today - in the meantime, I'm facilitating my 3 classes from my school computer. There goes some of the Germany money!!

On the same day, after coming back from the geeks, I realize the refrigerator is not cooling. Not only that, everything is melting in the freezer. Wonderful... I spend the late part of the evening transferring things out of the inside fridge/freezer to the garage fridge/freezer. Luckily, the thing is still under warranty.

Also, several weeks ago, the garage door stopped working right. Repair parts were ordered, and the garage door guy came yesterday morning to fix it. Yesterday afternoon, the fridge guy came to look at the fridge. Do we have a working garage door and refrigerator today? Nope.

For some reason, only one guy came to install the parts in the garage door. He arrived about 10:30, and was still there when I came home to meet the fridge guy at 1:00. He rang the doorbell about an hour later, and said he couldn't get things to work. He'll have to come back. Sometime. In the meantime, he disengaged the opener mechanism, so we can't use the garage door at all. We're parking outside.

The fridge guy diagnosed the problem with the refrigerator. Motor burned out in the fan that blows the cool air all around the freezer and refrigerator. Usually, he keeps that part in his truck. Not today. He'll have to come back. Sometime. In the meantime, we're using the refrigerator and the big freezer in the garage.

Ok - here's the good thing: ( I had to think pretty long and hard...) Since no one can open our garage door right now, our food stored in the garage freezer and refrigerator is safe.