working harder than 9 to 5

I'm not sure I want to go back to real work.

Lesson planning takes up so much time. Prepping for school eats up my life.

Last week we had testing. I had free time. I got to school 15-30 minutes later (between 7:50 and 8:05). I left earlier. (Except for family night.) I didn't plan forever after I got back. Instead I went for walks. Cooked good food. Talked to friends. Read books. (The fact that I've had three short weeks in a row now is also contributing here.)

It's been lovely catching up with people. Honestly, falling out of touch like we have can make me sad. Even though it is because we're busy with other adventures. Icky schedules not meshing. Time zones. Work hours. Spotty service. Traveling. Visitors. You know...that stuff.

Okay.

Six and half more weeks. And then I get to go wander.

Breathe out

The mother I was fearing didn't show up at family night.

See, I'm failing her daughter. By that I mean both that her daughter's grade in my class is a solid "F" and that there is something that I am not doing as a teacher. At least she's not learning.

I was all prepared, had the grade reports for everyone printed out so that I could show you point by point what assignments were contributing to your grade. But before we got to that we'd review your attendance. Because, with 13 absences and another dozen or so tardies since January, well, do you think you should be passing? But mom's been angry as the grade has dropped from a C to a D to a D- to a high F. I was dreading her.

Instead I got to talk with the families of four of my favorite students. Many who want to know what they can do to bring their grade up more. (Well, at least if 50% is many.) Parent night was actually kind of fun. Wow.

A head's up. I may not be blogging as much here in the next few weeks. I agreed to post on a blog for a class at my college and am trying to get my other blog updated some more. The class blog is locked (at my request, and maybe the request of some other alumni) but if you actually know me and want the address to the teacher blog, comment to give me a head's up or just send me an e-mail.

Far more addictive than it should be

You know those "Click for Charity" sites (like the one I linked to in my last post) that you sometimes go to because you feel like you should? But you know they're depending on advertising and is that really what you want?

I just found out about a new site that combines that with my nerd side. FreeRice is a vocab game. Sure it still depends on ads for its donations. Bu it encourages you to keep on clicking. And clicking. And clicking. I want to get to higher and higher levels (unfortunately I'm keep getting error messages and beginning again).

The site just started. So their data on how much has been donated daily is fun to look at. Sadly though I don't know Excel well enough to run the regressions I want to play with (and I didn't learn a few key steps in R). It does make me wonder why I don't see more about internet trends in word problems. (Maybe because the books that I'm looking at still talk about video and tape cassettes.) Note to people who are writing the word problems, let's get some of the data about MySpace and Facebook. Can we track growth of friend count? Is that appropriate?

Further note to myself, it's Friday night. I'm going to be working a lot this weekend. During your downtime it is okay to not think about lessons.