where in the world has the time gone? it's the middle of may already, and in 2 weeks school will be out, june will be starting, and the year half gone. yeesh.
and i'm nowhere NEAR halfway for my word count goal for this year. i miss my writing. :(
hopefully i'll make it up during dii's summer madness. we'll see, we got a lot planned for that. i still have to make the crests and set up the boards for it though. but it'll have to wait, just like everything else right now.
i'm scarce everywhere at the moment because i was given a "long term" position. i'm busily catching up on grading (with the help of at least one other teacher, thank god) and today will be doing some planning work and stuff as well. we've got 8 days in the classroom with kids, then i have 2 days helping with the end of the year clean up and moving.
and once again i've been given a problem class where the teacher is supposedly out "sick" for the rest of the year, but there seems to be something else going on. there's been clues that there's more than being sick at issue here: she's "not supposed to have anything more to do with the class," no one's saying what she's sick with (and usually, when there's a really long time, the administration and the teacher like to let the kids know what's going on and why a teacher will be out for so long), and other little things that just indicate there's a bit more than illness involved. i'm also getting the sense that she hasn't exactly made friends. it's not so much what they say as how they say it. so i'm wondering if she had problems handling the class (which i can see) and did something inappropriate, or if she had some kind of break down and just needs to get away for the rest of the year and start fresh with a new class for next year. it's all very odd.
as for me, still no ft/p position in sight. i didn't get my resumés out like i wanted early last week because it was too close to lunch by the time we got home and we had other things that had to be taken care of. it literally takes all day to get my resumes out to all the schools that are close enough for consideration. and now, since i'll be working the 2 clean up days, it looks like i'll have to hope i can get resumes out the following monday and hope that something comes up. i've had several teachers and other administrators ask me why i'm not in a full time position. my only answer is i'm not sure. all i know is if i don't get offered a placement, i can't get into gtapp; if i can't get into gtapp, i can't get certified because of the default on my perkins loan.
as for the class, most of the kids have settled in pretty quickly. we have a couple that have had major problems adjusting, and 2 or 3 of them have already been at least temporarily pulled from the class for their behavior. granted, one of them turned around and said some very truth stretching things about me, but i doubt it'll come to much. since there's only 8 days left, i'm getting creative with the behavior stuff, particularly since i don't really want it all to be negative.
the idea
i've come up with is to use sticker cards i've created. they have to get so many good behavior stickers and turn in so much of their homework to be able to go to the snack machine the last day of school. if they get everything -- nothing missing at all, then they can also pick from a goodie bag. i'm debating on a movie for the last day if enough of the kids are good. they wouldn't get the snack machine and goodie bag until the last 15 minutes or so of the class, so they might be able to behave through a movie. i'll have to keep thinking about it. at least i have a week to decide.
at least i'm working until the end of the year. i'm not sure i'll get the extra $10/day, but i was worried about not having any work the last 2 weeks. course, that also means i'll be the busy girl, so pretty quiet around here. the stacks of grading alone would be enough to keep me busy (really, thank god they got someone else involved to help! it's as much as i had for the high school in october, only i don't have the 3 or 4 weeks i need to get through it all), but the planning needs to be done as well. the teacher is sending stuff, but it's nothing more than busy work, to be honest. so i'm trying to plan stuff for the 2 classes (science and math) that do a little more than that, as well as try to allow time for make up work.
for the science class, we're going to do a brief overview of ecology. i think. i'm having trouble figuring out how to cover it in, essentially, 3 days since they need time to finish up the assignments from the last 2 weeks. i might do a project, but might not. if i do, it'll be some in class or weekend thing, i think. i've got to do a lot more looking into it and planning before today is done since i'd need to introduce everything tomorrow. good thing we bought ink or i'd never have the copies i'd need in time.
the plan for the math class so far is to cover decimals and fractions again and to do a math project over this next week that gives the kids "notebooks" for the formulas and so on that they need to know. this particular project would be a pretty simple copy and pretty up kind of thing, so if i do give them an ecology project, i don't think it would be considered overwork. we'll see. i'm not sure what else i should cover yet, but i haven't had a chance to really look at the book to plan more stuff. i need to finish the grading before i can determine more.
which i now need to get back to. after i see if i can order and get the goodies for the goodie bag in time or if i have to go to wal-mart and just buy pencils in bulk.
