our house has been busier than usual of late, and it ain't all holiday and work stuff. thursday, miss thang got her little butt thrown out. in a display of tempter tantrums we haven't seen for awhile, even with the tantrums and behavior that got her a "find another place to live" notice, she tried to insist on having her way and literally blew up when she didn't get it. we were expected to bend the rules and bend over to accomodate her yet again. who cares if leaving a door unlocked could get things stolen or that other people live in the places she "needed" to call after 10 pm. by not giving in to her desires, we weren't helping her and making the whole move out thing easy for her.
i really wish i knew where she got the idea that adulthood is supposed to be easy. nothing we've done to raise our kids has ever been designed to give any impression that life would be easy and that everyone needs to acquiesce to their wants and needs. in fact, we've been trying to raise the kids so that when the world doesn't give them any handouts, they're okay because they already knew they'd have to figure out a way to get what they want or need. i guess miss thang missed that lesson on life, despite it being taught repeatedly.
at any rate, we're working on getting into new routines and dealing with other fallout since the hour long plus fight/storm that finally got her on the phone after curfew . . . to get a ride to her new place since we weren't putting up with it even one second longer. i seriously needed sleep, but her needs, of course, came first and she had to push, and she ended up pushing herself right on out of here. it was only a few days early, but it didn't need to happen at all. after we finally got her out of the house, it took me yet another hour to calm froggy down and we had to give taz an extra pill (lower dose) to help him get to sleep. we also got word that he was completely out of sorts on friday. hopefully the weekend will have helped work some of that out for him.
i've pretty much finished my grading and am now working on notes for a final review before the kids' final test. i also still need to finish my grade checks to make sure the grades i have are the same as the ones in i put into the computer. some grades just need updating -- kids have since turned in work and whatnot. but once you get to the point where the screen is full, it can be pretty difficult to tell where the updates go. even on paper, working on that has been slow. anyway, while i'm working on the review, i'm also baking some more cookies.
i've decided that some of the issue with the project grades was the manner of help i tried to give them. somehow the extra pages i gave with the project information and the rubric, pages for them to keep all their notes on, confused them or overwhelmed them. in a way, it just seems there's no excuse for it -- they were told to use the ptoject info and rubric to determine what they needed for each piece of the project; in others, i suppose i can see how wading through the packet -- even a packet where the majority of the pages were a checklist with lines for notes -- would be a bit much for them.
so, for the first time ever, i'm admitting that grading on a curve may have it's place and am going to be entering the grades curved to the highest (or second highest in the case of one class where one person did get a 100 on one of the pieces) grade received. that won't much help those who got 50% or less, but should help alleviate the hit the students in the b through d range get. personally, i hate the whole idea of curving grades since it doesn't give the students grades based on their own ability and work but grades based on how they compare to other students, but this is a case where it seems warranted since even many of my a and b students ended up with b's and c's, and even a few d's. 'course, this still doesn't help the kids who turned nothing in and who will be getting the promised 0 because of it.
beyond all that, the house is pretty quiet. taz is a bit more wigged out than usual, but that's to be expected. i'll finish up the review between batches of cookies, and probably head to bed -- without a crazed teenager trying to get her way in the most dramatic way possible -- around midnight, which works for me.
it's nice to actually know there will be some peace and quiet in the house instead of wondering if this will be the night little miss goes off her rocker and sets everybody in an uproar. it's sad, but i'd rather be in my classroom of absolutely frustrating students than have to come home to miss thang on the rampage.
word of the moment: picaresque
belonging to or characteristic of a type of prose fiction that features the adventures of a roguish hero and usually has a simple plot divided into separate episodes; relating to or characteristic of rogues or scoundrels; picaresque fiction - prose fiction featuring the adventures of a roguish hero
