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2001-11-07 - 10:23 p.m. I just checked the fare watcher thing and I could go to Las Vegas for only $54 each way for spring break. I don't know if anyone else will want to go with me, though. We'll see. It is my goal (and Cassandra's) to go back to Las Vegas without Jasmine so we can do all the things she made us miss. I had a good day, although I am wallowing in self-pity and self-loathing over the fact that I never seem to get any papers graded ever. I am a total failure when it comes to that. I am surprised more kids don't ask where their papers are. I would be annoyed at me but maybe they have gotten used to it or something. We ended up finishing up the meetings this morning on time. I found out that our next meeting will be after school and we will get paid an hourly rate for anytime we meet outside of the normal school day. I am pleased by that! Let's hope we do more meeting outside of school than during the school day. I am excited about the work we will be doing. I ran into my principal and told him I was excited and then he asked if I would present what we learned at the staff meeting (only me and a math teacher came from our school). I said yes even though I am scared to death to do that. He just meant a little overview though so it's not like I have to go over the whole spiel. The reason I am a little scared about presenting it is because the ideas surround teaching to the test in some ways. Most teachers are against teaching to the test, as I was before this meeting. However, the way that we would be incorporating testing into our curriculum is a lot less intrusive and reductive (hopefully I am using this word correctly) than it could be. It actually seems it will be a positive way to do things. We get caught up in being scared and angry about the state testing but ultimately most of the things they are testing for are things I want my students to be able to do (although not always in the format they are presented with in the state tests) and we will not be limited to only teaching those things or teaching them in such a way that they will be able to do well on the test and nothing else. So I really do feel good about it even if on the surface it sounds sort of dangerous. How to present the information to the teachers without getting them angry is another question. However, I do think teachers will be pleased to actually have a curriculum guide, and I think they will be pleased to see that much of what they are doing anyway is in it. The other good thing about my day was that I came back in the middle of fourth period and walked into my classroom. I've never been there for half a day so I have never been able to see how the kids act for the sub. The kids were quietly reading, and this was one of my rowdier senior classes! :) They had convinced the sub that I let them listen to music as they read, so the music was on low, but other than that I was very impressed (and that wasn't a big deal really). I told the sub he could go ahead and go but he was all, "Oh, I'm going to go ahead and go through the study guide with them. I'll finish up here since you have gym duty at lunch. Go take a break!" I thought that was nice. I took him up on his offer and went and ate my lunch early. He said that everything went well for the most part and that yesterday seventh period did well (!) I was so happy to hear that. I will definitely use him again in the future since the kids were so good with him and they like him. My students were happy to see me back, though, which is always nice. I taught fifth and seventh and I just felt really happy to be back in the classroom. It felt like I had been away for a week or something. I'm glad I got that little break from them because I feel a lot more refreshed. I was a little sad to see how full the turn-in boxes had become in my absence, so am stressing over grades. I also was sad to see we have a staff meeting at 7:30 AM tomorrow morning. We have an inservice day on Friday where we will undoubtedly meet, why do we need to have a staff meeting on Thursday? UGH! We have two staff meetings a month, one at 7:30 and one at 3:30, and I absolutely hate the morning ones. I normally don't have to be to school until 8:00 and that extra half hour early is very difficult for me. We can supposedly leave at 3:30 instead of 4:00 on those days but I always forget about that. I have almost 1,500 words in my short, short story. I decided to write in the third person, which I never do. I am writing a story about a teacher who is lonely and sort of a few days in her life. She is based on me but I couldn't think of anything interesting to happen so I decided to have her house get egged on Halloween since I was so worried about that. I am definitely not going to post the story on here, or probably even enter the contest, because it is REALLY bad. But I am really happy that I am actually attempting to write fiction again because I really haven't written anything other than a few poems since high school. And you can only get better by writing often, as I always tell my students. :) Cassandra called me last night after a bad day at work and we stayed up talking until 1:15 in the morning! I had to take a nap when I got home so missed most of Dawson's Creek. Needless to say I was disappointed because I missed out on my weekly dose of the-guy-who-used-to-be-Tristan. He is so fine and on DC he is often shirtless! I used to never get excited by guys' bodies or anything like that, but I really like the way guys look when they are sort of thin but toned. That guy has a body like that and I am just lusting after him!
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