May 16, 2013

Right before going to bed last night I had the feeling I needed to check the yearbook one more time. So I did. And thank goodness. I called one of the third grade teachers by the wrong name. Whoops. In my defense, I used the same last name for her as the last girl on the page before. So I was apparently just in the mood to use that name. But I got it changed, and read every other name on my pages, before sending it off to the parent I'm working on the book with. Now my fingers are crossed I didn't forget someone else or missed some spelling error.

I came to the realization today that the front right pocket on my jeans is like a clown car. I carry way too much crap in that pocket. I think people would feel like they were watching clowns pile out of a car if they saw me pulling everything out of my pocket.

This morning on Good Morning America, Dan Abrams finally got to take a jab at Nancy Grace. They always have the two of them on together and Nancy Grace is incredibly annoying, with a grating voice that she uses to shout with and interrupt and talk over everyone. I don't like her. And I feel sorry for Dan Abrams every time they are on because she never lets him finish and she is constantly attacking his opinion. So today, they lost her feed in the middle and at the end George Stephanopoulos apologized for losing her, but then Dan Abrams chimed in “I'm surprised we can't still hear her.” Hilarious.

This morning I printed off all the MAP reports. Two copies of each, one for the teachers and one for the office. That's a pain but I managed it. I printed off the text reports for the first class on one printer, then moved them over to the other printer to print the graph reports on the back, while printing off the text reports for the second class on the first printer. That way I had constant printing going on and it went relatively fast.

In between the printing I went and read with kindergarteners, for the last time. They aren't sending books home for the rest of the year so there won't be anything to read with them. There were also a few fifth graders down there reading with kindergarteners today because they apparently got in trouble and their teacher's punishment for them involved reading with the younger kids.

I had my second grade reading group and it went fairly well. Not productive as always. I started with having them write about what they read yesterday. They are supposed to do that every day after they read but no matter how much time I give them at the end of our time, they rarely get further than the title of the book and the date. So today I gave them fifteen minutes and that was barely enough time. The only kid who is actually able to finish the sheet in a decent amount of time, finished way before the other three so I flipped through the book and gave him random words to look up in the dictionary. When we finally did get to read, they managed to read two pages before there was a false alarm about their class going to lunch so that was the end of that. They are always worried about whether or not it is lunch time yet but their class has to walk right by us to go to lunch so there really is no worry. Second graders.

A lot of my day was spent putting in the last few scores into my note card spreadsheet. Then merging those into Microsoft Word and formatting them so they will look good on the labels, which will them be put onto note cards. I got it all finished and printed off examples for the principal to look at. She wants me to add in reading lists for kindergarten and first grade so that will give me something to do tomorrow.

Near the end of the day we had an assembly for a Physics professor who showed off a bunch of fun physics experiments. Most of them involved heating stuff up to cause change. The finale involved having the whole school go out onto the blacktop and surround a big trash can that was filled with water. The professor than filled a small soda bottle with liquid nitrogen, tightened the lid, and dropped it into the trash can. A few moments later it blew up, throwing water several feet in the air. Apparently last year the explosion was bigger and got all the kids wet, so those that remembered this were underwhelmed. It was still pretty cool though.

After school I wanted to take a nap but the dogs kept randomly barking so I didn't get around to that. After dinner I went and visited the new volunteer kid for a typical, forty-five minute visit. He said the last day of school for him was yesterday but he had to go today because he has to finish an art project. Tonight I got a cherry vanilla limeade, which I haven't gotten since my first volunteer kid. I think anyway. Next time I want to get an orange or peach vanilla limeade. In my head it will taste like a creamsicle.

The rest of my night was spent doing the same old thing. I record my yesterday and my today so I am now caught up. And now that I am done with this I am going to go to bed because I am tired and I am fairly certain I will be even more so in the morning. Luckily it is an early release day tomorrow so I should be able to take a nap before I have to go to the theater.