September 6, 2013

This morning I decided not to exercise. I figure Friday is a good day for a day off seeing as how I work at the school and then end the day at the theater. I don't know that I will feel any less tired being up four hours past my bedtime but I figured it couldn't hurt. And a day off is a good thing. I'll be back in the mix tomorrow. And I did end up doing some push-ups to feel a little less guilty, so I'm not a complete slacker.

Throughout my day at work I spent a lot of time getting ready for MAP testing next week. I made the lab schedules for the next three weeks and updated/printed out the sheets I use to write down scores on when kids finish the test. The test is different this year and it looked like there might only be four scores for the first and second graders, instead of six, but I kept six columns on my sheet just in case.

In second grade reading groups this morning my first group worked on the unscrambling sentences worksheet with the robots on it and my second group had to pick a picture of an animal or other random things out of a basket and then write about it. That was like pulling teeth. I thought kids were supposed to be bursting at the seems with imagination. Is technology robbing them of this. Most of the kids picked animals they knew nothing about and then whined that they couldn't write anything about the animal because they didn't know anything. I told them to use their imagination and make stuff up. Tell me a story about what the animal does all day. Or make them into a character in a cartoon or their favorite show. I just wanted them to tell me facts if they knew any and if not, just make it all up. None of the kids really got it. They just got. I think if I was working with one or two kids I could probably jump-start their thinking but with six or seven kids it wasn't happening. I would try and talk to one or two and the others would get off topic and start messing around. Creative writing and BSing papers were two of my favorite things in school, I would have loved to be given the chance to just make up a whole life story for some random animal I knew nothing about.

The funniest part of reading groups was when my first group was working on the creative writing part on the robot worksheet, having to pretend they found a secret door in their house and writing about what was on the other side of it. One boy decided on the other side of his door was going to be a Dick's Sporting Goods made of pizza with golf balls made out of meatballs. When the boy across from him found out he practically showed "I LOVE DICKS!" in a completely excited way. It was funny.

In the lunchroom today it was pretty much the same old thing. One first grader dropped almost all of her crackers on the floor and started balling. I told her she was going to be alright and that life would go on and other stuff, none of which helped. She eventually stopped crying and I went back over and asked her if she had survived the cracker debacle. She nodded and then asked me what a debacle is. I tried to explain it to her and maybe she'll remember. A first grader walking around saying 'debacle' would be pretty great.

The most hilarious moment at lunch was completely unintentional on the part of the first grader but that usually makes things ten times funnier. There was a little first grade boy sitting at the end of a table with a whole bunch of chatty girls. At one point they were really going at it, I think talking about boys, and when I walked by they all started saying it wasn't for me to hear and basically told me to keep walking. In that cacophony of noise the little boy turned around and looked up with the most pleading eyes I have ever seen and said "help me". I couldn't help but start laughing because it was a perfect comedic moment for a boy surrounded by annoying girls. And then he held up his milk because he needed help getting it open. So I started laughing at my misinterpretation of his statement.

Right after the lunchroom I had about twenty minutes for my own lunch before one of the first grade classes came into the lab. They had a day off so they just played games on Cool Math. I think I have only seen one class ever do the actual math games on that site but whatever. There is one first grader who is really quiet and doesn't really use her words and she is awful at games. I keep trying to find easy ones for her but nothing seems easy enough. Her reading isn't the best so she can't read the instructions, and she doesn't have enough experience with games to have any sort of instinct or ability to know the general idea of what she should be doing. She just get frustrated and makes sounds and raises her hand. At first I would help her but that just meant I was the one playing the game because after showing her what to do and walking away, her hand would be up by the time I turned around and she would need help. I'm beginning to think everything on Cool Math is beyond her and I need to look elsewhere, like maybe ABCya or something.

Later on in the afternoon a para brought in a group of second graders and she had them looking up houses. They are working on a million dollar project, where they have to buy a house for $300,000 or less, put $75,000 away for college, buy a car, make a charitable donation, and buy stuff for there house, getting as close to a million dollars as possible. Then they will put it all together in a presentation for their class. It sounds like a cool idea and I had finished all my MAP testing stuff so I stood back with them while they looked at houses. That is actually pretty fun and it made me wish I had $300,000 to spend on a house. All but one of the kids were going for big, practically new houses. The one kid didn't really want to spend money and was drawn to all the small houses that were only just breaking $150,000 on the high end. So finally the para adjusted the search to start at $200,000 because she is wanting them to get as close to $300,000 for a house as possible. The kid ended up going with a house built in 1933 that looked like a major fixer-upper. It was an interesting decision making process to watch.

I fixed one of the pencil sharpeners in the workroom today. The other is completely dead and the other one has been kind of broken since last year. In order to get it to work you have to squeeze it. I noticed today while I was squeezing it and sharpening pencils for MAP testing, that the little cup for the shavings was flush with the top on one side but stuck out a little bit on the other. I took the cup out and started messing with the sharpener and found out that the front top piece was slightly rotated and popped out on one side. So I rotated it back and popped it back into place. After doing this the cup for the shavings was flush on both sides and I didn't have to squeeze the sharpener anymore. I probably should have taken the time to look at it last year but the other sharpener was working then so it wasn't a big deal. Better late than never.

Before heading home after work I stopped and got an oil change. I hit 3,000 miles yesterday on the way to visit the new volunteer kid and was up to 3,021 when I pulled in to get my oil changed. At some point I should go out to the dealer maybe and get a full checkup but the oil change will hold me over for awhile. And I didn't have to schedule an appointment. I got there a minute or two before the next person so I got in and out in about ten minutes.

Tonight at the theater I typed up most this entry, got a start on my next letter to my friend, and nearly finished Mrs. Frisby And The Rats Of Nimh. I actually would have finished it but I got to go home at eleven o'clock instead of one o'clock. I can't really complain about that. And now it is almost midnight so I am going to go to bed. It is way past my bedtime.