Thursday, January 23, 2014

January 21, 2014

Today was a long but productive day. I had some time before work so I went down to the second grade room and installed the state assessment software on the laptop cart in there. Fourteen or fifteen laptops maybe. Possibly more. I lost count. It's not a hard process (despite the apparent need for that meeting) but it takes awhile to pull all the laptops out and log into them and go through all the steps and then put everything away.

The first MAP test was uneventful. Just a bunch of kids, in a room, taking a test. When it was over I went down to the third grade room to start installing the state assessment software on those laptops. I got a few into the process when the third grade teacher came in (they had gone to the computer lab after the test) and told me there were a couple fourth graders wanting to finish a test. So I stopped what I was doing and went to go watch them test. Neither of them finished because they only had about fifteen minutes before lunch, and they're incredibly slow (or thorough) test takers. When they left I went back and finished installing the software on the third grade laptops. And then came back to the lab and emailed all the teachers to give me a heads-up if they wanted to send kids to the lab to finish tests so I would know to be in the lab and not off working on something else.

This afternoon there was another test. Uneventful except for the fact that the lab was really hot. It was blasting heat this morning and when I turned it down the heat went off but the air never came on. With the added head of twenty-seven computers the lab just got hotter and hotter. I propped the doors open with a couple reams of paper and told the secretaries. They got in contact with the maintenance guys, who were able to do something on their end, and the air came on, which was occasionally cold, but it wasn't enough to combat the heat in the lab. I had closed the doors at the beginning of the test but we ended up propping them open again and I left them like that for the rest of the day. Hopefully overnight everything will normalize. And not be freezing cold. Although I would prefer that over sweating.

Speaking of the reams of paper. I propped the doors open by putting the paper in the door jamb. Turns out they were right about head-level for a kindergartener because one of the really anyone kindergarteners walked into one of them. He exclaimed “Ow, who put that there?” And the kindergarten teacher replied “Maybe it was put there to test if you are paying attention.” A perfect response. And the kid obviously wasn't paying attention because he walked into a big ream of paper while he was concerned with something going on behind him.

The highlight of my day, only narrowly beating out the kindergartener, was the fifth grade teacher giving me an apology card she made for missing the MAP test yesterday. She thought it would be funny to kind of make it sound like it was her kids' fault so she had all of them sign it. It's pretty great. I think it's the only apology card I've ever received but it is definitely the best.

I was so exhausted after work. I think it was a combination of the long day and the hot computer lab and maybe a touch of sickness or allergies. Thankfully I was able to take a short nap before going to see the new volunteer kid. We sat at Sonic for about fifty minutes, randomly talking about stuff while he worked on his homework. Some of which was Physics. He was stumped on one question and I had no clue but I was able to ask the right questions to get him to notice the right stuff and think in the right way to figure it out. If that makes any sense.


And now I am going to go to bed because I am freaking tired. And tomorrow is going to be a long day. I need to quit the theater. Friday doubles suck big balls.

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