This morning I arrived at work just in time to help my favorite
substitute carry in several bags of fruit that she brought for the
teachers. She is always bringing some sort of food and today she
went healthy. We took the elevator down instead of the stairs and it
was my first time using the elevator. I always thought it was a tiny
one but it turns out it is about twice as big as my imagination.
That was strange. One of the SPED teachers and her intern (who was
the kindergarten intern before Spring Break) came down and the intern
was saying she kind of wanted one of the small oranges but she didn't
want to peel it. But it just so happened that the substitute brought
some that were already peeled, so I pointed those out and mentioned
something about them being peeled by small children in a backroom.
Well, yesterday was a fluke. State Assessments were a total crap
show today. In the first class six kids were able to load a test but
only two were able to finish. The other four had the test freeze on
them or had questions that never loaded. And the two who finished
one test had the next one freeze on them. After that we didn't even
try having the next class test. Shortly after that decision was made
and email was sent out saying that the server had crashed and that
testing would be postponed at least until Thursday. At this point
I'm a proponent of paper and pencil tests. If they want technology
involved, make the tests into PDFs, that the kids can access offline,
and have them put their answers on a scantron sheet. This should
have been the obvious solution during this transition year into using
new software. Rather than trying to roll it out across the entire
state they should have only done it in a few districts and given the
rest paper and pencil. It is such a waste of time. I feel bad for
the teachers because they're losing teaching time and stressing out.
And when the tests mess up it bothers the kids as well. But I really
feel sorry for the jackasses that decided a state-wide rollout of a
flawed testing system was the right choice.
I got a stack of sixth grade pictures today so I spent the rest of my
day working my way through those. And I almost finished. The note
sent home by the second sixth grade teacher mentioned something about
the school picture of each kid for this year and using that picture
in the slideshow hadn't even crossed my mind. But now I'm thinking
of adding that in. Some kids have old enough pictures that you can
tell who it is but others would be a hard guess. I still plan on
putting the name on each slide but a present picture would be a good
addition.
After school it was pretty much the same old thing. A lot of
nothing. I eventually had dinner and then spent the night watching
YouTube videos, Later... with Jooles Holland,
and practicing my keyboard. I've seen some commercials for Later...
but today the channel it is on had a marathon of it (Jooles as a play
on April Fools Day) and I gave it a shot. I like it. They have a
big circle or rectangle of musical guests of different genres and
they take turns playing a few songs. It is pretty cool.
And now it is creeping up on ten
o'clock and I'm going to call it a night. Mostly because I'm tired.
But also because I want to go to bed.
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