April 22, 2014

I keep forgetting to mention my Easter basket. It contained a bag of six individual boxes of raisins, a jar of unsalted peanuts, tangy buffalo Pringles, and a squicky green bird that puts on a light show when you slam it down. My mom says I'm no fun to buy for anymore. I will admit it is a little weird seeing an Easter basket without candy. But I liked all the stuff I got.

Today there were four tests in the lab, one State Assessment and three MAP tests, and it felt like there were four. It covered pretty much the entire day. The first test was the best because the fifth grade class all came in wearing bandanas with their names on them (they had also listened to music to get them pumped up before the test). Then, the teacher read the test instructions in an awful British accent because one of her students had requested it. Not the awful part but it was kind of a package deal. And it was great. But then the testing started and kept going and going and going. Right after fifth grade, one of the sixth grade classes came in and that lasted up until lunch. An hour later, the other sixth grade class came in, but only for forty-five minutes because they had PE, and only one kid actually finished. Fifteen minutes later, fourth grade came in, going from two o'clock to a quarter after three o'clock. The testing wasn't actually over though because a sixth grader came in to finish the test and he was there until almost 3:40PM. There were a few breaks in there but I was basically watching kids test all day. Fun.

There was a lot of running around today, most of it testing related. One of the resource teachers was testing with a kid but didn't have the MAP icon on her desktop and I couldn't log in as a proctor. I went and grabbed a laptop from the second grade cart and brought it up but I couldn't log in as a proctor on that one either. So I went across the hall to the SPED room and ended up borrowing one of their laptops. When I borrowed it the SPED teacher told me I needed to hardwire it, which sat in the back of my mind after getting it setup and then going down for the test in the lab. A few minutes later I decided that for MAP testing the laptops must all have to be hardwired. I'm sure at one point I knew this but I had forgotten. So after that test I went up and tried it on the resource teacher's laptop and it worked. Which was good because she needed to test two more kids, plus a third that would be coming back later. I returned the SPED laptop and went and grabbed another second grade laptop, along with an ethernet cable from the lab and one from the library. I got those all set up in the resource room and eventually made it back to the lab, almost in time for the start of that test.

In other runnings, I went to the kitchen to see if what I had from the printer was theirs (because the cook came in looking for something during one of the tests and the printer was off) but it turned out not to be theirs. They had actually printed to the library, not the lab, but to be fair, a few years ago the library was where the lab is now. And speaking of, I stopped by the library to find out who had checked out a book that was left in the lab. It turned out to be a second grader so I went to the other end of the building to return that. And later on went back down their to give one of the third grade teachers some stuff she had printed this morning but it didn't actually come out until this afternoon. I got my cardio in today.

Two other things from this morning that I just remembered. When I was walking from my car to the school one of the third grade teachers drove by me and did a whistling cat call. It was pretty funny. And secondly, when I was going into the office to get test tickets this morning, one of the receptionists wanted to take my picture, for who knows what. My favorite sub has also taken my picture several times recently. Also for who knows what. I'm curious but not enough to really care. I'm just glad I don't follow the belief that cameras steal souls.

Tonight I watched YouTube videos, added a couple inches to my purple scarf, and played a bit of Tera. Still a fun game. It is a tad annoying running across the map to talk to a dude, who sends you back to where you came from to collect something, and then going back to him only to have him tell you to deliver the collected stuff to the dude standing next to him or all the way back across the map to a dude right next to the spot where you collected the stuff. There's a lot of needless running around, but from what I understand that is pretty typical off MMORPGs. It's kind of nice zoning out and just killing mobs though.

I'm exhausted from all the running around today so I'm going to hit the hay. Tomorrow we have three tests. I'm pretty excited. My morning will be shot but hopefully I will have some time before or after the test in the afternoon to go get pictures of all the kids I don't have portraits for so I can add them to the yearbook. I believe the goal is to have it done by Friday. I will be glad to have that all finished so I can stop thinking about it. I haven't been thinking about it a lot, but it has always kind of been in the back of my mind. Not for too much longer, thankfully.