April 30, 2014

Today turned into a slightly different day than I was expecting. There was a fifth grade MAP test first thing so I got all tests loaded up and then went and handed out the State Assessment tickets upstairs for the test happening later in the morning. And then I sat and waited. Well, I finished the card art thing I was working on and printed out a test one to see how it looked. And then I waited. About ten minutes after I was expecting them I tried calling up to the third floor but no one answered. So I walked up there and the classroom was dark and empty. On my way down I saw them coming from the library so I caught up with the teacher and asked if she planned on testing today. She did not. Turns out she signed up for today but thought she had signed up for tomorrow. She also thought she signed up to taking the Reading test first when in fact she had signed up for the Math test, so it hasn't been a good week for her. I think she also messed up testing days earlier in the year but I'm not going to go back and check. The point it, she felt bad, and I felt slightly annoyed but got over it because it didn't really matter. She wrote me an apology email and I wrote back telling her not to worry about it but that if she ever taught a lesson about calendars she might want to triple check it.

The next test was a State Assessment and after about fifteen minutes with no class I went back up to the third floor to make sure my favorite sub remembered they were testing. There were just about to head down, so I got a little free exercise. In a flash from the past, most kids got errors when they tried to log in and the ones who didn't couldn't actually get in so the error never had a chance. I went to tell the principal and while I was in the office the fifth grade teacher passed through looking for papers she had set down somewhere but couldn't remember. As I walked by I just said “Shocking” and she replied “Of course you had to be here.”

I went from having two tests to no tests this morning. It gave me time to print off the card art, catch up on my MAP spreadsheet, and also catch up on all the sixth grade pictures I had but hadn't made into slides yet. I actually preferred the lack of testing because I was wondering when I would have been able to get everything else done.

This afternoon I helped a couple kids with their first thumb drives, showing them how to find it on the computer, how to save to it, and how to safely remove it. All things I don't think were things until I was in college. I can't remember when I got my first thumb drive but I'm fairly certain it was really expensive and didn't have very much space on it. Gigabytes are nothing these days.

The last hour and a half of my day was all sixth grade MAP testing. The goal was for the kids to finish their Reading test and then their Math test. Most of them were able to do this but there were two or three kids who didn't make it through the Reading test and a few more who didn't make it through the Math test. Hopefully they will be back during another classes testing time so I won't have to mess up my schedule. Fifth grade will be in tomorrow morning (hopefully) and sixth grade was supposed to have a make-up time in the afternoon but apparently we have an assembly. So who knows.

After school I stopped and got gas, this time with a pump that didn't keep shutting off on me so I didn't have to guess and actually got a full tank. Then I hit up Target before finally heading home. I can't be sure but I think I saw a kid I graduated high school with at Target with his wife and kid. That just seems so grown up. I have a birthday next week and I am well into adulthood, but I don't feel grown up at all. I want a wife and kids but I can't even imagine all of that responsibility. Hopefully I figure it all out relatively soon though. The clock is ticking. Not so much in a biological sense but in a I'm-getting-old sense. Although I guess that is biology. But not in a girl way where their baby time frame has a definite end point. I just want to be physically capable of playing with my kids, if not running around, but able to have fun with them. Not just sit on the couch like an old man, afraid to break a hip.

And speaking of all that grown up stuff, I spent my night playing a bit of Tera and watching YouTube videos. I also spent about an hour putting a new screen protector on my mom's phone. I only ruined one but I'm convinced the first one comes pre-packaged with dust on it. The one really grown up thing I did tonight was add a several more rows to my purple scarf. I am somewhere around thirty inches now, slowly but surely. I'm feeling slightly better about my chances of getting it done before school is out but I'm going to have to keep at it.