May 12, 2014

Last night there was a bit of a storm and the power shut off at least twice. I woke up a little after one o'clock and the power had been off for about an hour. Then I woke up again around four o'clock in the morning when my ceiling fan came back on. I actually woke up several seconds before my fan came back on and I way laying there trying to figure out what was different about my surroundings. It was strange.

I gave my thank you notes to the second grade teacher and my favorite substitute this morning. They both seemed to enjoy them.

Today at work I spent quite awhile updating spreadsheets and printing off MAP reports for teachers. I included one of the spreadsheets I made, the one showing the basic scores and percentiles for each test and how much they have gone up and down for each kid, and the teachers seemed to like it. When I wasn't doing that, I probably spent even more time copying, laminating, and cutting stuff for one of the second grade teachers. When I went in to check and see if the laminator was on, one of the fifth grade teachers was sitting at the table in the lounge just staring at me. Well, she had been staring at the stuff taped to the board right by the door but when she heard someone coming she looked over, giving the appearance that she was just sitting there, staring at the door, waiting for someone to come in and talk to her. It was pretty funny.

This afternoon we had the last band and orchestra concert of the year. Pretty much all the songs that the band played are ones I remember playing. And I'm fairly confident that I could pick up a trumpet and still play them. Not from memory but I can still read music, and if I didn't have music I could probably figure them out with enough time. I liked the trumpet but I never got to Armstrong or Gillespie good and that was a deterrent to my continued journey with the trumpet. Also, going to these concerts has given me a newfound respect for my parents, and all the parents of band kids, for going to concerts and clapping and lying about how good it sounded. Because it doesn't sound good. If you're a fan of music, and have the slightest ear for music, these concerts are painful. But I have learned it isn't really about the music at this point. It's about these kids creating something. They put in all this time to learn something entirely new, that they couldn't do a year or two ago, and the produce something that is passable. It isn't supposed to be good. It is a demonstration of the ability to learn and get better. And it's kind of beautiful. The kids feel good about what they have learned and want to show it off and you feel good that they feel good.

MAP testing lingers on. Today ended with a second grader retaking part of her Reading test, which she bombed the first time around. Her score on the first part went up quite a bit but the second one just tanked it so I brought up the idea to her teacher of having her retake it. And that turned out to be the right choice because she went up nineteen points. Still slightly less than her last score but combined with her score on the first part it should at least bump up her percentile a little bit.

Tonight I didn't really do anything. Quite the shocker. I played some Trials: Fusion and got to the tricks, which is a new feature to the series. At the moment, I'm not a big fan. It seems very hit and miss. I'll throw tricks and they won't happen or they will happen but I won't get points. Or I'll repeatedly move the sticks in what I think it the correct way but end up doing tricks that aren't even close to what should be happening. It's also just kind of distracting. I play the game because I like the challenge of the tracks and the stunts don't doing anything for me. I'll save those for skateboarding games.