September 16, 2015

 This has the potential to be lengthy but it is after 10:30PM, I have been ready for bed since 8:30PM, and I have a headache. So we'll see what happens.

More testing today. Four scheduled tests with a small group of first graders coming in at the end of the day to finish up. From about 12:45PM until 3:45PM I was on my feet, watching kids take tests. It was pretty great.

The first graders tested this morning and it was the class with the Chinese girl. She had to take the test because why not. Who doesn't love a pointless test? When she was done I pointed at her scratch paper, which she had not used because why would she, and said she could draw. She sat there for several minutes not really doing anything so I opened up Google translator and typed in that she was done with the test and that she could draw (or something to that effect). I pointed at the translation, and then played it so she could hear it, before I erased it and went to write down a few test scores for kids who had finished. When I came back later she wasn't drawing but I did see she had something on her paper. In very careful handwriting she had written down “Enter text” and “Translation”, just as they appeared on Google translator. I couldn't help but smile. It was great. I shook my head to myself and then typed in that she should draw a dog or a house or a tree or a girl. A little while later I came by again and she had drawn a little dog under “Enter text” and a little girl and a sun under “Translation”. I tried my best. Maybe she just not that into drawing. Or maybe she was still confused from having just answered seventy math questions which were frequently English-heavy.

When the small group of first graders who hadn't finished this morning came back this afternoon, the Spanish speaking first grader was with them because she had been absent this morning. She managed the test pretty well, not score-wise obviously, but she got the idea of how to work the test pretty quickly. At one point she tried to get help from the boy next to her, who I think might speak at least a little Spanish, but I kind of stepped in and showed her how to answer the question (not give her the answer but showed her the controls). With my brief understanding of Spanish, she wasn't confused about how to answer the question but the question itself, but the boy next to her looked confused (maybe he isn't that good at Spanish) and for some reason we don't have a translator sitting with these kids, so I just wanted to move the process along.

Other than testing, there wasn't much. I entered test scores at the end of the day and this morning I scanned a drawing that one of the kindergarteners had drawn. This is the girl who needs to be in SPED so she can have a full-time para but her parents don't want that label so instead have hired observers to be in the room all day. Observers who aren't allowed to interact with anyone, including the girl, and serve no purpose other than making the teacher uneasy. Anyway, every day at the beginning of the year there is a student of the day in kindergarten and each day the kids draw a picture of that student. The little girl has never really drawn the student of the day and really likes mermaids so she tends to draw them all with a big fin, if she even gets that far. But today she actually drew a person, with two arms and legs. The teacher wanted me to scan it because the original will go into a book but she wanted a copy so she can show it to the girl the next time she is trying to draw a mermaid and show her what a good job she had done before. My mom came down with the drawing and I did a quick scan and edit because she was in a hurry but in my break between the morning and afternoon tests I made it look better and sent the teacher a digital copy.

My journey home after work was a tragedy of errors. It never quite achieved comedy. At the light near the school I go straight to go to Chipotle. The car in front of me turned left and as I went to go straight the car across from me turned left, so right in front of me so I had to apply my brakes. This is actually a somewhat common occurrence because the two roads don't line up well and people coming from the other way often aren't the brightest it seems. When I did make it across the street, I only made it a short way before having to turn left because the road was closed. The whole road had been closed yesterday and I don't know why I didn't think to look farther down before I decided to take that road today but I didn't, so I was left with a roadblock. I knew I needed to take the second right to go as far as I wanted but the two cars in front of me took the first right and I jumped on the bandwagon. This put me on a road that didn't go as far as I wanted so I had to turn left again, then right to get back on the forward track.

When I got to the intersection I wanted I looked right but the road was still blocked off so I had to continue forward. There were two cars in front of me at the intersection to a larger street and the one in front wanted to turn left. And they weren't accepting anything less than a thirty-second break in traffic to turn onto the street. It was ridiculous. But they eventually turned and I eventually made it to Chipotle.

There was a guy who has worked there a long time at the front of the line so he had things moving along and I got a well made burrito. Unfortunately, the slow girl was at the register. And for quite awhile she was having a discussion with an equally slow group of people at the register who I think had called in their order. The line of tacos and burritos kept growing as the fast dude tore through them and this girl wouldn't end the conversation and start ringing other people up. She is not suited for work that requires speed or even the slightest sense of urgency.

When I left Chipotle I was an idiot and thought maybe only one lane of the road was closed. That road being the one from earlier. With all the roadblocks. Well, turns out the whole thing was closed, which I learned after turning onto a side street heading toward it, so I had to turn around and go back. Then I was a polite idiot and waited for a dude on a bmx bike riding in the street to go by. Well, that dude turned out to be an asshole. I get the impression he was only riding the bike because he lost his license due to alcohol and/or drugs. Rather than riding off to the side of the street and was slowly swerving back and forth across the entire lane. Then he took a right, which is what I needed to do, and did his little swerving ride for the next two blocks. If I didn't care about dents in my car, I would have seen how high far I could knock him down the street in front of me.

At the next stoplight there was a big truck in front of me and there was a girl in a big pickup to my left on a side street wanting to turn on. I thought she was turning right so I pulled up behind the big truck but a short while later I learned she was turning left and wanted to be in the lane to my right. There really wasn't enough room for that to happen and I ended up having to suck right up behind the big truck so I didn't lose a taillight to the pickup truck.

This new route put me one street past the one I needed to be on to mail a bill so when I got across town I again had to go out of my way to get back on track. Then I headed over to buy my Powerball ticket. They've installed new stoplights by the gas station over there and they make getting out of the gas station kind of a pain. I needed to turn left and there were several big pickups at the stoplight to the right so I couldn't really see into the far lanes and it was hard to tell if traffic was coming. Eventually the stoplight traffic down the street to the left caught up and when the big SUV in the right lane couldn't go forward anymore without blocking me in due to the traffic at the light, they waved me forward. I slowly started creeping out, trying to tell if there was any traffic coming from the right. When I looked back left, there was a big SUV coming in a little fast in the far lane. I hit my brakes, they hit their brakes, we waved apologies, and I pulled out the rest of the way and headed on my way. Thankfully the rest of the drive home was uneventful.

Dinner was good because I actually had a full-sized burrito, and I think the videos went over pretty well. After dinner I did a little school work. I realized that there were a few things I needed to read for the discussion post this week, that I hadn't read because they were in the optional readings, so I didn't write my discussion post tonight, which I kind of wanted to do. Instead, I wrote most of my interview paper for my academic library class. Something I should have done a long time ago because I did the interview back in August.

Tomorrow I need to read the articles so I can reference them in my discussion post. I also need to finish my interview paper. And maybe do some work on my group presentation. I have completely ignored that this week. I need to get back into that mode I was in at the end of the summer semester when I was way ahead on everything. I actually felt good about myself. Getting behind makes me feel like crap and makes it that much harder to keep up with things. I finally got on top of the reading, doing it the weekend before the coming week. Now I need to step it up with the assignments.