October 1, 2015

 Yesterday morning when I got to work, along with several monitors being out of place and having to push in stools and put headphones back on towers, even though I had done all of that before I left the day before, my office chair was also missing. I ended up finding it completely lowered and pushed in at one of the computers in the back row. That monitor was also pulled forward as far as it could go and tilted up, and the stool that is normally there was far under the desk. To me it looked like a small child wanted to get comfortable. A small child after school under the “supervision” of a Boys & Girls Club worker. It seems that a lot of the workers want to be friends with the kids, not disciplinarians, and I learned recently that they really stress the “club” part of their name. Which I guess is an excuse for the kids to misbehave in the school, before and after school hours, when school employees aren't there to keep them in line. Things get broken, go missing, or are left in shambles, but it's okay, because it's a club and there are no rules or sense of responsibility.

Anyway, I know my office chair gets used when I'm not there but I can ignore it, until it is left in the back of the room in a blatant display of its misuse. That was the last straw and I emailed the principal to see if we could institute a “policing your area” policy in the computer lab after school so I don't have to come in every morning and pick up after Boys & Girls Club. She ended up talking to the new girl in charge of it and she spoke with me yesterday afternoon and said she would do a better job of making sure things were in order. I am hopeful. This morning I didn't have to push in any stools or put up any headphones, that's at least a one day improvement.

I finished watching the second season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. this morning. I'll be honest, I was getting kind of tired of the drama over the last several episodes. Maybe because I was spreading out my watching, only seeing small chunks at a time, but it seemed like it was dragging on forever. It was also the drama built out of misunderstanding, which I can't stand, especially when I am the omniscient viewer, privy to details that would easily clear a situation up but are lacking for the characters in question. It's over now, though, so I can move on to other things. Or maybe just back to Psych.

Before work this morning I went to the Treasurer's office to pick up my vehicle registration. Instead of taking a number they have a new system where you type your phone number on this large touchscreen. Then you get a text message and someone calls your number out when it is your turn. Helpful I guess if it is really busy but I was the only person in line. Also, they don't read out your whole phone number over the intercom, which is good, but also unexpected. I was kind of zoned out in my own world when they read out a number. I was wondering who it belonged to, maybe someone in the bathroom, because I was the only one not being helped and no one was coming forward. Then the lady at the open desk got my attention and asked if that was my number because I was the only one not being helped. When she said the number again I realized that it was in fact my number. The last four digits of my phone number. It is weird only hearing the second half of your phone number, especially when you are programmed to hear phone numbers read all the way through. Anyway, I told her about the message I got, verified who I was, and got my registration. It was actually in the mail pile to be sent out so it is a good thing I went before work.

I spent over an hour this morning cleaning all the desks and computers in the lab. This included the monitors which tend to get covered in snot because kids can never quite managed to turn their head or cover their face when they sneeze. I also replaced all the mouse pads. I've been holding off because the mouse pads are crap, I guess we got them for free at some point, and they don't hold up to kids very well. Namely, Boys & Girls Club kids. When I put them out originally, at least a few of them were damaged by the next day, and it happened at Boys & Girls Club. Slowly but surely they were all damaged. I had been planning to put out replacements and I figured right after attention had been brought to the undesirable state the lab was being left in, would be as good a time as any. Maybe for a little while longer there will be a reprieve from the disregard for school property.

There were classes in the lab throughout the day. The only one really worth mentioning was the second kindergarten class, which was logging into Compass Learning for the first time. For the first two years I think I logged them in the entire time. Last year I had them start logging in during the second half of the year. And this year, I've started them from the beginning. And they can handle it. Most of them, anyway. They'll get better. There were eight kids missing today out of the twenty-four in the class, which made a big difference. The best part was that no one cried. Last year there were criers but we managed to avoid that this year, so I'll say that was a win.

We finished up the last MAP tests today, with one day to spare, so I'm pretty happy. Now I just need to wait for tests to be deleted so I can print reports. I just had the thought that I didn't shutdown the computers in the lab and that has to be done on computers that were used for testing in order for scores to be submitted. I didn't do it yesterday either because we didn't test, and most of the computers weren't shutdown by Boys & Girls Club. Hopefully they managed at least the three that were used for testing today. I think last year or the year before an email was sent out about a computer still being on in the building that was preventing scores from being uploaded. That ended up being a laptop that they were still testing on. I didn't get an email today so we'll hope for the best.

After school when I walked out of the lab I ran into one of the fifth grade teachers in the hall and I ended up talking to her for awhile about her broken flash drive. After clocking out I walked by the principal's office and she asked me if I happened to remember her state assessment log-in information because she couldn't find it. I thought I might still have it written down from the one time I had to use it last year when she was gone so I went back to the lab and looked. Turns out I didn't. I probably shredded it. Which is good, but not when you need it. She texted me later that she ended up finding it so that's good. Finally, as I was walking by the library, the fifth grade teacher and the librarian were in there so I stopped in to tell the librarian I would have the Lexile chart for her tomorrow because I didn't have time to finish it today. It is the color chart I made for her last year but I didn't save the original, editable copy, only the PDF, so I had to remake it. She wanted me to take the grade levels off because a teacher wanted to show it to her class and the librarian didn't want the grade levels being shown, especially for the lower kids who would see their Lexile range attached to a lower grade level. After talking with her I'm going to also take off the label for each section so now it will just so the range and the associated color. I ended up standing and talking to them for quite awhile about all sorts of random things, and finally left the building a little after 5:15PM.

I will confess that I did not read the final metadata article tonight. I had a headache and I just couldn't read a thirty-two page PDF. Fortunately I was able to write my discussion post without it. I will probably want to at least skim the important parts for the crosswalk assignment, but for the moment, I'm good. I also posted my research topic for my academic libraries class to the discussion thread. Because that is something we were supposed to do this week. The professor also put up a second discussion thread but I decided to save that for tomorrow. It is about budgets and will be easy enough to bullshit but I wanted to put some thought into it when I wasn't so tired.

Tomorrow, I'm going to finish the Lexile chart and edit some pictures for the other kindergarten teacher because he saw the ones I made for the other kindergarten teacher and asked if I could do the same for him. I took the pictures today I just need to edit them. I imagine I will probably do a bunch of other stuff as well.