January 26, 2016

 Going back to yesterday's discussion of Beetle Adventure Racing, I emailed the fifth grade teacher to find out if it was a coincidence that she owned a real-life Beetle after enjoying Beetle Adventure Racing as a youth. Turns out, not a coincidence. She was a little bit obsessed with the VW Beetle. She said every year she would get a Beetle poster at the book fair and hang it in her closet. Then when she was sixteen she said she went five hours away to find her green Beetle. That is dedication. Or obsession. Impressive either way.

Today there was more testing. One scheduled test in the morning and one in the afternoon, with a few other ones sprinkled in. At some point one of the SPED teachers came to ask me if there was anyway to recover a terminated test. I said I didn't think so but said she should contact that lady who is in charge of MAP testing for the district. That lady confirmed that terminated tests were gone forever. Apparently, the SPED teacher accidentally terminated a test that she had been working on with a kid for a week. He was up to question 34, which is either almost done (if it was the Reading test) or over halfway done (if it was the Math test). Either way, kinda sucks. To be fair to her, the 'terminate' and 'suspend' buttons are right next to each other and the window that pops up after clicking them probably looks very similar. She said when it first happened that she told the kid they might be able to get the test back but if not she would buy him lunch. So at least the kid is getting a free lunch out of the deal.

When I wasn't testing I worked on my spreadsheets and I also started typing up testing accommodations for the state assessments. One of the kindergarten teachers took pictures of all the kindergarteners and made them old with an app for the 100^th day of school. He sent them to me so I could put them in a file and print them out for him. Kudos to the app because most of the kids looked like tiny old people. It was kind of crazy. And I think that was pretty much my day. Most of it was spent on my feet watch kids test but I got a little work done.

After work I went and got my Powerball ticket before heading home so I don't have to worry about it tomorrow when I get Chipotle. Speaking of, I think I'm going to get a bowl instead of a burrito. Change things up a little. We'll see if I remember tomorrow.

I got my W-2 today. It's always sad seeing how little money I make. I am a hard worker and go above and beyond my job description, and my paychecks looks nice most of the time. I still get paid crap, however, and having the summers off certainly doesn't help. I really need to find a new job for after graduation. I enjoy my job now, most of it anyway, but I would also like to make a living wage. Hopefully I can find both with my next job.

Before dinner I read a textbook chapter. After dinner I researched stuff for my two discussion posts this week. For one I have to pick two tech resources from the book and find one on my own that I think are good resources for libraries. I managed to pick the two from the book so I just need to find a third one and then write up my post. For the other post I need to research NewsBank. I found a couple resources and I need to start writing to so I can see how much more information I need to find.

In my search for resources I found a couple good free image websites and a website for free education resources. I got lost in those rabbit holes for awhile but I found my way back out. Too many websites and not enough time. Tomorrow I would like to have at least one of those discussion posts written. Both would be nice but we'll see how things go.

Now I'm going to do nothing for a bit and then go to bed.