Thursday, April 21, 2016

April 21, 2016

 There was more testing today. That is my life now. There were three full classes throughout the day and then random kids finishing up. The slow third grader came in the morning and in the afternoon. Trying to keep her focused is like herding cats. She's all over the place. This morning she managed to suspend her own test twice. The first time I looked up after hearing a bunch key pounding and she was going to town on the keyboard with her eyes closed. I don't know if the overwhelming number of key presses suspended her test or if she managed to hit just the right buttons to cause it. Either way she had to log back in. The second time I think she had the exact opposite problem. She had been working on one problem for so long that I think it considered her idle and timed her out. That happened about 11:50AM, which is when I was planning on stopping her anyway, so we called it for the morning.

This afternoon there were two tests and a fourth grade performance. I only got to see the second half of the performance because after stopping the third graders test again so she could go to the gym, I was about to walk out the door when the slow sixth grade came back to finish her test. We tried this morning and it wasn't reactivated so I sent her back to her room until I could get it reactivated. About five or ten minutes later I got that sorted and went to grab her, which worked out well for the class because one of the students was trying to do a PowerPoint presentation and it wasn't showing on the projector. I played around with it until it worked and then went back to testing.

The sixth grader had to stop the other day because the audio question only played for a few seconds and then stopped. The same thing happened this morning but it played for fourteen seconds before stopping. Better but still not great. I had her stay there while I went and got it reactivated again to see if that would help. It didn't. Still fourteen seconds. I suggested the sixth grader just guess based on her prior knowledge but this is the girl who spends forever answering questions and then spends an equal amount of time going back over them. So of course she wasn't going to guess. By the time she came back this afternoon a trouble ticket had been put in and things apparently got resolved because she was able to listen to the full audio clip. This allowed her to finish stage three of her test but because that stage had been reactivated stage four wouldn't show up until tomorrow. It would have been nice if she could have gotten it over with but it was also nice to get out of the lab and go to the performance.

After work and tonight I didn't accomplish anything, once again. I'm at that stress level where I'm just kind of shutting down. I really need to work on my conference proposal because that is due on Sunday, and that alone really isn't that overwhelming, but on top of all the other stuff I need to do it feels overwhelming. The only way to lessen those feelings is to actually start checking things off my list but I'm struggling with that. Tomorrow night I actually need to do something. It is obvious that all day Saturday will be spent on the proposal. My goal is to get it done Saturday which would allow me to look it over Sunday and make and last edits before submitting it. The majority of Sunday should be spent digging into my group project. It all sounds so good written out but the reality will probably be far different. I need to just start chipping away at this stuff.

My penmanship books, ballpoint pens, and first fountain pen should be arriving tomorrow. I'm not sure about the arrival dates for the pens and paper I got on the other websites. I will definitely take a look at the stuff that comes tomorrow but I'm going to hold off getting into the penmanship books or playing with the fountain pen until I get my proposal done and at least get a start on the group project stuff. Hopefully I can stick to that and it will be incentive enough for me to get work done.


Now I think I'm going to go to bed. Last night I got to bed after midnight and as soon as my head hit the pillow I was wide awake. That is always annoying. I feel equally tired at the moment but hopefully that doesn't escape me when I get in bed.

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