One of Those Days

Below is an excerpt from an email today. (I'm too tired and lazy to write it all again):

Today was a disaster. It started last night when I left off working after having been at a conference in Portland all day--only to get home and have Mark ask me to please, please go into town and get him his Valium because the narcotics by themselves weren't cutting the pain. So I turned around and went to Newberg and then came home and worked for several hours. About 11:30 p.m. I had just shut down my computer when I realized that I had forgotten to scout out a news clip to show in my high school classes today, but I was just so tired that I decided to wait until morning. But I also hadn’t showered last night, so I had to do that this morning, too, and … well, days that start off in a rush like that tend to go poorly, I’ve discovered.

Running out the door, I realized that I’d forgotten to pay two important bills. I plan to take care of bills this weekend, but these should have been done LAST weekend. ACK! I can’t hold all this in my head! I felt so bad that I let that slip, but what could I do about it right then? Nothing. So I went off to work.

I got through the first part of 1st period just fine, but then I went to show them the news clip I’d selected, I couldn’t find it. I had put the link in my lesson plans, but it only opened to a search screen. I also couldn’t find it in my bookmarks (although I KNOW I put it there, too, just in case). I looked and looked for something else that would be suitable, wanting to find something somewhat interesting and/but appropriate for a high school classroom setting. (There’s a LOT of stuff on Univision.com, but I didn’t think, for instance, that the story on Jennifer Lopez’ love life, for example, would be quite suitable.) I finally decided to just show them the weather, but first it wasn’t loud enough (solved that when I discovered that I can plug the speakers directly into my computer) and then we could hear it, but the woman was talking SO fast that it seriously felt like it was sped up. So that obviously wasn’t going to work. I finally settled on a clip about Obama’s visit to Miami and a mini-discussion on whether the embargo against Cuba should continue. All’s well that ends well, right? But those poor kids had to sit and sit and sit while I tried to come up with an alternate plan.

Then second period, the kids came in and said that they hadn’t understood what I left for them to do yesterday. They were supposed to take a test today, but I scrapped it and we went over everything they did yesterday. Even still, a couple of the kids were thoroughly lost. The book is HARD. I felt really bad for them. Oh, and then the vocabulary crossword that I had computer generated with their vocabulary words was all messed up. I DO make mistakes myself, which is always really embarrassing. But this was such a MESS that I know it wasn’t me. The computer really had a total brain fart or something. GRRRR. One of the girls gave me the web address of a more reliable crossword generator, though, so hopefully this won’t happen again.

Then third period … Remember how excited I was about Quia.com? and how much TIME I put into setting up my classes thereupon? Well, okay … the kids took their first quiz on Quia, and it did NOT go well. I thought that this being the computer age, they would do BETTER in an electronic format. Actually … no. Most of them bombed it. It was too confusing for them not to be able to write in the margins or mark things off (for the multiple choice), etc. Poor Emma, after struggling and struggling, clicked on something and got kicked out of the test. The site wouldn’t let her back in and scored her test at a zero. I told her we’d find a solution after lunch, but when I looked over again, she was wiping away tears. She’s such a sunny creature, but right then she was SO frustrated. When the kids got back from lunch, I gave her a paper version of the same test and she retook it. Said that it was “so much easier.” It was the same test, exactly! But … a different medium.

Then I also had to deal with the issue that only six kids could test at once. I knew that, of course, and I rotated them and gave the other kids a crossword to work on, but clearly the crossword wasn’t long enough because about halfway through the period, kids started finishing up. Then I had kids just wandering around, being loud and boisterous while others were trying to quiz. I could have/would have played a game with those who were done, except that I had realized that it was SO EASY for the kids to cheat on their tests with those big monitors just open to view and so much commotion in the class that there was NO WAY I could monitor who was “talking while testing” from the front of the room. So I ended up having to monitor the testers, while the rest of the class sort of … enjoyed themselves, shall we say.

Okay, so … like Jen Nice said, we all have learn through experience sometimes what works and what doesn’t. And I’m really glad that I figured out that this wasn’t actually as ideal as I had thought BEFORE I paid the money to extend my membership beyond the trial period. But still … that was a lot of time I sunk into this “brilliant idea.” Sigh …

And then all day I was so, SO tired, and I couldn’t help but think repeatedly of the fact that I probably won’t even BE here next year, and … if I AM here, can I REALLY do all this and grad school, too? and … it was just so discouraging. But thankfully, 4th period went really well, and they are such a fun bunch of hoodlums that I ended the day on an up note. And then I went to the staff room during my prep and was able to get all of Spanish 3 planned out for next week so that I only have one class still to prep for (and a HUGE pile of grading to be done/inputted), so that I felt better about my ability to get it all done this weekend (as well as the other non-work related things I needed to get done) so that (hopefully, hopefully) I have time to study this coming week.

But for tonight, I'm going to put up my feet and veg (likely while playing Pathwords on Facebook. That game is seriously addictive!). I have to drive Alex to the dance and pick him up later, but that's just around the block, so ... no biggie. I should, probably, do some work tonight since I have such a full weekend and such a lot to do, but I really feel like if I don't just go floppy for a few hours, I'll never make it.