I am overwhelmed with paper and reports. Too much. When do we get to just teach? And now they want us regular core teachers to add exercise to the class period. Lemme see — 55 minutes allocated per class. Typical class size = 25. That’s less than 3 minutes per student per day, and that’s if there are no interruptions.
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I’ve been back in the classroom for two weeks and I’m still alive. I am pleased. Teaching last year was horrific. I felt more like a warden at Alcatraz than a teacher. I still wonder if I managed to teach ANYTHING! Oh wait, there were those handful of students who told me “gee, I really liked this assignment.” So I guess I reached a couple. The effort that goes into planning a lesson is nothing compared to trying to teach that lesson to kids whose behavior borders on the absurd. Ok. I’ll back away from that and just report that this year’s class is soooo much better. These are sweet kids. Really. Oh, they have their issues around behavior, and I deal with them swiftly, thanks to the strong support of the administration, but they are not mean spirited or disrespectful. I feel inspired by them to present well-planned lessons to them, whereas before, I just needed anything that would keep those hellions at bay so that I could get home in one piece. I know, already I’m going back on my word not to talk about that class, but man, you just don’t know how deep an impression they made on my psyche. I was reading online where someone was being a bit testy about the down time teachers have – summer, holidays, etc. School let out in May. I stood outside watching the last bus pull off asking “what the hell was that?” (referring to those ‘children of the corn’). I laid on my couch for almost two weeks straight. No joke. I was spent – emotionally and mentally. Plus, my voice box ached. Anyway, back to this year. As expected, I have a mix of abilities, but it seems the majority of them are teachable, in that they listen and respond. All I ever needed was just a little participation. I seem to have more than a little these days. Thank you God. I have to thank Him because He knew I needed to know that kids like this still existed. I haven’t counted how many weeks until this new school year is over. Why bother? I will say, though, I’m having a much better experience. Last year at this time, I was wailing like a baby. Misery was my middle name. This year, I actually have a lot of likable students. Maybe it’s the age. They’re 7th graders, mostly 12 going on 13, so maybe some of those weird hormones haven’t kicked in yet. They’re still ‘cute’ and naive and open. They’re not mean or violent. I really like them. They seem more like ‘kids.’ One little guy even said, which I thought was too cute, “I’m a good child.” Just the fact that he referred to himself as a child endeared me to him. Precious. Oh sure, I still have to deal with setting and enforcing guidelines for discipline, but these kids “LET ME.” Yeppers, it’s got to be a mutual thing. I’m liking that they will be quiet when I want them to be, and will do the assignments…although many are still struggling academically, but at least I can work with a group that’s not putting up a ton of resistance or sabotaging my efforts with bad behavior. Thank you God for looking out for me. I keep wondering if I’m dreaming. I know I’m grateful for the change. I was honestly about to ditch this whole teaching business after last year’s experience, but it looks like I can hang through this school year. Teachers went back to work yesterday. Students come in on Friday for a half day. I spent today painting parts of my classroom. I’m new at this school, and my room was a wreck. The walls are the standard blah beige. The last teacher got frisky and used brilliant blue to badly paint window partitions, bulletin boards, wood cabinets and doors, trim…UGLY. I couldn’t function in a room like that. It was messing with my head, distracting me. I was imagining myself getting lost in a lesson as I stopped to ponder that paint color. Why? Why would anyone do that? Yeah, I did the painting, because admin said they wouldn’t/couldn’t because it had been painted a couple of years ago. I saw no proof of that. The room was also dirty. I’m exhausted. All that work, but it does look 90% better. I’m reserving the 10% for the old cabinets and desks. Can’t do anything about those. Tomorrow, I will work on my bulletin boards. I like doing those, so that ought to be relaxing. It’ll be interesting to see how long it takes a group of 12 year olds to mess up this room. I dare them. I will paint them with that hideous blue paint and send them running home to their mamas. The very last thing I tried to do kinda capped off my day. I’ve been wanting to change the header on this site. So I found the info regarding the header, i.e. size., went into Gimp and proceeded to draw over the copy I made of the header file. I was feeling right proud of myself too. I had just done a header for another site, which took me, literally, hours trying to get it in place. (you know you have to find the right code, the right spot, all that. Well, at least I had to). Seeing as I did get that done, I felt rather confident about trying another one today. Boy, was I wrong. Oh, the header loaded alright. But it was all over my screen – cute as could be – but in the wrong place, under the tabs, way on the right side of the screen. I tried a couple more things to no avail. Bummer.
Hmmm…just noticed that the ‘y’ in the pony is short. Maybe it’s a good thing it didn’t sit right. Maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t spend hours trying to force it in only to discover the darn “y” is too short. (groan) And then earlier, I decided to dye my hair. It’s not bad, but it’s not great either. It’s just sorta – blah. At least to me. I’d been looking at my old hair for so long, maybe it’ll take time for me to get use to the new. I hope it doesn’t take too long. And then earlier than that, the water pressure went down in the rear house. (I have a renter back there) The pressure went down because there’s a leak in the basement. At first, I thought it was my 3 year old, 50 gallon water tank leaking. It turned out to be one of those old galvanized pipes. The plumber is coming tomorrow. $$$$$ Meanwhile, I can feel my pressure rising because I have to go back to work. Dreading it. I sure will be glad when the economy improves so that I can have some more choices. Well not quite. Still have until September. But it’s over for teachers and students. I will say that’s this has been a nice long break. I didn’t do anything I didn’t want to do. I guess after spending the last school year doing just about everything that I didn’t want to do, I deserved that. I’ll be going to a new school. I’ve met a few of the teachers there. Most said that the school is ‘nice’ and the kids are ‘not bad.’ Of course, all that is relative. One did give that knowing grunt when I told him about where I taught last year. Not unexpectedly, he confirmed that the school was, indeed, not your average. I just have to make sure I plan my workload so that I have time to do what I enjoy, which is be on the computer. I’m going to miss staying up late into the night fiddling with this code or that, and practicing my drawing. Oh well, all good things must come to an end? (who said that? and where can I find them?) Granted, these are not high quality. They represent my first efforts in learning Gimp. I really like Gimp. I discovered that I really, really, like digital drawing. I hope to get better and better. A couple of these were tutorials that I took, like the one that looks like eggs in mid-air and the purplish girl. I enjoyed doing both because my results were so satisfying. I did tweak the purplish girl a bit. Some of the others were drawings I did directly in Gimp of friends and acquaintances. They might look a little cartoony, but they are not caricatures. Some of the people are using them as avatars. Cool! All, but one, were done freehand with the mouse. The one with the woman in pink against a tealish background was done with the Wacom tablet. And now that I have my Wacom Bamboo Fun, I will really have a field day with Gimp.
Crossing my fingers with the newest upgrade of WP. Now didn’t I read somewhere that 2.9 is lurking on the horizon? I ain’t complaining, though, especially since this upgrade went rather smoothly – cause WP is free. The fact that so many work so hard to keep the program up and running, at no cost to us users, impresses the heck out of me. That 2.8.2 upgrade gave me the blues, but I trodded along until I got it. Learned a lot in the process too. There are a couple of mantras that must be recited: must backup database; must disactivate plug-ins. Now, let’s see if this page will post. If I was working as a Wordpress installer, I could have racked up some serious overtime pay, but as it is, doing this for myself, I’ve racked up mucho hours and bloodshot eyes.
I hate NOT knowing how to work situations that affect me directly. (I’m sitting here trying to remember if I’ve ever put in this kind of energy for another person…surely, I must have). This blog of mine is and will be a work in progress for some time to come, as I learn the intricacies of WP. I know I’d have a much easier time if I knew Php. As it is, I know html, how to read CSS, but not code it without a book. Strangely, Php is looking more familiar, as I pick through the functions. I did manage to stumble across a couple of solutions to problems I was having with navigation. And I figured out how to get my pony on the page, although it doesn’t show exactly where I wanted it originally. It kept crawling under the navigation bar. I like where it is though. Those of you who have visited my site in the past are probably wondering what the heck happened. Well, it was upgrade time, and in spite of my perceived comfort level with websites, I found the whole process tedious and time-consuming. I spent hours uploading, downloading, testing, and got NOTHING! My site still said I needed to update. I was at it until 3:30 am in the morning. Whew! Good thing I’m off from work, or I’d have been calling in sick, and it wouldn’t have been a lie. So, I did what any worn out, beat up, chicken would do – I baled. What you have here is essentially a ‘new-ish’ site. Oh, I’m going to have my old posts available in the archives – I think. That is if I can comfortably port them there. If that poses a problem, then I’ll do something else. Meanwhile, I think I’ll give this front page an overhaul. Things might seem a bit displaced for a bit, but I’ll get it together. Hopefully, it will be new and improved. So keep checking back and know that you don’t have to call first, just drop on in anytime. |
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