The hotel has a pool.
Actually, with luck, it'll wear them out. We're taping them in at 10,
since we have to be on the road by 5:45 to get to the meet tomorrow.
(ew)
We drove to Silverthorne for dinner and turned the kids loose for 90
minutes. They all made it back to the bus on time, only one injured,
and we chaperons had dinner at a Chinese place in town.
That's still weird. The chaperons are all a generation or two older
than me, and I'm certainly not the students' age. Plus, the chaps are
all veterans - they keep telling me what they usually do. (I'm not
complaining - it's very helpful and a relief in a lot of ways).
More later!
Friday, October 09, 2009
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Let's Have Lunch
That's the lunch I didn't eat today. Getting things ready for class, grading papers, filling out intervention forms, and taking care of things for the speech meet this weekend sucked up all of my "free" time.
Despite that, today wasn't a bad day. I'm feeling a little lost in my English class - there's no focus, no project right now, and I don't like that. Drama went better - we went to the stage to run scenes and my two problem kids weren't there (one was absent, the other I escorted to the office at the beginning of the class when he refused to hand over the iPod I tell him every day to put away and he mouthed off to me).
The kids are all tired, though. I am too, for that matter. We really should have a fall break right about now - I think everyone needs it to decompress and catch up.
I was tired of my room being messy (they cut back the custodial staff this year for budget reasons, like schools are doing everywhere, so it tends to be a few days between cleanings), so I held elections for a Room Czar in my speech class. I took nominations formally, each candidate gave a 1-minute speech, then campaigned for votes for 2 minutes, then we voted by ballots and I marked their fingers with ink as they turned in their votes (we're multi-national!).
Two great speech veterans won; and after the class had some time to work on their midterm performances, we did some meditation. When I proposed it, everyone agreed it was very much needed this week. When I released the class, I pointed out that there were some scraps of papers on the floor and chairs unstacked. My Room Czars sprang into action: "Everyone! Stack your chair! Look to your left! If there's a chair there, stack that one too! No one leaves without picking up 5 pieces of paper!"
Within seconds, my room was clean.
Awesome.
After school, I worked with three different students on their speech pieces - one was girl writing an Original Oratory (OO) on James I, then one of my drama class Juliets/Mercutios doing a humorous interp, and then a speecher doing a creepily seductive interp narrated by a serpent.
I'm settling into coaching, and I love being able to work one-on-one with students like this. I start off each session by asking them how they want me to help them. They're starting to get used to that question, and they're getting better at answering it. I'm using a lot of my teacher-director instincts, too. The OO session was mostly about writing a paper - she had a good outline, but didn't really know how to tie it all together. After she told me that she's been delivering her speech by speaking through the outline, I told her about the times when I would get stuck while writing papers for school, and my mom would offer to transcribe them for me while I dictated. It went so much faster, and it allowed me to focus on the ideas and the flow, rather than getting stuck in typing and conventions. (I don't know if I've thanked you for that enough, Mom. You were so generous to give me that kind of time when I needed it!) She's going to try getting a transcriber so she can talk, in addition to other work.
The humorous interp is already very good, so I got to focus on smaller, more intellectual things with HI Girl - talking about the switch in the narrative from third person to first, for example. I'm loving (LOVING) working with kids who are so smart. It's different for me - something I still stumble over at times when things aren't going right and I figure out that I'm going too slow for them, that I'm not pushing them enough.
I helped one of my student coaches work with Serpent Girl yesterday afternoon (the coach was a senior last year - Rachel, if you remember, she played the Baroness in the rehearsal we saw. She's a great speecher, but she tends to give suggestions for things that work for her, and she coaches in the "no, just copy what I do" method). I figured out pretty quickly that SG just needed to talk through her ideas. I was stuggling to stop yawning (it was 4, and my blood sugar was totally out of whack by then), but I also enjoyed doing that because I've been in that stage of the creative process - where what helps me most is just to talk to someone about all of the ideas swirling in my head, to verbalize those thoughts in order to process them and get some order cemented.
At one point, I noticed two of my male speechers pouring over one of the volumes of my OED with it's magnifying glass. I was thrilled - they were using the OED! Without prompting! And we're not even doing the Dictionary Game!
Then I heard what they were saying. Apparently, there had been some discussion about the difference between fellatio and fornication earlier in the day, and they wanted to resolve the issue. Except they couldn't figure out how to spell it ("Is it FE-llatio or FA-llatio? Or maybe FI?"). Ah, the paradox of the dictionary. When they couldn't find it there, one of them asked if they could use my computer to look it up. I suggested that it might not be the best thing to have in my search history on my work computer.
I'm enjoying high school and speech. I had a meeting in the middle school yesterday, and as I walked through the halls I found myself a little sad that I wasn't there anymore - I miss middle school more often than I thought I would. I did love middle school for a lot of reasons, but it was time to move on.
Oh, and? They're predicting snow all day tomorrow, and all weekend. If you see photos of a snow-banked school bus full of teenagers in blue hoodies on the news, you'll hear about it on my blog.
P.S. I'm going to have to go to New York next year to see this. Care to join me?
Monday, October 05, 2009
Ribbons Down My Back
30 kids
22 awards
6 Best of Events
Thank goodness. If we hadn't done well, certain parents would have flayed me alive, devoured my innards, then wrapped my remains in the local paper's article about the changes I'm making to the speech program.
We survived the first meet. We got awards. I learned a lot about scoring working in the tab room. I didn't leave any students behind (or chaperons, for that matter) (Hi, Janelle!), and I have four more days to rest up before the next one.
Rest up. Ha!
I'm supposed to go visiting with my presidency tomorrow. We had a list of 12 girls to contact, and I'm waiting for the word on how many appointments we've got. My girls haven't called me back yet. Jasmine's is a no-answer and a "maybe?" I don't know about Hillary and Allison's lists.
Is it wrong of me to hope for a whole slate of no-returned-calls?
I usually don't mind the visits once I'm on them, but what I really want to do is sleep. And do laundry. And grade the papers I'm ignoring right now. And sleep.
In speech class today, one of the veteran speechers named the cheer I led them in before the meet as her favorite moment of the whole thing. A lot of students have also been talking about the meditations I've been teaching them (mostly as a way to cope with stage fright). I think I'll do a group meditation session at the hotel on Friday night, if I can find a space for it.
Two of the older boys and I were chatting the other day about the first overnighter. I told them that, based on their reasons for why overnights should be reinstated, I expected them to
1) be in bed asleep promptly at 10:30,
2) spend the entire evening before practicing their pieces (for at least four hours), and
3) divide up their rooming assignments so that each room has at least two freshmen in them, so the newbies can "feel more included."
They laughed at my statement, nervously. My assistant coach (one of the boys' mother) told me later that as soon as I had walked away, they turned to her and demanded in a whisper, "She doesn't mean that, does she?"
Paula said that she just smiled and shrugged.
She's a great assistant coach.
22 awards
6 Best of Events
Thank goodness. If we hadn't done well, certain parents would have flayed me alive, devoured my innards, then wrapped my remains in the local paper's article about the changes I'm making to the speech program.
We survived the first meet. We got awards. I learned a lot about scoring working in the tab room. I didn't leave any students behind (or chaperons, for that matter) (Hi, Janelle!), and I have four more days to rest up before the next one.
Rest up. Ha!
I'm supposed to go visiting with my presidency tomorrow. We had a list of 12 girls to contact, and I'm waiting for the word on how many appointments we've got. My girls haven't called me back yet. Jasmine's is a no-answer and a "maybe?" I don't know about Hillary and Allison's lists.
Is it wrong of me to hope for a whole slate of no-returned-calls?
I usually don't mind the visits once I'm on them, but what I really want to do is sleep. And do laundry. And grade the papers I'm ignoring right now. And sleep.
In speech class today, one of the veteran speechers named the cheer I led them in before the meet as her favorite moment of the whole thing. A lot of students have also been talking about the meditations I've been teaching them (mostly as a way to cope with stage fright). I think I'll do a group meditation session at the hotel on Friday night, if I can find a space for it.
Two of the older boys and I were chatting the other day about the first overnighter. I told them that, based on their reasons for why overnights should be reinstated, I expected them to
1) be in bed asleep promptly at 10:30,
2) spend the entire evening before practicing their pieces (for at least four hours), and
3) divide up their rooming assignments so that each room has at least two freshmen in them, so the newbies can "feel more included."
They laughed at my statement, nervously. My assistant coach (one of the boys' mother) told me later that as soon as I had walked away, they turned to her and demanded in a whisper, "She doesn't mean that, does she?"
Paula said that she just smiled and shrugged.
She's a great assistant coach.
Saturday, October 03, 2009
Bad News -
The store next to where we stopped for lunch sold silly string.
Good News - I didn't find this out until we got back to the school =
kids actually kept it totally put away until we got out of the bus.
Good News - I didn't find this out until we got back to the school =
kids actually kept it totally put away until we got out of the bus.
Friday, October 02, 2009
Early in the Morning
It's the day before our first speech meet.
I've had a hectic week, trying to keep track of all of the paperwork and hoodies and kiddos and insurance information and kids with questions and angry parents and nice parents and, oh yeah, teaching, too.
This is not an overnight meet, and the school we're going to is about 2.25 hours away, according to MapQuest. Speech meets start at 7:00 am, so the bus is pulling out at 4:45 am. Which means I need to get to the school around 4:15 am. Which means I need wake up at 3:00. A. Freakin'. M.
So. Even though it's not furnished, I am going to spend the night in the lovely condo my parents just bought up here near MTHS. It really is pretty - very foresty and mountainy, and I hope they get to use it to run away from their work once in a while. In the meantime, though, I'm totally going to crash there so I won't have to make the whole commute for these heinously early mornings.
I have an air mattress, a blanket and sheets, towels, and a pillow. Plus, Ben already hauled up his giant LoveSac, so I'll have somewhere to sit tonight, too. I have my laptop and a variety of TV shows on DVD to watch, and I'm going to drive to the closest strip mall (25 minutes away from MTHS) to get some doughnuts for the kids tomorrow, some emergency snacks for the kids who didn't listen to/read my reminders that they should bring snacks since we won't be eating lunch until after the meet and 4:00am-1:00pm is a very long time, and some dinner for myself. Probably Qdoba. They have one of those up here.
And then I'm going to bed. In about 2.5 hours from now. Because if I fall asleep by 7:00pm, that will give me 8 hours of sleep and I'll totally be able to wake up at 3:00 am.
Right?
P.S. I'm writing this blog entry under the same compulsion that I get right before a big trip. There's always kind of an undercurrent of dread - the what if this is my last chance to write something before... I don't know. The plane crashes? The car wrecks? I get kidnapped by gypsies without being near any stairs to confound them?
I'm not really worried about anything tomorrow beyond the early wake-up time. I think it's actually the fact that I'll be away from internet access for a night that is evoking this feeling. Even with my iPhone that I can hunch over and check and recheck my email on the little screen, I feel like I'll be cut off from the world.
Oh well.
P.P.S. SO amazingly glad that it's conference weekend, so I get to sleep in on Sunday without a single dang meeting I have to go to. If only every Sunday after a speech meet was like that.
I've had a hectic week, trying to keep track of all of the paperwork and hoodies and kiddos and insurance information and kids with questions and angry parents and nice parents and, oh yeah, teaching, too.
This is not an overnight meet, and the school we're going to is about 2.25 hours away, according to MapQuest. Speech meets start at 7:00 am, so the bus is pulling out at 4:45 am. Which means I need to get to the school around 4:15 am. Which means I need wake up at 3:00. A. Freakin'. M.
So. Even though it's not furnished, I am going to spend the night in the lovely condo my parents just bought up here near MTHS. It really is pretty - very foresty and mountainy, and I hope they get to use it to run away from their work once in a while. In the meantime, though, I'm totally going to crash there so I won't have to make the whole commute for these heinously early mornings.
I have an air mattress, a blanket and sheets, towels, and a pillow. Plus, Ben already hauled up his giant LoveSac, so I'll have somewhere to sit tonight, too. I have my laptop and a variety of TV shows on DVD to watch, and I'm going to drive to the closest strip mall (25 minutes away from MTHS) to get some doughnuts for the kids tomorrow, some emergency snacks for the kids who didn't listen to/read my reminders that they should bring snacks since we won't be eating lunch until after the meet and 4:00am-1:00pm is a very long time, and some dinner for myself. Probably Qdoba. They have one of those up here.
And then I'm going to bed. In about 2.5 hours from now. Because if I fall asleep by 7:00pm, that will give me 8 hours of sleep and I'll totally be able to wake up at 3:00 am.
Right?
P.S. I'm writing this blog entry under the same compulsion that I get right before a big trip. There's always kind of an undercurrent of dread - the what if this is my last chance to write something before... I don't know. The plane crashes? The car wrecks? I get kidnapped by gypsies without being near any stairs to confound them?
I'm not really worried about anything tomorrow beyond the early wake-up time. I think it's actually the fact that I'll be away from internet access for a night that is evoking this feeling. Even with my iPhone that I can hunch over and check and recheck my email on the little screen, I feel like I'll be cut off from the world.
Oh well.
P.P.S. SO amazingly glad that it's conference weekend, so I get to sleep in on Sunday without a single dang meeting I have to go to. If only every Sunday after a speech meet was like that.
Friday, September 25, 2009
You'll Never Walk Alone
Oh, man. The last two days all of the teachers at MTHS have been dragging - it's just cruel to make the two 14-hour days on Tuesday and Wednesday instead of Wednesday and Thursday!
PLUS! My principal did my formal observation first period on Thursday, so I had that spike in stress (caused mostly by my previous observations. Not the ones at DPJH where, more often than not, the principal would forget to do them and would instead call us into his office right before the paperworks was due and ask, "So, what are some goals you had this year? Mmm hmm." (scribble scribble) "And how did you do at those goals?" (scribble) "And tell me about a lesson of yours that you think went well?" No, those don't cause stress. It was the observations at STMS. The ones the faculty called 'Drive-by Shootings'. So I get a little PTSD whenever I see an administrator in my room.) (Longest parenthetical to date? Perhaps!). That, plus all kinds of fun with the whole speech team debacle that is still leaving me in a pickle. But, again, I don't want to write about that.
Today, though, was a strange day - it was the school's annual day of service. As a memorial, the school dedicates this day each year to service projects, which I think is rather a nifty idea. There were four or five different projects for the students to sign up for, and they rotated during the day. My first assignment was to supervise cleaning the highway. We donned blue gloves, orange vests, and headed out with bags in tow:
(Picture of students in said outfits)
Now, bear in mind that it's been snowing up here all week. Today the weather was turning, but it was still quite chilly. Unlike the teenagers, I had bundled up:
(Like the teenagers, however, I sported my iPod headphones in one ear. If I was really cool, I would have run the cord through my shirt to hide it). I wound up loaning my students my gloves and scarf when their fingers turned bright red.
Before trekking down to the highway, the other supervising teachers and I ran down the list of things they shouldn't try to pick up - broken glass, syringes, knives, guns, drugs, wads of unmarked bills, bodies and/or parts of bodies (okay, I contributed the last three to the list. I was in a jovial mood this morning).
My warnings were well advised, though! Not ten minutes into our walk up the freeway, we discovered a body lying among the weeds:
It was totally something out of Law & Bones: Miami. Bom-Bomp!
We also discovered a dead fish, a dead bird, and a soda bottle full of pee. Service is fun!
Actually, it was. Our assignment was to walk up the road until we hit "a purple sign". Two miles away from the school, the kids started to whine about how far we'd gone. "Where's the sign?" they asked me, pleadingly.
"The sign is a lie," I replied.
"Ha! Like the cake!" yelled one kid, which made me immensely happy that he got the reference. Especially since no one there understood why I kept saying "Two by two, hands of blue!" in a creepy voice. I'm working hard to cultivate my reputation as maybe crazy, maybe just weird, drama teacher.
We walked a little over 4 miles total, filled several bags with trash, and admired the loveliness of the leaves up there as the sun rose.
Plus, I discovered there's a lake on the other side of the football field!
Who knew? (Aside from everyone who's ever driven past the school. Unlike me. 'Cause why would I do a silly thing like that?)
The students started out way more excited than I expected. They raced for each piece of trash, competed to be the first to fill their bags, and seemed genuinely into doing this kind of service.
An hour into it, though, their interest was waning. And what to teenagers do when bored?
(Picture of boys pulling used blue glove over his head and inflating it through his nose)
Sigh.
(And what do their teacher-supervisors do when they pull used gloves over their faces? Take pictures with their cell phones, of course!)
Next up, after lunch, I checked out the other service projects inside: letter-writing to troops, knitting scarves, stuffing envelopes for a charity, and such. I brought home the beginnings of a scarf to finish this weekend for them, and headed outside again to check out the major project of the day: Habitat for Humanity. On the way, I passed a group of freshmen cleaning out the pond:
(Picture of freshmen scraping algae out of decorative pond)
The Habitat project was only for kids 16+, but there were still enough volunteers to make three shifts of students. I was supposed to help, but they had tons of volunteers, so I mostly took pictures, helped to hoist up a few walls onto a truck, and made fun of my speech students.
They're fun to tease, 'cause they play along. Like so:
(Picture of one student posing in a goofy way with a nail while second student pretends to attack him from behind with a hammer)
Oh! I also totally averted tragedy for our football team by finding this:
thereby saving them from certain tetanus and then death. I helped!
Those kids framed a two-story duplex in just a few hours, not to mention all of the others projects accomplished. I'm exhausted, but it was a good day for everyone, I think.
Except, perhaps, that poor deer.
Now I'm off to bed and I'm not going to wake up until I'm ready to! Yay! (Crazy-Kermit-like arm waving ensues.) (But only in my head, 'cause I'm too tired to actually move like a Muppet).
PLUS! My principal did my formal observation first period on Thursday, so I had that spike in stress (caused mostly by my previous observations. Not the ones at DPJH where, more often than not, the principal would forget to do them and would instead call us into his office right before the paperworks was due and ask, "So, what are some goals you had this year? Mmm hmm." (scribble scribble) "And how did you do at those goals?" (scribble) "And tell me about a lesson of yours that you think went well?" No, those don't cause stress. It was the observations at STMS. The ones the faculty called 'Drive-by Shootings'. So I get a little PTSD whenever I see an administrator in my room.) (Longest parenthetical to date? Perhaps!). That, plus all kinds of fun with the whole speech team debacle that is still leaving me in a pickle. But, again, I don't want to write about that.
Today, though, was a strange day - it was the school's annual day of service. As a memorial, the school dedicates this day each year to service projects, which I think is rather a nifty idea. There were four or five different projects for the students to sign up for, and they rotated during the day. My first assignment was to supervise cleaning the highway. We donned blue gloves, orange vests, and headed out with bags in tow:
(Picture of students in said outfits)
Now, bear in mind that it's been snowing up here all week. Today the weather was turning, but it was still quite chilly. Unlike the teenagers, I had bundled up:
(Like the teenagers, however, I sported my iPod headphones in one ear. If I was really cool, I would have run the cord through my shirt to hide it). I wound up loaning my students my gloves and scarf when their fingers turned bright red.
Before trekking down to the highway, the other supervising teachers and I ran down the list of things they shouldn't try to pick up - broken glass, syringes, knives, guns, drugs, wads of unmarked bills, bodies and/or parts of bodies (okay, I contributed the last three to the list. I was in a jovial mood this morning).
My warnings were well advised, though! Not ten minutes into our walk up the freeway, we discovered a body lying among the weeds:
It was totally something out of Law & Bones: Miami. Bom-Bomp!
We also discovered a dead fish, a dead bird, and a soda bottle full of pee. Service is fun!
Actually, it was. Our assignment was to walk up the road until we hit "a purple sign". Two miles away from the school, the kids started to whine about how far we'd gone. "Where's the sign?" they asked me, pleadingly.
"The sign is a lie," I replied.
"Ha! Like the cake!" yelled one kid, which made me immensely happy that he got the reference. Especially since no one there understood why I kept saying "Two by two, hands of blue!" in a creepy voice. I'm working hard to cultivate my reputation as maybe crazy, maybe just weird, drama teacher.
We walked a little over 4 miles total, filled several bags with trash, and admired the loveliness of the leaves up there as the sun rose.
Plus, I discovered there's a lake on the other side of the football field!
Who knew? (Aside from everyone who's ever driven past the school. Unlike me. 'Cause why would I do a silly thing like that?)
The students started out way more excited than I expected. They raced for each piece of trash, competed to be the first to fill their bags, and seemed genuinely into doing this kind of service.
An hour into it, though, their interest was waning. And what to teenagers do when bored?
(Picture of boys pulling used blue glove over his head and inflating it through his nose)
Sigh.
(And what do their teacher-supervisors do when they pull used gloves over their faces? Take pictures with their cell phones, of course!)
Next up, after lunch, I checked out the other service projects inside: letter-writing to troops, knitting scarves, stuffing envelopes for a charity, and such. I brought home the beginnings of a scarf to finish this weekend for them, and headed outside again to check out the major project of the day: Habitat for Humanity. On the way, I passed a group of freshmen cleaning out the pond:
(Picture of freshmen scraping algae out of decorative pond)
The Habitat project was only for kids 16+, but there were still enough volunteers to make three shifts of students. I was supposed to help, but they had tons of volunteers, so I mostly took pictures, helped to hoist up a few walls onto a truck, and made fun of my speech students.
They're fun to tease, 'cause they play along. Like so:
(Picture of one student posing in a goofy way with a nail while second student pretends to attack him from behind with a hammer)
Oh! I also totally averted tragedy for our football team by finding this:
thereby saving them from certain tetanus and then death. I helped!
Those kids framed a two-story duplex in just a few hours, not to mention all of the others projects accomplished. I'm exhausted, but it was a good day for everyone, I think.
Except, perhaps, that poor deer.
Now I'm off to bed and I'm not going to wake up until I'm ready to! Yay! (Crazy-Kermit-like arm waving ensues.) (But only in my head, 'cause I'm too tired to actually move like a Muppet).
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Make Way
It's 6:30 on the first of two long nights. Parent-Teacher Conferences here at MTHS go from 3:00-8:00 (with a break in the middle for dinner). I've only got one more kid scheduled for tonight, and so far there have been no drop-ins, so I'm going to kill some time talking to you.
Here's a comparison between my three schools:
DPJH
- Conferences went for two nights
- The Friday of that same week was a comp day for teachers
- I was usually hopping from beginning to end at the fall conference
- Parents just showed up and made their way around to whoever they wanted to see/who had the shortest lines
- All of the teachers were in the gym in alphabetical order, which meant that
a) There were people to talk to between sessions (I usually chatted with Watts and Weyrauch) and
b) All of our stuff was in our rooms, so we had to print off grades and tell students to come get papers from us tomorrow.
STMS
- Two nights
- The comp day was later in the year... I think that's how they justified Spring Break?
- As the 8th grade team, we were required to call every parent and schedule appointments. Even though we filled the appointment slots, we had parents who would just show up, which would throw off the whole schedule.
- We split the team up into two rooms for conferences (Math and Science in one, Me and History in the other) in one person's classroom. Again, that meant we left supplies/computers behind, but we did get to
a) Share the translator,
b) Talk about writing in both classes (at least History and I did)
c) Protect ourselves against angry parents by having witnesses.
(No, seriously. That was actually the main reason behind meeting in pairs.)
MTHS
- Two nights
- Comp day's the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. I'm already tired and don't want to wait that long.
- We stay in our rooms (yay for supply/computer access!)
- Kids or parents can request conferences in advance and sign up for 15-minute appointments. Drop-ins are fine, but, like I said, I haven't seen any yet.
- Things are light. I've seen five parents so far, and I only have one more to go today. Tomorrow's about the same.
Bonus info:
- Only one angry speech parent so far! She left "before [she] started crying" after arguing at me for 20 minutes. Too bad, since her kids are awesome.
I'm not sure yet which system I like the best. DPJH was certainly more jovial (I used to haul down my bungee-chair, a plant, a table cloth, and some mints; just to liven up my table spot), and I wish we had this Friday off. Still, it's nice to be able to sit here and blog while I'm waiting.
Oh, also? The fog's descending outside as I type, and I heard rumors that snow started falling on the pass between MTHS and home around 1:30 this afternoon. I drove the carpool group this morning, which means I'll have to face it in about an hour. AND it's supposed to snow most of the day tomorrow, too, to boot. Ew, ew, ew!
Wish me driving luck, please!
Here's a comparison between my three schools:
DPJH
- Conferences went for two nights
- The Friday of that same week was a comp day for teachers
- I was usually hopping from beginning to end at the fall conference
- Parents just showed up and made their way around to whoever they wanted to see/who had the shortest lines
- All of the teachers were in the gym in alphabetical order, which meant that
a) There were people to talk to between sessions (I usually chatted with Watts and Weyrauch) and
b) All of our stuff was in our rooms, so we had to print off grades and tell students to come get papers from us tomorrow.
STMS
- Two nights
- The comp day was later in the year... I think that's how they justified Spring Break?
- As the 8th grade team, we were required to call every parent and schedule appointments. Even though we filled the appointment slots, we had parents who would just show up, which would throw off the whole schedule.
- We split the team up into two rooms for conferences (Math and Science in one, Me and History in the other) in one person's classroom. Again, that meant we left supplies/computers behind, but we did get to
a) Share the translator,
b) Talk about writing in both classes (at least History and I did)
c) Protect ourselves against angry parents by having witnesses.
(No, seriously. That was actually the main reason behind meeting in pairs.)
MTHS
- Two nights
- Comp day's the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. I'm already tired and don't want to wait that long.
- We stay in our rooms (yay for supply/computer access!)
- Kids or parents can request conferences in advance and sign up for 15-minute appointments. Drop-ins are fine, but, like I said, I haven't seen any yet.
- Things are light. I've seen five parents so far, and I only have one more to go today. Tomorrow's about the same.
Bonus info:
- Only one angry speech parent so far! She left "before [she] started crying" after arguing at me for 20 minutes. Too bad, since her kids are awesome.
I'm not sure yet which system I like the best. DPJH was certainly more jovial (I used to haul down my bungee-chair, a plant, a table cloth, and some mints; just to liven up my table spot), and I wish we had this Friday off. Still, it's nice to be able to sit here and blog while I'm waiting.
Oh, also? The fog's descending outside as I type, and I heard rumors that snow started falling on the pass between MTHS and home around 1:30 this afternoon. I drove the carpool group this morning, which means I'll have to face it in about an hour. AND it's supposed to snow most of the day tomorrow, too, to boot. Ew, ew, ew!
Wish me driving luck, please!
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