Short Week, Easy Street

This week was absolutely amazing. Well, actually the last two weeks weren't too bad. Two weeks ago we had our second round of 6 weeks testing so aside from having to grade 135 papers all in one night and get my gradebook all set up and ready to go, the week was low stress and very little actual lesson planning/teaching. Proctoring tests is about as close as you can get to being paid for doing next to nothing. I spend the entire time walking around the room making sure the kids don't cheat and that they stay on task. I answer questions without giving hints at answers, and the kids are almost deathly quiet except for the sound of pencils digging into scantron bubbles and erasers rubbing back and forth every now and then.

I have a lot to be thankful for this week, but I'm mostly thankful that I finally got a chance to recharge physically, emotionally, and mentally. I was able to show the kids parts of the movie versions of their books (Of Mice and Men and The Outsiders) on Tuesday and gave a quick enrichment lesson on Friday to the few classes I did have since it was a half day. Geez, I still can't believe that I actually had 4 and a half days off. I do have to say though, I'm surprised that we had school on Wednesday. I don't ever remember having school the day before Thanksgiving, but I guess now adays students come in as much as they can. Unfortunately for the high school students, a benchmark exam was scheduled for the Thanksgiving week even though they just took the 6 weeks exam the week before. Two weeks of straight testing, school the day before Thanksgiving... no real breaks. Luckily our students didn't have their benchmark test because my department requested it be rescheduled for December. It just makes more sense to space out tests so that the kids don't get burned out.

Well, I think this about does it for this week's post. While I may be slightly recharged, I'm still not 100%. The last few days let me fix up a LOT of things at home so that I feel like my life is more or less in some type of order, but my car is not fixed, and I still have things to get ready for tomorrow. With that being said, goodnight all, and have a great week.