Let Spring Break begin

The moon has been full and the students have been insane all week. Finally, Friday arrived, and I counted the minutes until the 3:05 bell. Last night, the school held an open house which lasted until 8:30. Parents and teachers came to the classrooms in shifts, at assigned times, so each teacher had to give a little talk about curriculum to seven different groups. Actually, I enjoyed talking about ninth grade English---especially, for a change, to an audience who listened attentively, didn't interrupt, didn't throw any spitballs, and didn't raise any hands in the middle of my discussion to whine, "What time does this end?" or "Can I go to the nurse?" They even asked questions! But after a long, long day that began at 5:30 that morning, I was exhausted when I got home. I had been scheduled to begin the practice scoring for the Delaware 10th grade writing test and to do two hours. I'd scheduled two hours because I thought the open house at the school would end sooner than it did. Thus, I could only do about 45 minutes of the test prep before falling into bed. Today, luckily, I was giving the students the unit test on Romeo and Juliet, so I didn't have to teach. I only had to monitor their test-taking. Since it was the end of the Unit, the last day of the week, AND the last day before Spring break, I could not see any reason to spend the last 30 minutes of class after a 90-question test trying to teach something new, just for the sake of appearances, so I let them finish out the class period just talking to each other(their biggest thrill). After the last bell rang, I had bus duty, followed by a few tasks before I could leave.

I'd scheduled three hours with Pearson for this evening, but two of our laptops had problems that prevented me from accessing the practice student papers on the Pearson website. Liberto tried to manipulate the programs in the Toshiba and fiddled with that computer for the entire evening, while I tried downloading and installing new ePEN software into the HP laptop, which also didn't work. I never had a chance to try it on the Gateway because it is so slow that I could start opening a website, go do a few laundries, and then come back before it opens. At 9:00, I gave up, and watched a little of a movie. By then, Liberto said he'd fixed the Toshiba's problem. But I was too tired, so I'll continue with that tomorrow.

I'm ready for spring break. Even though I'll be grading research papers as well as doing some standardized essays on line, I'll be around the house and have a few stolen moments by the pond.