Quick entry. I have three days to do something productive. My goal now is to do lesson planning for today. I am aiming for 5 weeks of lesson plans and homework sheets(next week and the month of December). If I succeed (or even mostly succeed), then tomorrow will be apt. cleaning day. And Sunday will be my day of rest. I would also like to resume using my rowing machine. Hopefully, I will be able to start going to the gym in December. My routine then will be gym Mondays thru Fridays and rowing machine Saturdays and Sundays.

On Friday, I managed to do some furniture rearranging in my classroom. I moved my desk to the back by the sink and my personal copier. I had enough of the split work space that I'd created. Now, my most of my workspace is in the back corner of the room. The space by the window will now be my teacher's storage space. I've located a shelf and a bunch of colorful crates(for storage space). For some strange reason, my classroom looks bigger now. I did not include a photo because, I only managed to relocation my desk. I had to pile miscellaneous things into the back of the room. Next week, my plan is to tackle the disorder a day at a time. Hopefully, by next Friday, I will have a nice and orderly classroom.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving. My Thanksgiving was fairly quiet. I went to my foster father's place. His lady friend made the Thanksgiving dinner. I bought the cheesecake that one of the school custodians was selling. Sixteen dollars for a cake! The cheapskate in me wanted to say H** No!!! However, since other teachers were buying, I sheepishly followed the crowd.

Anyway, after moving my classroom around, and getting home about 8pm, I really was not in the mood for leaving my bed. I did not get out of bed until about 12PM. I finally did manage to catch the MN to NYC.

I arrived about 4:15PM. My foster father's lady friend's grand daughter was there. When I arrived, I asked if anything was needed from the store, granddaughter suggested ice cream. So, I was back out in a matter of minutes. It was actually a very nice day in terms of the weather.

Lady friend's kids and grand kids arrived. Not a lot of space so, I just kept to the living room. I had brought my lesson plan book and a couple of textbooks, so that I could have something productive to do. However, I spent about 30 minutes, address envelopes for the parents who did not show up for parent teacher conferences. I finally got around to mailing the report cards. I also included a progress report and a print out of their child's pretest results on the reading program we use at my school. I bought the stamps last Saturday.

I waited until Lady friend's kids ate (not a lot of space in the kitchen), then I fixed myself a plate. The dinner was very good. It is nice having a home-cooked meal. Eating Chinese takeout and precook microwavable meals get tiring after awhile. After I finished eating, I washed all of the dishes. I also put most of the food into containers and washed the pots and pans. By the time I finished, it was almost 8PM. I ate a piece of the expensive cheesecake, it was actually pretty good. I was out by 8PM. I ended up missing my train, so I ended up getting home about 10PM. I read the newspaper and skimmed the social studies textbook that I bought with me.

Well, I better go. I already spent too much time on this "quick entry". My breakfast is now cold. I finally opened the organic instant oatmeal. The first difference I noticed was that it was thicker than the other brands.

Well, that's it for now. Hopefully, I can get offline now, eat and then do some lesson planning. I want to stop (whatever I'm doing) by 6PM, I don't want to spend the whole three-day weekend staring at my lesson plans with a mental block. I want to treat today like Sunday, do as much as I can then put the school work away. I'm tired of wasting weekends thinking about school work, procrastinating and avoiding school work, stepping over, pushing aside, sitting on, repositioning...I think you get the picture.


Post Date - Friday, November 23, 2007 10:42AM