Thursday, January 10, 2008

Train trouble, so I took a cab.
4th graders had a day three test. I gave my students a math practice test assuming that Admin would want the rest of the "testing body" to be in a testing mode. after I'd already started, a memo was sent via student delivery mentioning giving the practice test I was already administering for Friday. the memo suggested that classes work on workfolders and portfolios. I called and was able to reach AP1 who did not seem to mind me doing the math practice test so I continued. In a moment of rare peace and quiet, my class managed to stay in test mode for the Literacy Block time that was dedicated to the "testing mode". I was able to administer the practice test and grade it.

My hypers were hyper, and I did not get a prep today, so I was not in the best of moods. AP2 made an announcement on the loudspeaker that all testing grades would be meeting during their preps for planning for the State Math Test, but my prep teacher never showed to take over. He is always, always 10 to 15 minutes late, so I just assumed that he would be late as usual. He is one of the nice people, but he will often let the kids get too hyper. Not as extreme as the "Spanish" teacher, but having him for a prep is a "finger crosser". Anyway, it turns out he was doing some kind of assisting with the 4th grade test. I called the Math coach to appologize for not being there, but the coach did not seem to know about the meeting. I'm thinking I missed about 20 minutes of the meeting, but no one showed up, and the coach did not bother to call, he just said that no one showed up. I guess he didn't want the meeting either.

Lunch detention. One of the powers that be decided that this afternoon would be a good time to administer the 8th week assessment for the reading program that we are using this year. Even though only about half of the school would need to be testing, the whole school went to the Literacy Block groupings for the last hour of the school day. Wouldn't it have been better to do the testing on Friday when the literacy block schedule resumes, but what do I know.

Another day wasted on "planning" to get organized. I left the school about 7pm only just starting to tackle the mounds of papers in my classroom. I told myself that I would not go to gym this week to get organized in my classroom, but I have yet to do anything of substance.


Post Date - Sunday, January 13, 2008 12:03pm