I have just under three hours of "kid time" left. After that, I have "scantron machine time," "course expectation writing & formatting time," "pretending to carefully read and score essay time," and lots and lots of alone time with my filing cabinets. I need to track down a half-dozen people who can order books, supplies, and furniture for my program, drop off a series of sketches for my facilities guy to look at, pretend I've been keeping impeccable and timely hard-copy attendance records, turn in stuff, and get a bunch of signatures on my checkout list.
But then, I have "dyeing my hair purple" time and "staff barbecue time," followed by a "we did it day," more ordering, etc etc.
And hooray for me; I am pretty sure I get to teach Watchmen next year in Honors American Lit.
7 comments:
Hooray indeed!
I have had... "cleaning out my room and moving it home" time. GAG. My records are usually among the first to be completed and turned in. So, tomorrow when everyone else is engaging in the "turn in your grades, credits, summer school recommendation, etc." time... I will be packing. It's not that I keep impeccable records. I don't. First of all, I am teaching. I don't have an aid nor is there one assigned to a set of teachers. The campus has ONE aid, and administration gets first dibs. I don't have any sort of assistant, and quite frankly, I think I should. So, the records keeping is not a high priority. Second of all, I don't give a shit. Basically, I have "giving them what they ask for on time" down to science. Keep in mind, what they ask for and what they want are often not the same. Today for instance, the vice principal emailed us saying, "be sure to update the grades with end of the year averages." One teacher very appropriately responded, with "'update' what?" In other words, yes we can provide end of the year averages, but we have not been inputing grades for months. There's nothing to "update" and where should we send this information and in what format.
Ah... to work on my campus, where common "school type things such as entering grades" is a cluster fuck. I don't have to worry (so much) about checking in my books. They very carefully recorded all the books, equipment, and resources the teachers had taken at the beginning of the year so as to keep up track of supplies. Then, they lost the list. They informed me I was two books short. I asked how could they possibly know since they lost list. The topic was not brought up again.
I keep good records--attendance in at least 3 places, grades uploaded in two places daily, etc--but my "magic binder," the one that, basically, IS my job, has a habit of not getting paperwork filed in it every four weeks. Usually at semester I print up a couple of batches of attendance reports (aren't they the very most accurate then?!). I am a superstar at doing silly mundane paperwork, so it'll all be taken care of by 7 tomorrow morning, then all I have to do is print semester grade summaries, the whole gradebook for Q4, staple, collate, hole punch, and file, the take everything OUT of the magic binder, double-check order and accuracy, and stick it in an envelope.
It still beats grading those damn Dickens essays while my Freshmen take their exams.
dude, you get to teach Watchmen?!? that's bloody awesome. i wish my english teachers would've had the insight to show that graphic novels are a valid art form. at the time, however, "genre" fiction was poo-poo'd, and i have a hard time imagining my 63-year-old, danielle steele reading english teaching having anything positive to say about rorschach :)
My wife IS cool, but for the record, I began teaching graphic novels as a genre ( and as a means to get reluctant readers into literature) in my 4th grade class 2 years ago. Obviously I'm not teaching Watchmen, but I'm teaching Bone, which is about as cool as you can get at age 9. I've also turned more than a few kids on to others, like American Born Chinese, Laika, and Diary of a Wimp Kid. Hopefully in time they will get into the greats, like Watchmen, Preacher, Transmetropolitan, etc.
It's been a long time since I had any "dying my hair purple time". I really miss it.
Coming in late with another comment...
During the book fair at the boys' school, I just turn them loose. We have a price limit, but they get to pick whatever they want. I was thrilled... PROUD he was MY son and my parenting skills utterly validated when Devyn shows up with two Bone books. I have not introduced him to graphic novels, so this was a completely independent choice and only in the 2nd grade. Of course, he read them right away!
Aren't there boobs in Watchmen? And bad words? And a rape scene? And a scene in which a Saigon whore attacks a man with a broken bottle? Sweet!
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