Hidey-Ho!
Well, would you look at that?!?! It's NOVEMBER 15th ALREADY!!! Where the hell have I been??? Oh, that's right, I've been living at work (school). We have three parent-teacher conference nights within six work days in my school district -- a Thursday night and then the following Tuesday and Thursday nights. Let's just say that it makes for a long week and a half, and we teachers feel like we've been living at work and passing our families in the hallways of our homes as we shuffle off to bed immediately upon arriving at home after these nights.
This year, I've been involved in more conferences than ever before -- all due to the fact that I now have a 4th grade advanced reading group for which I am responsible for giving grades. Granted, all of these conferences were a piece of cake because each of these kids are high achievers and love to read, help out, etc. However, I was able to get some stuff done in between those conferences, and I even left 30 minutes early on the last night so I could join my mom, sister, future sister-in-law, and niece for a Girls Night Out (I had 1.5 hours of comp time coming my way from going in early on Election Day to help facilitate a mock election... too bad I'll never get to use the left-over hour...).
Anywho... as I sit here and type, I'm looking at the gray and rainy day outside (it feels like it's 5 PM, but it's really only 1:30 PM!)... and I'm wondering when the hell I'm going to be able to get all those damn leaves up off of my grass in the back yard. The fuckers all came down off of our neighbor's trees, but we've got to get them up so they don't damage the lawn over the winter. If I didn't have five gazillion conference nights lately, I'd have been able to get them up before now. Dammit!
So I had a morning-long observation this week by my principal. I'm in the first year of a new two-year contract, and per our contract, I only have to be observed once during that time (as opposed to new teachers who must be observed three times in each of their first two or three years). My principal picked a day to observe me when my schedule didn't include my reading group. So, she had to keep coming back to observe me as I went through my morning. First, she observed me with small groups for math for about an hour -- reteaching skills and practicing multiplication facts -- FUN! Then she checked on me in the hallway outside of a 4th grade room while I was conducting reading interviews with students. Finally, she came back a while later and hung around a fluency group I have. It was great, great fun, let me tell you. I won't know how I fared until at least Wednesday of next week, because she will be out of the building until then.
Anyone out there want to come over and reorganize the little alcove in my garage where the grill and outdoor furniture get stored for the winter???? It has accumulated uh, stuff, and now I have to find homes for that stuff so I can bring in the stuff from the back yard. In addition, we need to clear the old gas out of the snow blower because we neglected to put any STA-BIL in it when we were done using it in the spring. I also need to kill the plants in my large planters in front of my garage so that I can store the planters over the winter to avoid having them crack under the extreme temps. I hate killing plants on purpose. They still look nice (they're pretty hardy varieties), and frankly, I just don't know where I'd store the planters...
Well, that's about it for now -- I've got stuff to get done around this house! Hopefully I'll be able to post more often now that our eleventy hundred conference nights are over. Toodles!