Week Recap and the "General" Saga Continues
It's funny when you don't post anything for a few days... You forget about what you last blogged/posted/ranted about. At least I do. :)
This week..... I feel like I've lived through 5 Mondays instead of just Monday-Friday. There was a lot of pressure at school.
My Darling class was at it again this week. On Wednesday, one of the students asked for my school email address (so that he could email me his assignment that he forgot about til he walked into class - *sigh*). So I told him "It's R-P-A-T-T-O-N at blah blah blah dot com." He kind of stopped for a second, looked puzzled, and asked what the R stood for. He had been at Open House the night before with his mom. In the presence of adults, I tend to introduce myself as firstname-lastname, and I default the first name to what I go by, not my legal first name. It's just habit. So the student had heard me introduce myself as Shelley the night before and didn't know my real first name.
Several of the other students heard him as what the R stood for and started in with:
"I know, I know!"
"Don't say it, I want to guess."
and my favorite (from the one who started the General saga in the first place): "There's something not right about it. It's different. It's not normal" HAHAHAHA That just made me giggle. It's true though. My given name is 'misspelled'. So's my brother's - ask me why I called him Amy for several years growing up. :D
They eventually remembered what my given name was and then asked how the Shelley name came about. So I told them about saying my given name + my middle name (Lee) really fast, like you're yelling at a spoiled little temper-tantrum-throwing 4 year old, and you eventually end up shortening the whole thing to just Shelley.
They all paused for a moment (I think I actually counted 5 full seconds of silence - which for that class is a miracle!). Then I saw a couple of 'light bulbs' go off in their heads. A couple of them looked at each other, then the Ringleader started laughing.
"Miss P, you're doubly screwed now. Now we get to call you General Lee Patton."
LOL He's right; I'm never getting out of this one now.
This week..... I feel like I've lived through 5 Mondays instead of just Monday-Friday. There was a lot of pressure at school.
- Staff meeting on Monday that ran long.
- There was some DRHAMA between me and one of the chemistry teachers on Tuesday afternoon. I hadn't been able to talk to ChemTeacher about a couple of things about the classroom (I float into her room twice) and about the chemistry lab supplies in general (I'm in another ChemTeacher's room for two other classes), so I emailed the DeptChair about the potential problems. ChemTeacher jumped down my throat in front of my students about being reprimanded by DeptChair. Long story short- I told DeptChair that ChemTeachers were leaving their lab tables an absolute disaster, with supplies and chemicals left out and spilled on the counters, making it REALLY unsafe for my students to use the areas. Not to mention the BS of me cleaning up THEIR mess before I could get my classes started.
- Tuesday was Open House Night and most of the teachers were lucky to get out of the building by 8:30 that night, making it a really long day. I didn't make it home until after 9pm that night, making it a 14 hour day. zomg. The overkill that early in the week just carried on through til today.
- Wednesday morning, one of the other floating teachers calls down the hallway "Hey General!" Yes - It's gotten around. Even a couple of the teachers are using it. Really it's all in good fun. He's grinning like a fool (I've known him for a long time - we went to the same schools and he and my brother wrestled together during HS), so I know something's up. "There's a rumor floating around about you." *blink* Really? "Yeah, rumor is that you and ChemTeacher really got into yesterday." I filled him in on the story. Can't believe I made it to the rumor mill, though. And he's not even IN the Science Department.
- Wednesday/Thursday was grade-crunch time. I'd gotten behind on the grading side of things while I'd been busy making powerpoint after powerpoint and lab write-ups for lesson plans, so I had a metric ton of grading to do. Finished up around midnight Wednesday night. The calc-phys kids did pretty well for their first test. The trig-phys kids - not so much. I think for the first time ever, I flat out curved a test grade. I *hate* doing that. But their grades were abysmal. The curved grades weren't much better (as far as what *I* would expect from engineering-type students in an AP Phys class). I handed back the tests today, expecting groans, moans, and complaints. I'm still waiting. Some of them were even happy with their grade. I'm confused.
- Email Progress reports went out today, too. Not sure if my rant from two weeks ago somehow made it to my kids' parents, but I only got one email response from the reports and the mom included the child's name, class period, and the assignment name that she had a question about in her response. It was actually nice to have a parent email like that. :)
- One of my senior Mentor students stayed after school today, so that we could start going over his senior portfolio thing. I was expecting the whole meeting to last 15-20 minutes. Nope, we were there for an hour. But it was a good conversation. He probably thinks I'm really crazy now. :D
- When I finally did get home, I crashed.... hard.... for 4.5 hours on the couch. No wonder I'm up at 12:30 now.
My Darling class was at it again this week. On Wednesday, one of the students asked for my school email address (so that he could email me his assignment that he forgot about til he walked into class - *sigh*). So I told him "It's R-P-A-T-T-O-N at blah blah blah dot com." He kind of stopped for a second, looked puzzled, and asked what the R stood for. He had been at Open House the night before with his mom. In the presence of adults, I tend to introduce myself as firstname-lastname, and I default the first name to what I go by, not my legal first name. It's just habit. So the student had heard me introduce myself as Shelley the night before and didn't know my real first name.
Several of the other students heard him as what the R stood for and started in with:
"I know, I know!"
"Don't say it, I want to guess."
and my favorite (from the one who started the General saga in the first place): "There's something not right about it. It's different. It's not normal" HAHAHAHA That just made me giggle. It's true though. My given name is 'misspelled'. So's my brother's - ask me why I called him Amy for several years growing up. :D
They eventually remembered what my given name was and then asked how the Shelley name came about. So I told them about saying my given name + my middle name (Lee) really fast, like you're yelling at a spoiled little temper-tantrum-throwing 4 year old, and you eventually end up shortening the whole thing to just Shelley.
They all paused for a moment (I think I actually counted 5 full seconds of silence - which for that class is a miracle!). Then I saw a couple of 'light bulbs' go off in their heads. A couple of them looked at each other, then the Ringleader started laughing.
"Miss P, you're doubly screwed now. Now we get to call you General Lee Patton."
LOL He's right; I'm never getting out of this one now.