The last two weeks of school has been anything but ordinary and frustrating beyond measure. 3:30 on Tuesday, I and the other academic core teachers found ourselves responsible for all-day EOC remediation for all three alternative schools in our district. This essentially doubled our high school population for the rest of the week and transferred our middle schoolers back to the purview of long-term subs. Poor middle schoolers. When EOC retests are said and done, they will have not had real class or real teachers for almost 4 weeks. Also at 3:30 on Tuesday, my spring schedule of courses has changed. Instead of teaching U.S. History and World History to the high schoolers, I will be teaching Foundations of Social Studies. What exactly this means, I don't know yet; the district curriculum coordinator is still working on developing the class. Hopefully I'll get the particulars before Friday (when the class is supposed to start), but I'm not crossing my fingers at this point.
I think my new iteration of TFA's "One day all children in this nation will have access to an excellent education" is "One day all (insert district here) teachers will know what they are teaching before the semester starts" because this is looking just as impossible at the moment.
On a non-school note, I have stray cats living under my house. Because North Carolina doesn't believe in insulation, each time they use the kitty potty, we can smell it in the corresponding part of our house. Except for the smell, I wouldn't care that they live under the house, but some days it is really stinky. And yet I can't have a trained cat or dog live in the house. Go figure.
The other night we three roommates were sitting on the front porch, sharing a drink and enjoying the warm night (24 hours before the snow, I will note). We were watching the cats wander the neighborhood while we sat, and Roommate 1 was telling us his theory that cats are the new rodents. Because really, the only thing that separates "wild" rats from "wild" cats is that at some point human ancestors decided that cat ancestors were cute enough to constitute pets, but rat ancestors were not. As he finishes this theory, a furry white, black and brown head and shoulders pokes out of the vent in our house's foundation, about two feet from where Roommate 1 is sitting. He stands up so fast he knocks over his beer, and cursing walks over to the other side of the porch. The cat, startled, scoots back under the house. Roommate 2 and I are in stitches. Roommate 1: "See! Nothing but rodents!"
The last thought I want to leave you with is from The Onion (read: 98% satire). Another friend in TFA sent this to me while I was freaking out last Tuesday when second semester went to hell. Hope you enjoy.
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