Whew! Long day! Went in a little before 7:30am this morning and drove away at 7:10pm this evening. The reason? Progress reports. They're due tomorrow and until this afternoon after school I didn't even have my computer grading set up.

First though let's rewind to this morning. I had to show up early so I could get copies made for my lessons. I went in on Labor Day and made my lesson plan for this week and the copy room was locked then. I think there were a couple of teachers who also waited until the last minute who weren't real excited that I was in front of them making 200 copies. Early bird gets the worm or something...

So I walked into the morning assembly a few minutes before go time and was told that the "pledge leaders" (two kids who announce the pledge and the Texas pledge in front of everyone) are supposed to come from my class this week. "Surprise! Now you have 30 seconds to inform some kids that they have to walk in front of the whole school and do something they had no plans of doing 30 seconds ago!" So I turned to the first two kids and asked them to do it. All the girls in my class wanted to do it but none of the boys wanted to. So after I chose the first girl in line I picked a boy too and said "You're up!" He seemed kind of awkward about it and apparently I now have a parent/teacher conference scheduled for tomorrow with his parents. Don't know for sure if it's related to that or not but he never told me he wasn't allowed to or anything...and the reason I chose this kid was because he seems bright and confident and I just felt like I could count on him. It might not be related to that at all but I guess we'll find out tomorrow.

Today was library day so that was 30 extra minutes of free time in the morning and then in the afternoon. Well, I wouldn't really call it "free time" since I have a pile of stuff to do but it was time I wasn't teaching so that's something I guess.

One of the funny things about these kids is the shock and indignation that they register when you call them out for their behavior or put their name on the board. It's as if you just wrote the name of Jesus Himself up there and told Him he couldn't go to recess. The kid could be blatantly looking directly at someone else's paper during a quiz and then deny it up and down. You could be staring straight at them as they talk and hear the words emanating from their mouths and then they'll swear to you that they have just broken a 5 year vow of silence simply to defend their good name which you just put up on the board. Sometimes it's funny and sometimes it's annoying. I just try not to respond to anything that I'm not absolutely sure of.

Another thing I have to do as a teacher is check off on these "computer skills." I have to go to the computer lab after school and show them that I can do certain things. So I spent an hour after school today (when I REALLY needed to be entering grades into the computer) in the magical world of computers learning how to "minimize" a window, "delete" a file, "turn off" a "CPU" and "double-click" a "mouse." It was "incredible." It's really a whole new world for me now. Who knew that all those little buttons actually "DID" something! Surprisingly we didn't cover blogging.

After that I spent the next 2.5 hours setting up my grade program, entering grades, organizing and getting ready to send home progress reports tomorrow. Then dinner with my honey at Quizno's since neither of us had time to go to the grocery store and not much time for anything else. Of course...I'll always make time for you, faithful blog reader.

This was kinda long...kudos to you if you've read this far. Now its off to practice my "double-clicking."