Today was...meh.. I don't know. I had a sit-down with the principal and we went over the observation that she did of me a couple of weeks back. It wasn't exactly glowing. There were circumstances surrounding it though. I had a crappy lesson that day and I knew it. Also, I had some inaccurate expectations of the observation and what it entailed too. We're going to do it over.

Today was just a busy day. I asked the principal last week if she could get someone to fill in for me during one of my classes tomorrow so I can observe another teacher using a particular method of teaching English. Well, she told me this afternoon (after school and after our faculty meeting) that she would personally be standing in for me during that time. Well, after the somewhat negative discussion about her observation I was thinking I need to have some kind of really good lesson plan for her so I spent too long after school completing my lesson plan when I had other things to do this evening.

I brought home the teacher appreciation cards that the students made for me on Friday. Here are some of the other sentiments that were expressed in addition to those I mentioned Friday:

"You are the teacher in the world." (whoa! I'm THE teacher?! That's quite a burden!)

"Hope you get better!" (You hope I get better at teaching or what?!)

"Everyone misses you!" (I'd been gone for an hour and a half)

"Good Lucky!"

"Get well soon!" (Guess this kid was a little confused about what kind of cards they were making...either that or he's talking to my doctor and knows something I don't)

This one was written down the page:
"yourth
ebestea
cherinthe
univers"
(I think it's one of those wacky word puzzles)

"I hope your lunch was fantactic." (Oddly enough I did use some fan tactics when I got a bit warm at the restaurant)

Best for last - this one said "Your the best teacher in the galaxy" but that wasn't the best part. Below that it had a bunch of random pictures and each picture was labeled. Here is how the pictures were labeled from left to right: black hole, doggy, ogre, guy on fire (the guy has his hands in the air, is smiling and appears to have flames shooting out of his anus), flying pig, darth vader. Then down below that is a man driving what appears to be some kind of red, convertible fire engine and there's a label that says my name. As much as I like Theach's proclamation about me that I mentioned yesterday this card is probably my favorite. It wins out of sheer randomness.

Today was the first day of the school book fair. I took my class for about 15 minutes. I wish they would just have books at these book fairs because the kids all came back with all kinds of random junk and few books. One kid spent who knows how much on some plastic skeleton hand that opens and closes when you squeeze a button. That should really improve his reading skills. They came back with video games, Spongebob posters and book covers, posters of basketball stars, little plastic toys. I seriously don't recall seeing one kid bringing back and actual book.

It kind of reminds me of when I was a kid in elementary school and we had this thing around Christmas called "Santa's Secret Shop." The idea was you could bring some money and shop for your family for Christmas. Basically it was 10 tables full of the worst kind of Chinese-made plastic crap. One year my dad's Christmas present from me was a shoehorn. It came from Santa's Secret Shop, of course. To his credit he kept that shoehorn for many years. I'm surprised it didn't go straight in the trash. Another year I think I bought him some fingernail clippers. Not just any fingernail clippers though...they came in a faux-leather zippered case. Zippered case? What's up with that? Do I really need to add another step in the fingernail clipping process? Is it truly necessary to introduce unzipping and zipping into the equation? I think I got my mom one of those oven pads one year. I'm sure that left her breathless. I wonder if they'll do something similar to that at my school this year. For the sake of mothers and fathers throughout the area I sure hope not.

I'm out. G'night.