Counting down

I try not to do this, but something about this year and this time of year has made me count how many days of school are left. I usually love my job, and want to be here, but... there are 11 days of bus duty left, 10 more days of teaching the before and after school reading program, about 29 days of actual school and tons of reports and meetings left.

Yesterday afternoon at a meeting with the fourth grade teachers, we talked about the mandated changes for next year. No one sounded very postitive - that will make the job go easier, huh? I guess we feel as if we weren't let in on the planning stage to give our ideas and now we're stuck. Our administrator has been having his own problems, I guess. He was to observe me teaching on Monday. I was introducing a new theme in reading and a new story and had really planned some good activities to grab the student's attention and get them motivated. 45 minutes of my lesson had gone on before he came in. He apologized over and over, but what do you say? So, he came to observe me in another class - I was basically doing the same kinds of things, but had chosen the first class for him to observe because of the way the kids react - oh, well, I know he's not going to fire me!

And, it's raining again!

Can't wait

I can't wait to get home today! There should be a telescope on my porch. You know we save Coke reward points and after saving a long time decided to redeem them for a telescope. The neighbors are safe no more!! No, we really are both interested in space and planets and stars and now we will be waiting for clear nights so we can go out in the country a bit away from "city" lights so we can use the new toy.
Parent conferences are next week - lots of paper work still to do, but I still have my after school reading group to work with today, then it will be 5:00 and the inclination will be gone! I was here by 6:00 this morning, so maybe I've done my part today!

April Fool's

I hope everyone survived the jokes and tricks from yesterday. I did not have one student tell me there was a spider on me, or my shoe was untied! Behavior was bizarre though, for some odd reason. There were playground fights, one student used the playground for a bathroom, several ran away. Really strange and no one can figure the reason.
Monday I went on a field trip with my two fourth grades to the Science Center of Iowa. One of the teachers gets carsick so had to be in the front of the bus. The other is to give birth in two weeks, so she rode in the front of the bus, leaving me to be the heavy from the back of the bus. Parent chaperones often don't tell people to sit down and be quiet! In all, it was a good trip. The kids behaved well, the IMAX movie was spectacular (we saw Roving Mars) and all the exhibits worked. That is not always true. The only down was that we couldn't be on TV for the noon weather, the weather people stayed in the studio because of fronts pushing across the state.
As we start to count down the days left to go to school, we are looking at next year's calendar. Seems like we usually pick a calendar earlier - but there are some interesting choices - we usually have parent conferences in the spring 3 half days, but looks like they are changing that to 2 half days. That says to me we aren't going to see all the parents, maybe invitation only? It will be interesting!