Last week I had kids being silly all over the place and no free periods to deal with it. This week I have spent hours catching up to them, and getting things sorted. My pinky pile is gone and now I have all my marking to catch up with. No rest...
Tomorrow I go on third form camp, and then after camp finishes I collect an exchange student who will stay with us for a week. Our students won't host Japanese students because they don't know any Japanese, so it tends to be the staff that have them to stay. I don't mind as I would like to get back to Japan sometime, and this gives me an excuse - there is a strong sister city relationship between Wanganui and Nagazima(spelling sucks, its something like that). I'll fix that later.
The bubba might have had croup, but without the barking. Which I have heard of before. Poor little fella. The other one continues to be very fit and healthy and being good too. R is at home for the next week, which is good for him too. He is going to go to the inquest about his brothers death next week, and only realise last night that flying might be an option rather than driving...!
Better go mark stuff.
Had an interview with a kid today that claims that he does want to change his ways. I think he thinks it will be easy, which is a shame because it won't be. He has been silly for about four years so it will take a while to set new normal behaviors. I have got my pile of pinkies down to only two, and one of them has been sorted so it is one. But I am going away for Thursday and Friday so it will no doubt be when kids once again melt.
Some year 13's pulled out beer in school van in the weekend and refused to put it away - the teacher was so angry with the way they were treating him he couldn't stop the van in case he did something really unprofessional.
I made all my little darlings work really hard today - I enjoyed it...
I didn't even know they played cricket in Ireland - did you?
Man is it pouring buckets at times at the moment. It gets so loud that I can hardly hear myself think, and the riot that is my class is drowned out. I guess in every event there is a silver lining.
I am listening to U2's Electrical storm on a very short repeat. I don't listen to commercial radio so I have missed a lot of stuff over the past few years. And now I have the ipod I am starting to catch up on some of it. But the main thing you would notice looking at my most played list is the U2 kick. It continues... interesting reading the net and seeing the different opinions on the band. They seem to be very polarising at the moment. There are not many comments that go "I don't care". Mind you, I guess those people don't post. But even the reviews are polarised.
The students of our school have been really peculiar today - they were milling around in big mobs at lunch time today, but apparently there were no fights or problems.
Went running last night - the best thing I could say about it was that I went. I ran like an old woman again, but then again I did run the whole way without needing to have ventolin.
Had to stop at the supermarket this morning to buy a coleus plant. Today we are doing starch tests on leaves, and I needed a coloured leaf.
All well on the home front. R is having some difficulties with the army - who may or may not be sending him overseas. We are hoping they will work out whether they are or not quite soon, as it makes organising the home life really really difficult, not knowing whether he is going to be around or not.
For the professional development I went on yesterday we were asked to bring our job descriptions. No-one had given me one of these, so I was somewhat surprised that there was actually one on file, even if I had never seen it.
Honestly, no-one could do all that stuff and still have time to breathe.
Since becoming the dean of year 10, other teachers are talking to me as if I have been issued with some kind of magic silver bullet. Students that are causing them no end of grief will apparently come to me and Be Fixed. These are teachers who have probably double my experience. Some of them have been deans and should know better! If there is a silver bullet out there whoever has got it has lost it. I mean - if you didn't share that bullet with love, surely you'd sell it? And it would be in heavy use. So I'd know it was there.
And then there is the amazing yawning gulf into which I could pour my time.
Never mind - TGIF
I had some professional development to go to today - and really it was rather expensive. I had to buy new tyres for the car so I could get there. The tyres I had were 20 years old. The car is 20 years old, and has done 52000 km in that time. So the tyres would get a warrant because they still had plenty of tread but were liable to explode if I went too fast in them. Being stuck in town and limited to 50 km has become a pain since being back at work so I bought new tyres. SO EXPENSIVE and no-one has noticed them on the car. $500 of customizing would be much more fun. Especially putting flames on a Mazda 323. Funny.
Drove over with the ipod playing a podcast - better than the radio because I get to choose what I am listening to.
R asked how the PD was and I said useful. He has been listening to some of my moaning as he thought that was an extremely high accolade (he's right). So I am going to try to apply some of the things we talked about.
Went out for the usual run last night, but put the timer on because I wanted to see how fast I can go. So I went out fast and gradually lost speed. I even had to walk a few times. I still ran 1.20mins faster than the last time I timed myself. I am crediting running downhill a couple of times. According to the internet site I got the idea from you gain speed withing the first week of running a steady downhill slope. I thought that was a bit exagerrated but it seems he was right. He reckons (from his research) that running downhill makes you run faster but stay relaxed and so you quickly and effectively program your nerves and muscles to run faster.
It really seems to work for me.
So I got on the map my run site and worked out how many calories I burnt by running faster. I also put in a map of where I went on Sunday night. I ran 3.5 km on Sunday without even noticing the extra, even though it was hilly. Very cool.
As I ran round the bottom of Kings Avenue I gained another accompaniest on my travels. I normally take my dog, and I've noticed she is not trotting round after me but is having to canter (!). But at Kings Ave we gained a much younger version of Sally. This little rough coated terrier sprinted round me like I was standing still and followed us all the way home. So we put her in the back yard and rang the dog rangers number at the council. They paged him and he rang me - no hello or anything like that! His opening gambit was "Why didn't you run faster so the dog couldn't keep up with you? Now I'll have to come in all the way from Fordell and get it." I laughed and pointed out I had already run faster than ever before... he is a hard case dude. Turns out when he came to pick up this dog this morning that he had bred her, knew the owners and had another litter coming in April. He's going to put our name down for a puppy. C's birthday is in April - this could all work out really well.
Went for a run last night and went a different route. This one involves running to the local dog exercise area and then going round the park. To get there I take a bit of a detour so I can go down a hill. Yes, I know, to go down a hill I must go up a hill, but I don't mind that. Apparently the latest thing in how to get your speed up is to run down gentle slopes at least once a week. And then on the way back I run up the same hill from the other side and then go down the long gentle slope again. It actually give me a figure eight run. When I started I wasn't sure how I was going to go - I felt stiff and one leg reckoned it was sore. But by the end I felt fantastic, like I could run forever. This running lark is quite addictive once I get over the first part of feeling like I can't run at all, and then the next hump when I can run and so the challenge is over. Now I have another challenge - doing 3 km in 16 minutes before the end of the year. I might get that sorted sooner than I think if I keep running like I was last night.
About two thirds of the way round I saw a couple of the kids I teach sitting on a fence with friends having a drink. They had the good manners to say hello - I'm wondering what they will say to me today? I'll find out soon enough - I have them first period.
A couple of nights ago I bought an ipod from the apple store on the internet. Now I have to wait for it to be delivered - the waiting is not doing good things for me. I surely hope that when it gets here I can pretty much plug it into the computer and that it goes. If it takes more to make it happen than that I am going to have to start drinking in order to calm down.
There's a few new things in my life at the moment. I bought a new compost thing, and that seems to be working just fine, as much as something that takes months to establish can be assessed after only a few days. And the other day I was offered a very cheap Mexican Walking fish, and took it. It seems to be a very quiet pet, who sits around in the bottom of the tank just breathing. Apparently that is perfectly normal behavior for them and it might be really happy. It seemed to be gasping when I first put it in, but that may have been because it had been in the same water for 3 days and was already in oxygen debt. Perhaps the gasping was about feeling much better. The kids are not annoying it so far, so hopefully it can spend most of its time at school. Also hopefully it will live! I always feel like fish things can die in a short period of time and very mysteriously.
I have a lot to do at school, and with no free periods it is not getting done during the day. I will need to get into a pattern of ringing people at night, or not having lunch breaks. More likely to ring people at night!