Tuesday, March 11, 2008

• Silk purse

  Apparently I was dreaming about hitting some button repeatedly this morning, and whatever button that was in my dream, it was definitely my snooze in real life.

  So I get to school a good 15 minutes later than usual, a span of time that I typically spend preparing for the day, making copies, reshaping plans, whatnot.  Fortunately, I have lugged my own ancient laser printer to school once more, since my school-allotted model has decided that I don't deserve any more printing.  The ancient laser printer at least means that I can print of copies of stuff rather than trekking to the main building from my pitiful little mobile unit adrift in what once was a parking lot.

  But wait, to print, I'll have to use my flash drive.  And the flash drive that contained versions of worksheets and activities adapted to the curriculum here bit the dust three months ago.

  No matter, there's Channel One in my pitiful little mobile unit now, so I can tinker and print during that time.  And plead rough morning if anyone takes the time to notice that today's "friendly reminder" to man our morning duty station goes unheeded.  Plus some of these things are uploaded to my class webpage or on my e-mail!

  But wait: some are not online at all, lost forever, doomed to retyping.

  And wait again: the ones that are there are taking FOREVER to load.

  So I copy and paste some lyrics to the smart notebook on the smartboard, enlarge during Channel One, while the partnered activity is printing off.

  Wait, wait again.  I have no homework for them!  We used the one workbook page devoted to -AR verbs yesterday!  So I rifle through the drawer of horded materials.  Phew!  18 copies of an -AR worksheet!  And I'll find something else for the native speakers...maybe only 18 will show up.

  No, no, wait.  The 19th was just late.

  So how did I survive all of this and make it to my third period planning as cheerful as I am?

  1)  The old fall-back of white boards was a hit, so the effect of the reduced morning planning time was, well, reduced.

  2)  I found enough relevant textbook work for 2nd period Spanish II to even threaten with sending the textbook home if kiddos did not stay focused.

  3)  I magically found the folder with Spanish II's lyrics translation song (which was neither uploaded, nor on my flash drive) and had just enough copies for half the class to share with the other half.

  and 4) The brilliant imperfect tense childhood plate activity I stole from my compañera filled up the class, keeping the speedy ones busy finding pictures to go with their imperfect tense sentences and allowing me to set some pokier folk straight on a few concepts!

  Somebody is definitely looking out for me today.

  • 12:22 PM
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