Day #18

No kids tomorrow for professional development, thank God. That is the only reason I am thankful about a professional development: no kids. Otherwise they tend to be beyond useless, and in fact they're more often than not odious and tiresome and they actually sap professional curiosity and desire to achieve out of my soul.

I think, in fact that I will use sick time tomorrow. I've been laboring under some miserable virus for three days, which clouds my head and weakens my voice and makes me exhausted all the time, with occasional chills and sweats to boot. And today was Back to School Night, and I was at school and on the run for 13 hours straight. I'd hoped to get planning and grading and cleaning done in my room before and during the festivities, but the administrators scripted us into going to a large assembly and thence to small break-out sessions with our kids and parents according to grade level. I much prefer the Back to School Nights where we gather for ten minutes and rush off to our rooms to wait for parents to come to us for sit-down meetings with my electronic gradebook and printer. Between parents I can get work done and listen to music. As it was I got nothing done, but nonetheless this evening was valuable. We had maybe a bit more than 50 parents there, which is I believe the largest turnout I've seen for an in-school event.

I had a couple rough patches this week, but overall felt that the chaotic outbursts were rupturing rather successful teaching, whereas last week I felt that occasional outbursts of teaching were rupturing the rather successful chaos.

That's my story and I'm sticking too it. Off to bed.

UPDATE: I was going to link to my Donor's Choose project to solicit funds again when I found out that it had been fully funded today with an extremely generous donation. I am giddy with delight [and Nyquil]. I am also humbled and profoundly appreciative. I can't wait to take the Thank You pictures and write the Thank You notes with the kids again.