I am a product of my choices...I live by design

Anyway, I let off steam; I am at peace with the world now. The whine-fest is over. The 4th period situation is out of my influence, so I am going to focus on what I can control:
I am going to choose the subject.
I am going to request both of our aides for that period.
I am going to think outside the class for inexpensive activities.
I am going to use Mrs. G's room and split into groups.
I am not going to try so hard to keep things academic anymore, because it is obvious I care too much.

So...onto better things. Today is beautiful. No one would go to the beach with me, so I went
myself. The weather was warm but not hot. The water was too cold for me. But I did see some people in it.



My chair.



Me in my chair.

View from my chair.



View from my chair.




Wild daisies growing at the beach.

stupidness

With the budget cuts to the schools, every teacher has to "do more with less". Here is how I am apparently going to do my part. In normal, sane circumstances me and Mrs. G split the students in the unit by grade: 9-10 and 11-12. This way we don't have our immature and gullible 14 year old freshmen with our 19 and 20 year old seniors. Well, Mrs. G has off 4th period, and normally there would be another teacher available for those other students. Not anymore. So I get all of them in a small room for 2 hours a day for the entire year. (4th period is block, so you would normally only have them for half the year.) To top it off I have no new materials and we wont be getting any money for stuff. So I guess we will just be using the same exact books we have used for the past 3 years with the same kids. Nothing like boredom in a classroom to set off the mischievous and the bullies looking for entertainment.

my messy desk

I like my schedule this year the best of any so far:
Language Arts9-10, Language Arts 11-12, Science 11-12, Career Prep 11-12, and Unique Skills 9-10.
But, when my desk gets like this I know there is too much is going on at once.

Note the pile of books on my work table. The stacks of papers and folders that all need my attention. Grades are due this week (by the time I finish inputting and uploading my wrist is killing me). My homebound student, like many teenagers, does not give school a thought when a mean grown-up is not around to nag him. So he is weeks behind in all of his classes from all the school he missed before I started with him, and this is the last week we can turn anything in. Plus, I have got to get ready for missing three days next week. I never miss work. It is not worth the trouble. Normal planning for me is jotting down a few notes in my lesson book. When you have to plan for the sub, you have to write each and everything out and plan double the amount of stuff just in case. It takes forever. Just to confuse things, next week I am getting a new Science class, so that will be my first week with them, and I am not even going to be there for most of it. I also have to find time to take my old Science students' projects to another school to bind them into a book. We don't have the binding machine on our campus. When am I supposed to do this before the end of the week?
If anyone is still reading this after all of that moaning, I really do like my job. This is just one of those weeks when everything happens at once. I really hope that I get to continue in this setting next year, but with all the budget cuts, I have a feeling I am going to get stuck somewhere really uncool.