Sunday, August 27, 2006

12 hours until it all begins again

Only spent two hours in the classroom today; what's done is done, what isn't, isn't.

I watched the Dateline segment last night, The Education of Ms. Groves. It was fairly realistic, nothing like that drivel, The Ron Clark Story, which has been playing on TNT constantly the last two weeks.

I weeped like a baby at the end of it. So much so that my dog stared at me as if I was a crazy person. He started wimpering, and I thought he was being empathetic, reached for him, and he backed away, barking at me.

So much for man's best friend.

Last year I had 110 students, this year I have 186. What have I done? 30 of them are an extra class I took on, with quite a bit extra pay, so I can't complain, but still, that leaves 156 students. The district limit for a teacher is 157, so they are cutting it very close. As an English teacher, that means 156 essays to grade every time one is assigned. Good God. I may need to be a wee bit more organized than last year.

Or, figure out a way to read and correct (for both content and conventions) 750-word essays in three minutes or less.

I should have been a PE teacher.

6 comments:

tornwordo said...

You a PE teacher? Bwahahahaha. just kidding. They should just make all the students do a 20 minute cardio and be done with it. Then assign the jobs the pe teachers don't have to grading essays, lol.

Anonymous said...

Now THAT is one hell of a great idea! Of course, one can't be too sure of the PE teacher's ability to grade any sort of paper, can one?? OOh, I am nasty. Can you tell I was never the star jock? Devo PS I am so happy to be commenting!! I know, I am a bit sad and pathetic....

GayProf said...

Do schools even have PE anymore?

r said...

Devo, I changed it all just for you. I'm a comment whore, and when I saw your comment on Chunks' blog, I knew I had to enable anonymous comments.

Now... who the heck are you?

Coldguy said...

Well think of it this way, reading some good and some terrible pieces of writing from kids with merging talents and untapped imagaination, or kickball for 40 years....I'd go with option one and do the stair test when I am really stressed.

Stair test is when you grab all the papers in a big pile and chuck them down a flight of stairs, the lower they go, the lower the grade. Simple and might get it right sometimes.

Chunks said...

Devo has a thing with PE teachers because the one we had in High School was a total nightmare of a woman. Plus, she hated us because we smoked and couldn't do anything athletic in the least. Haha!

My dogs avoid me when I am bawling, although the last time Taz was near, he licked my tears away. Of course, it was only because he had no water in his dish!

Chin up Kiddo, soon it will be December and you can have a much-deserved break!