When asked which day to post my Day in the Life post, I picked the 8th day because if you made it here, you should know 8 is my lucky number but it is also my favorite number and it is also my birthday. So, I get to document my birthday. It also happens to be a Professional Development Day due to voting.
I like my birthday. I talk about it. I plan things. I don't wait around hoping for people to tell me Happy Birthday. I tell them. I don't shout it from the rooftops, but if I want to be happy on my birthday, I plan it.
It started off by making sure I graded two sets of quizzes from yesterday, yesterday so I didn't have to grade on my birthday. :)
I decided not to set my alarm for my usual 5:40 am because we don't have to be in until 7:20 and with no kids, I could walk in the door at that time. But, I am a morning person and my eyes pinged open at 5:40. I did my usual phone routine and was so happy to see a Facebook post from my Dad. My parents live in Florida, I am in Massachusetts. My Dad has a tradition of always picking a song and posting it for friends and families' birthdays. It made my day. He picked Tim McGraw's "My Little Girl". If you don't know it, go, now! iframe width="480" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/D1XYn-al8lE" frameborder="0" allowFullScreen="">
I have four awesome boys, but no girls, but I am always his little girl and I work to make him proud every day. He always has a tradition of calling people at 6 am on their birthdays, so I took that call and then jumped in the shower.
We don't have enough lunch time to go out and grab something, so I still made my salad, but I didn't have to make my 2 sons sandwiches because they are off.
My mother in law gave me my present last night. She knit me a beautiful scarf. It is a light pink. I picked my outfit out around it so I could wear it today.
Here I am, ready to head out for the day at 6:30 for my 1 mile commute to school:
I entered school through the front door to the front office to check my mailbox so I could pick up a quiz that one of my inside school suspension kids took yesterday (so I will grade 1 quiz today) and the vice principal stopped me to thank me for doing a little presentation yesterday about Adobe Spark and to say he liked it. :)
Into my room, to finally have a few quiet minutes to get it back in order. Move the desks back from rows, clean the board, organize what I need to do for the day.
My big plans:
Work until 2
Vote at 2
Run after that then shower
Dinner with a high school friend at 6 pm
Bed
I have another great problem on an Algebra 2 assignment sheet that has me stumped. I don't remember where I got it from. I am going to print it out and ask some colleagues to try it:
10.) B and D are midpoints of segments ACand EC in triangleACE. Segment BD = 7.
The perimeter of triangle BDE is
20. Find the perimeter of ABDE.
Head to the bathroom, run into my senior son's teacher who tells me he is failing the class because he isn't doing the work, make a note to call him later to get him working.
My colleague friend ran the Disney half marathon on Sunday, so she stopped in at 7:20, chatted until breakfast until 7:45 am.
Went to the cafeteria for an amazing hot breakfast as we looked at the board for our school's first #edcamp style PD day.
Special ed teacher concerns - how can we support the teachers when we have so many different learning platforms - places for the kids to have to go to.
Maybe make a toolbox for teachers to go to and grab - a graphic organizer, exemplars.
Students could do a voice memo and send it instead of writing an explanation.
Lots of great conversation on how to help kids on IEPs.
9:10 heading to the library for 10th grade PLCs- horizontal alignment. Big concern - tests and quizzes falling on the same day from different classes. Thinking about the amount of homework assigned when.
9:45 am break time, back to my room for a breather to decide what my next Alg 1 unit looks like and take a bathroom break. Give my computer a few minutes of juice. Text son to do the above homework. Decide where to go next. I might go to Breakout. I have done one before and love it and want to make another this year. I wonder if it will be doing a breakout or just discussing it. I might want to play.
10:00 am Yep, there is a breakout box. Time to play. I am very competitive. We better breakout. Hoping this inspires me to create a new one for Alg 1 this year. I made an elaborate one for Alg 2. We only had 30 minutes and we broke out in 18 minutes! Yeah us! We did the Time Warp one about communication. Found out the middle school just got a great and bought a bunch of boxes. I already bought my own. It is really fun. Now to find time to make an algebra 1 one.
10:40 am Going to the one on Twitter. Let's see if I can help get anyone started. It is fun to sell something you really love!
11:15 am Lunch time. It was a fun morning to go to what we wanted to go to and to get to chat with colleagues I don't normally get time to sit with.
12:00 pm Math Department meeting: Looking at the curriculum and determining what is missing or does it need to be moved? Changes don't look to bad. I am already doing it all in accelerated anyways, phew.
1:15 pm back to planning Algebra 1 new unit on Systems.
1:45 pm ALICE drill practice. They came over the loud speaker to give us a scenario to think about how we would react. Will have a drill with the students this year.
Overall, it was a nice PD day. I feel like we are all on our separate hamster wheel, going round and round and today we got to stop, take a breath and just catch up. We had some great conversations and made important connections.
2:00 pm, leave the high school and drive right next door to the middle school to vote. No lines, no waiting, walk right in and vote. Easy, peasy.
2:15 pm, home to my two sons. Check in with them to see what they did on their day off. They worked at a friend's house putting stuff into a dumpster and got paid. Pretty productive. Now, Kyle is heading off to play some golf because it is just gorgeous out.
2:20 pm, head out for a run:
Temperature is a bit different from my scarf weather this morning. It is short-sleeved running weather because it is sunny and 61 degrees. I don't usually share my speed, but it was a great run and my shadow got super long:
3 pm - catch a bit of Ellen's monologue an jump in the shower. Blog.
3:30 pm - time to read. I started the book "The Storified Life of A.J. Fikry" on a friend's recommendation last night. I was super tired, so I didn't last long. But, now I am going to go sit outside and read! What a treat!
It was so gorgeous out for Nov 8th in MA. What a wonderful luxury to just sit and read. I read until 5:30. Then, it was time to head to dinner with my friend. She brought me a balloon and a card. I had a yummy seafood risotto di mare and we had a melty chocolate dessert with ice cream. I am so full. Dinner was 6 - 8. Now....it is time to read. This book is soooooo good. I highly recommend it. It is short but I am reading it so slow because I don't want it to end.
A heavenly day (and I managed to avoid all politics).
No comments:
Post a Comment