The up side is that because it is a high needs school, they are offering a $12,000 bonus for anyone teaching there. PLUS, because I am nationally board certified, I'd receive an additional $5,000. So, that would be a $17000 raise. That's more than $1000 a month AFTER taxes.
I just don't think any amount of money is worth the stress and pressure that would come from working there. I like my school. I like my coworkers. I like my kids. I like my room. I like my commute (the new school would add about 15 minutes to my 35 minute drive).
I'm pretty sure that I'm going to ignore the email because there are some things money just can't buy.
It sure is tempting, though.
- Music:Steve Forbert
So, what's been going on, you ask?
I spent 56 hours this last week revising tests. Writing questions. Tweaking questions. Creating visuals and charts. Matching test questions up with objectives and standards and creating master spec sheets to go with each question. It totally sucks. The only good thing is that I mad about $1500 doing it. So there's that.
Here are some good things that have been happening.
1. I bought a networkable color laser printer. I don't think I've ever been more in love with a piece of technology before (except for maybe my iPod). I love, love, love that thing. Just for fun, I went out to the backyard and typed my grocery list and sent it to the printer. I guess I'm easily amused.
2. My sister did not forget my birthday this year! And now I have $20 at Target and $25 at iTunes to spend. I have no idea what I'll get at Target and the only thing I can think of that I want from iTunes is Jakob Dylan's new album. Any other suggestions?
3. My little town is growing. I live in a small town that's about 20 miles south of Austin and 40 miles north of San Antonio on the interstate. It's a sleepy little town with a cute downtown and train tracks and all of that. I love how small it is. Of course, the town is ringed with Sub Divisions. I live in one of the older sub divisions that backs up to the town so I never feel like I'm totally in suburbia. Up by the Interstate, though, things have been happening. Last year we got a big grocery store, Subway, Starbucks and Whataburger. They just announced now that in the next year we'll get a Kohl's, a TARGET! and a movie theater. I'm stoked. I know I should be anti-development, but since it's all up by the highway anyway, it doesn't ruin the asthetic of the town. I'm stoked.
4. I love Netflix. I'm currently watching Buffy for the first time and am through the first DVD of the Tudors. I've got an MS3TK for tonight, so I'm good!
5. I saw Spamalot. It was good!
Bad Things
1. It's fucking hot. That's all I have to say about that.
2. One of my dogs got a hold of a chicken breast from KFC and chomped down all the bones in 3 seconds flat. I'm worried that he punctured a bowel or something.
3. I turned 39. That's one year away from 40. When did this happen?
4. I need to write another chapter of Nobody's Business, but all I can think about is the heat. I'm going to try to get it done today or tomorrow, though.
5. I haven't been able to read as much as I want to and I've totally gotten behind on the whole Outlander thing.
That's what I've been up to. I'm going to try to catch up on a few things here on LJ and then get to writing.
- Location:Hell (It's Hot Enough)
- Music:Frank Sinatra
Had a pretty decent weekend. I saw Sex and the City. I've never seen the series, but I really enjoyed this movie. Funny...full of heart...nekkid men...what's not to love. I liked this movie about 1000 times more than the last one I saw which was Baby Mama. Have I talked about my disappointment at that here?
I broke my iPod on Friday when I dropped it hard on the concrete and dmanaged the poor little hard drive. What a great excuse to get a new one! So I spent time on Sunday rebuilding my iPod and iTunes (which was a mess due to a hard drive malfunction a year ago which caused me not to be able to synch songs). So, I dug out my CDs and reinstalled things I can't live without (Leonard Cohen, Springsteen, Tom Waits). I made sure I put cover art with everything and now I have a pretty tricked out iPod. I have 1300 songs and am only using 5 out of 80 GB. What the hell am I supposed to do with the rest of the room?
Today, I brought in RockBand as a promised reward for getting good test scores. We had so much fun. I have some boys who came in during lunch to play on expert level and holy crap were they good.
Tomorrow is field trip day and I volunteered to stay behind. I'm hopefully going to get my room cleaned out then.
Good times!
- Music:Leonard Cohen -- Waiting for the Miracle
Here's what I've done so far:
1. Made tuna casserole.
2. Watched PS I Love You. Yeah I cried and yeah, Gerard Butler is hot, but it wasn't a very good movie.
3. Watched about an hour of I AM Legend...decided I was too bored and that the dog was probably going to die so I turned it off. It's not like me not to finish a movie.
4. I got to sleep in! 8:30 before the neighbor started mowing his lawn.
5. Cleaned my room and bathroom and washed my bathroom rugs. I've also sorted the rest of my laundry.
6. Watched all of Season 1 of the Office and I'm up to The Fire from Season 2.
Here's what I still need to do:
1. Mow the lawn tomorrow morning. Payback is a bitch, neighborman who keeps his tiny, dachshund puppy chained up in the backyard.
2. Watch the rest of S2.
3. Finish at least one chapter of Nobody's Business.
4. Read more than 18 pages of Outlander
5. Laundry
6. Update the website with reviews of the Newark show. Early reports are that Don was wearing makeup. Say it isn't so or that it's just powder for the lights.
I may go see a movie. I haven't seen Baby Mama yet and the theatre isn't 1000 degrees like it is outside. It will be pathetic, but at least it's something to do.
- Location:Home Alone
- Mood:
bored - Music:Steve Forbert
- Location:Babysitting
- Mood:
cranky - Music:Shawn Mullins
Stolen from the folks on my friends list.
1. Shuffle your song list and put it on random. Use the first 25.
2. Write the lyrics to the first lines (or the first line of the chorus).
3. Have your friends guess what song it is.
4. No cheating! No google, no last.fm, etc.
I think that the season finale was pretty near perfect. Sure there will be things I pick apart later, but there was just so much to love and I while I can predict a lot of complaining, I can't think of a better way to end this season.
( Read more... )
Now I'm going to catch my breath and watch LOST
Ugh. I have been so incredibly busy this week it isn't funny. I have to help come up with nice things to say about 145 kids and for some of them, it's not very easy. I have to think about getting grades done before May 30th. I have to keep kids interested for another 15 days despite the fact that we had to be done with our curriculum a month ago to get ready for the test.
What else am I crabby about?
1. They cancelled Moonlight. This was the best worst show on television. I'll miss mocking it at lunch on Mondays.
2. I am so behind on my fic reading. There are so many stories I haven't had a chance to read yet. Maybe I can get caught up this weekend.
3. I keep moving Jim and Roy around on the page like little action figures, trying to make them fight and they just won't do it.
Bright spots?
1. Office finale tomorrow. I'm so excited to see just how far off all of the online speculation has been.
2. I'm showing Mr. Smith Goes to Washington in class and that's a very good thing. We start analyzing it tomorrow and I'm sort of looking forward to that.
3. Did I mention that there are only 15 days left this year?
Everyone else on my very small friends list is doing this, so why not?
- Location:Home
Well we made it. Testing is officially over for another year.
Today the kids took their US History test. It covers the entire year and is a total reflection of everything we've done together since April. I can't look at the test and I'm not even supposed to discuss it with the kids, so I'm kind of freaking a little right now.
I know many of the people on my flist have been going through finals / paper writing / end of semester stuff and I honestly haven't done that for a while (studying for my National Boards 2 year ago is about the last time I studied for something) so while I could empathize, it was difficult for me to put myself in your shoes.
But now, I've got 145 kiddos who have to wait three weeks for their results and I have no clue how they did and I'm freaking out for them. What if we reviewed the wrong stuff? What if they didn't take it seriously because it was the Friday of a long week of testing?
Sure, I'm worried a little for me, because how they do is a reflection of my teaching, but I really want to see them succeed here.
I usually don't get this freaked out and I think it's because none of the kids came bursting into my room to TRY to tell me about the test. Usually they want to ask me questions or tell me if it was easy or hard, but I haven't heard a word from any of them. Is the silence a good thing or a bad thing?
In fic news, I'm now 3/4 of the way to finishing another chapter of Nobody's Business.
Happy weekend. I think I'm going to go shopping for treadmills after work. It was payday yesterday, so...Woot!
- Location:Empty Classroom
- Music:Sweet, Sweet Silence
I've got the first half (the exhibit part) of the next Chapter of Nobody's Business done. I'm having way too much fun with this story. Chapter 4 features Jim's feature in Scranton Life Magazine. Seems our boy is Scranton's Most Eligible Bachelor!
Hayden -- Has about 5 origami swans folded on his desk
Christen and Prad -- actually working on Social Studies test review workbooks.
Kyle-- Making a spring out of paper
Esteban -- drawing guitars
James -- dead asleep
Riley and Josh -- playing tick-tac-doe (they aren't supposed to be interacting with each other, but I'm letting it go)
Kelsey -- making elaborate henna-esque designs on her hands with blue ink.
Deirdre, Thomas, Cody, Will -- staring off into space
Paige -- writing an elaborate fanstasy story about elves, knights ..etc...
Karla -- coloring in an entire piece of paper with pencil
Jonathan -- trying to communicate with hand signals with someone across the hall.
Justiz -- drawing a fish? dragon?
Reuben -- picking apart a pop tart
Xio-- Unravelling a tie on her sweatshirt
Me: Saying, "Please be quiet, every 7 or 8 minutes", working on Nobody's Business (I finished all of my grading yesterday), drinking mass quantities of diet coke, updating this LJ, emailing other teachers in similar lockdown situations).
Everyone else is reading or staring at a book. (interesting fact...there are 6 copies of something from the Twilight series currently in my room).
That, ladies and gentlemen, are your education dollars at work. Seriously, something needs to be done about testing week. There's so much useless down time that borders on torture for the kids and the teachers. (i get to pee once...at 9:45). For example, the Science and Social Studies tests each take roughly 2 hours for all of the kids to finish. Why not combine them on one day? Why not put everyone in the cafeteria and get 15 people to take turns monitoring them? Why not get rid of meaningless standardized testing?
In other news....we get THE OFFICE tonight so that will help get me ready to do this one more time tomorrow. What am I hoping for?
- Location:Lockdown
- Mood: cranky
- Music:Shuffling of feet
I could rant long and hard about standardized testing but I'll save that for another post.
The good news is that I've got a new chapter of Nobody's Business almost ready to go.
ETA: Nobody's Business is now ready to go. I'm off to post it.
- Location:locked in my classroom
- Music:silence
I thought I'd distract myself with this little task:
- Music:Ryan Adams
1.
Sigmund the Sea Monster. I remember feeling really sorry for Sigmund.
2. Great Space Coaster. I just sang along to the entire theme song. I need a drink.
3. Bigfoot and Wildboy. Bigfoot saves a child and raises him as his own. No, really.
4. Electra Woman and Dyna Girl. Girl Power, I guess.
God, and there's more. Isis (homely school-teacher can transform into Egyptian Crime fighting goddess), SHAZAM (Hot boy can transform into Superhero with the help of Roman gods), Wonderbug (broken down jaloppy tranforms into cool car). Am I seeing pattern here.
I didn't link up Land of the Lost because even now, I'm still scared shitless of Sleestaks.
- Location:Bed
- Music:Lucinda Willaims
2. I liked Dinner Party. A lot. But at the same time it made me miss Season 2. A lot. I don't know if I can explain it in a way that makes sense.
3. I had to watch the CMT Awards last night. Actually, I fast-forwarded through them because I was only interested in who won Wide-Open Country Video and I needed to see Joe Walsh and Timothy B. Schmit present an award. Frankly, I was frightened by most of the precedings, but I was left with a question. The Wide Open Country Video (as I understand it) is for non-traditional-country artists who record a country song. Alison Krausse and Robert Plant were nominated as were the Eagles. That makes sense. But Willie Nelson was nominated in the same category. I'm sorry...since when is Willie not a traditional-country artist?
4. One of the choices my students had to vote on for their end of the year dance was "80's Prom". Why would anyone want to recreate that? I brought in my yearbooks to show them today and they decided that we all looked like the Beatles. In 1985. Yeah.
5. I'm really excited about this week's Office. I'm a little spoiled so I've got a lot of questions.
6. I have to attend a DAC (District Advisory Council) meeting this afternoon. I plan to work on my new story while it's happening.
- Location:Work
- Mood: exhausted
- Music:The sound of 30 8th graders taking a test.
It's been so fun reading everyone's lists, so I thought I'd try to get in on the action as well.
Comment to this post with one or two (or 7 or 8) subjects for a top 5 (books, tv shows, foods, songs, etc...whatever you want, they're your oats) you would like to see me post about (with pictures, if applicable), and I will post it soon.
I've been mentally answering all the challenges I've seen posed to others, so I feel up to the challenge!
Friday:
Had a mandatory faculty meeting after school. On a Friday. The hell? Didn't get out of here until 4:15 and by then traffic sucked!
Went to the 7:10 showing of Leatherheads. Want to know what I thought? I bet it mirrors many other people's opinions. I will point out the things I liked
( NOT SPOILERY )
Saturday
Went to Wimberly Market Days. Bought a big metal flower for the front yard, some soaps, a painting and a knock-off handbag. I couldn't decide between the Fauxberry and the Fauch. I ended up with the Fauch.
Mowed, edged and weed-whacked the front yard. Trimmed the Photina down to an inch of their life.
Put up the last of the reviews/photos from Europe.
Sunday
Went laptop shopping with a friend.
Watched some top model
Took a nap! (what is wrong with me?)
Started reading Deathly Hallows again.
Didn't think about work ONCE. Woot!
- Location:Work
- Mood:
sore - Music:Hum of Air Conditioning Unit
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godinthischilis- Melissa
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