I learned that I'm not great at remembering to take pictures as I set out on this new blogging adventure. I hope you'll forgive me this time.
Monday, 1/11
5:15am: Hit snooze button only after hubs told me it was going off.
5:30am: Roll out of bed.
7:00am: Leave for school.
7:20am: Clock in and return text messages received while driving.
7:30am: Last run to bathroom before 1st Period. Scramble to finish posting make up work online that I didn't post Friday before I left.
7:45am: 1st Period tardy bell rings. AP Cal AB block. Today we worked on comprehension skills for product and quotient rules for derivatives.
9:32am: Break. Aka the way we poor, rural schools raise money to buy toilet paper, pay utility bills, pay for extra subs for things are that aren't sick days, etc. Today I was fighting with my phone to upload the video I recorded 1st period.
9:45am: Planning period. Catch up on math blogs. Finish organizing videos I uploaded Friday and post them on my website for students to watch who were absent. Type out lesson plans for the remainder of the week on Planbook. Post beginning-of-class-instructions on the projector for the rest of the day's classes. Bell rings before I can finish typing.
10:40am: 4th Period Algebra II w/Trig. Graphing quadratic equations and inequalities. Rabbit chase: Two of my students, a guy and a girl, are constantly arguing, and I tease them that I better get a wedding invitation one day. Today, the guy told me that he did his "Promposal" this weekend. I, of course, asked to whom did he "Prompose." You guessed it. The girl. :) They told me there was a video, and I watched at the end of class. Following the promposal story, we graphed quadratics, and calculated max and min values without using graphs.
11:37am: Lunch. Tuna salad and wheat thins. Lunch duty this week.
12:05pm: Precal. Period and amplitude of sine and cosine functions with a little conversation thrown in about tonight's national championship game.
1:00pm: 6th Period Algebra II w/Trig. Assembly with a guest speaker about an upcoming opportunity to participate in aviation careers program. Except, he never showed. And we spent the entire period sitting and talking while thinking that we were about to be called to the gym. Oh well. We had good conversation about hating jobs and who will turn out to be Rey's parents in the newest Star Wars trilogy.
2:01pm: Algebraic Connections. This is the 11th grade version of "what-do-I-have-to-do-to-graduate" math. We're currently multiplying matrices, and today was spent prepping for a test tomorrow. I had one student who was very disenchanted with the fact that she was doing all this "work" and not getting a grade. She could not be convinced that her reward would come tomorrow when she aced the test. Alas. Still some work to do on helping them understand that grades should be a reflection of what they KNOW, not how much they can write on a paper.
2:55pm: A little Scantron Performance Series number crunching before leaving.
3:10pm: Leave for home. THIS IS A VERY RARE DAY!!! The only reason I left was because I had a mattress delivery coming to my house.
3:30pm: Mattress delivery, laundry, cooking, talking to my BFF who lives 2 hours away.
6:00pm: Supper. (Potato soup)
6:30pm: Laundry and ironing.
7:30pm: Blogging while watching National Championship game. Since I'm an Auburn fan, tonight it's Go Clemson!
8:30pm: Asleep on the couch before hafltime.
Tuesday, 1/12
5:15am Alarm
5:30am: Roll out of bed.
7:00am: Leave for school but have to stop for gas in the freezing cold. BRRR!!!
7:25am: Clock in and prepare to give an AP Language mock exam. Do I teach English? No. But in a small school that doesn't matter.
11:40am: Mock exam finished, and I didn't even fall asleep! Just kidding. I would never sleep during a test.
12:30pm: After extended lunch, we returned to class, but my students brains were fried so I let them decompress.
1:00pm: The guest speaker was late AGAIN!
1:15pm: Guest speaker arrived. He was interesting. Youngest person to fly solo around the world. We are starting a partnership with Huntsville International Airport (HSV) call Flyquest that will allow a small group of students to explore careers related to aviation. My step-daughter is applying!
2:35pm: Return to class. End of day bell rings in 20 minutes, so there goes that day of instruction...
2:55pm: Snap pictures of notebook pages to post on my website for absent students. (fergusonlovesmath.weebly.com)
3:00pm: My Beta Club co-sponsor comes in to discuss tomorrow's meeting agenda and our upcoming spring trip to Six Flags over Georgia. We usually go to the state Beta Club Convention in April, but interest has waned, so we decided to take a different trip so that next year when convention comes around, only half of our students will have ever gone, and they will be more excited about it.
3:25pm: Record part of a video that I'm leaving for my AP Cal students to watch Friday during class since I will be in a meeting.
3:45pm: Go to gym to keep book for JV girls basketball game. (Husband coaches, step-daughter plays.)
5:30pm: Send step-daughter off with a friend to ride to club volleyball practice.
6:15pm: Keep book for varsity girls basketball game.
8:00pm: Dash to Muscle Shoals (45 min drive from school) to pick up step-daughter from practice.
9:00pm: Leave practice, picking up Arby's on the way out.
10:00pm: Home, sitting in bed reading Home is Where My People Are by Sophie Hudson but fall asleep while waiting for SD to get out of shower and hubby to get home from game.
11:00pm: Give in and go to sleep.
Wednesday, 1/13
5:41am: Wake up late with no recollection of alarm. Beta Co-sponsor is sick and needs me to copy meeting agenda before meeting, and I've already overslept for not having to do that!
6:40am: Miraculously (actually with lots of breakfast and lunch prep help from hubby) leave the house.
7:00am: Clock in and copy meeting handouts.
7:15am: Beta meeting
7:25am: Prep for day
7:45am: 1st Period tardy bell. Today is the lovely chain rule!!! :) I love the chain rule. I love calculus.
9:32am: Break. Text with math dept colleague about catty ladies in the meeting she's attending.
9:45am: Planning. Create foldable for tomorrow's Algebra 2 class. Record more of Friday's video for AP Cal. Check on other math class that has sub.
10:41am: 4th Period. Safe Place Guest Speaker. (One of those weeks...sigh.) I am the tech person at our school, aka the only person on campus with computer admin rights to install software. So during the speaker, I installed a printer and set up Outlook on a colleague's new computer.
11:32am: Lunch. Today is tuna and crackers...comfort food. Is that weird?
12:05pm: 5th Period Pre-cal. Graphing sine and cosine functions.
1:00pm: 6th Period Algebra II. Same lesson as 4th Period on Monday...remember I said it was one of those weeks.
2:00pm: 7th Period Algebraic Connections. Test on Multiplying Matrices. I tweaked and printed their INB pages for tomorrow.
2:55pm: Great intentions of running 4 miles in the mild 50 degree weather but I forgot a key piece of my wardrobe, so instead I called the curriculum director from A+ College Ready (AP grant sponsor) to discuss the Laying the Foundations training for the next two days. My two rookie math colleagues were planning to attend and I wanted to express my concerns about some things from the last sessions they had in the Fall. Great conversation and we talked calculus, too.
3:45pm: Record more of Friday's AP cal video.
4:30pm: Leave school headed to Jack's for early supper.
5:00pm: At church to practice with the band for Middle School Worship. I play keys.
6:00pm: Middle School Worship.
7:10pm: Head for home.
7:25pm: Stop at Walmart for apple slices, my crack addiction.
7:35pm: Home. Check on sick hubby
8:30pm: In the bed attempting to work and can't stay awake. That calculus test will have to wait til morning, especially since my Google Chrome on my laptop has been acting goofy.
Thursday, 1/14
5:15am: Actually get up when alarm goes off to get meds for sick hubby. Shower, dress, makeup, hair, lunch, etc. etc.
6:55am: Leave for school.
7:15am: Clock in and record more video for tomorrow's calculus class. (FYI, I use the MoviePro iPhone app $4.99 to record said videos.)
7:35am: Finish creating calculus test. (Thanks, Kuta Software for being awesome!)
7:45am: Tardy Bell for 1st period. Give calculus test. While my students were testing, I used the YouTube video editor to string all of these short videos into one complete lesson and post on my website with the hopes that early test finishers could start watching today. However, the video processing on YouTube's end took longer than I expected, so it wasn't ready for them today. So instead, once everyone finished their test we worked together through a free response question from the Master Math Mentor Step-by-Step series for AP Cal AB.
9:32am: Break. Socialize with teachers in the hallway.
9:42am: Planning. Record video on implicit differentiation, also for tomorrow's calculus class. Make copies for the rest of the day's classes. The end. It flies by so quickly.
10:37am: 4th Period Algebra II w/Trig. Solving quadratic equations by factoring. Some students are mortified that they actually had to remember how to factor after Christmas. Blasphemy, I know. Most did really well.
11:32am: Lunch. Tuna and crackers again.
12:05pm: 5th Period Precalculus. Finish graphing sine and cosine including phase shifts. They are a little overwhelmed by then, so what better way to lighten the atmosphere than to watch my favorite Mathbyfives YouTube teacher explain the same concept. You really must watch if you haven't ever. He's hilarious.
12:59pm: 6th Period Algebra II w/Trig. Same as 4th Period.
2:01pm: 7th Period Algebraic Connections. Properties of exponents refresher day.
2:55pm: Upload the video recorded during planning and edit out a part where I made a mistake.
3:10pm: Leave for home. I never leave this early this often in one week, but the roofer who didn't come Monday was supposed to come today. Sigh. They came after dark and said that the reason we had a leak is due to build up of pine needles. Well, we are surrounded by pine trees. Who knew.
4:30pm: Dinner prep. It has to be ready on time so that we can leave for volleyball practice! I had already thawed balls of pre-seasoned (by hubby) hamburgers ready to be grilled on the George Foreman. I attempted to make guac to go with them, but my avocados still weren't soft enough, so Hidden Valley Ranch mix it was.
5:20pm: Eat dinner and doctor skinned knees from basketball practice.
6:00pm: Leave for volleyball practice 50 minutes away.
6:55pm: Set up camp in The Commons of University of North Alabama (my alma mater!) to kill time/work on my chromebook. Discovered they have flat-rate fro-yo. FLAT RATE!!! I got me some of that! And before I left to go pick up R from practice, I got her some too. I think she thanked me at least 5 times.
9:10pm: Practice is over, and we drive home for quick showers and bed. Long night.
Friday, 1/15
5:15am: Wake up. Hubby's birthday!!!
7:10am: Leave for school. Little later than normal due to computer delays and bday gift opening. :)
7:30am: Try to find out who my sub is for the morning while I am in a meeting with folks from the state department. (It's all good I promise!)
7:45am: One of my calculus students who works at a local fast food place brought us all biscuits!!! Fried bologna...brownie points for you!
8:00am: Leave class with sub and eat biscuit while waiting for State Dept to show. No one really knows when they will arrive. We have implemented a VERY out-of-the-box new schedule for this semester that includes optional attendance on Mondays. It's more than I can explain in this post, but I hope to share it with you very soon. It's not a 4 day week, but a restructured school day on Monday. So the state department wanted to come talk with us and ask questions to make sure we had fully vetted the idea. (And we have.) The meeting went very well! They were very positive, and no one was there with a "gotcha" mentality.
11:30am: Lunch of leftover Chick-fil-a Chicken Minis. YUM!!! Celly text 5th period students to go straight to lunchroom (rather than coming to my room for roll call first) since we were just wrapping up.
12:05pm: 5th Period Precal. Welcome students back from lunch with NO CLUE what we were doing in class that day since I had missed my planning. This particular "shoot-from-the-hip" day turned out well. So well, in fact, that a post will soon be coming about this one.
12:59pm: 6th Period Algebra II w/Trig. Take them to the library to do the same assignment that 4th period did while I was in my meeting. Choose between two IXL assignments connected to this unit and submit evidence of mastery.
1:55pm: 7th Period Algebraic Connections. Practice yesterday's exponent skills on IXL using library computers. I had to leave at 2:15, and the librarian graciously agreed to supervise them.
2:15pm: Leave for basketball game. My husband coaches and my daughter plays on the JV basketball team, and they had a 3:15 game to kick off the county basketball tournament. Since I'm the bookkeeper, I thought I might need to be there. ;) Plus we all rode to school in the same car, and well, that means we all leave in the same car.
2:45pm: Arrive at the tournament and begin writing names in book, sharing the starting lineup, etc.
3:15pm: Tip-off. All four of our teams (JV Girls, JV Boys, Varsity Girls, and Varsity Boys) played tonight, so it was a full night. The JV Girls were the only ones that won and proceeded. The last game of the night, varsity boys, ended with drama on and off the court, but that's a post for a whole 'nother day. If you live anywhere nearby, you probably heard about it.
10:30pm: Home. Facebooking, tweeting, phone calling and texting about aforementioned drama. It was that deep. Drama is putting it lightly. It was an event that our school and community will talk about for decades, and not necessarily in a good way. #freemike
Midnight: Close eyes for a restless night's sleep due to the evening's events.