Well, Thanksgiving 2009 has come and gone, and my short vacation is just about at an end. And I have not updated the whole time I was off. Hee! Actually, I’ve spent a lot of time reading, sleeping, and generally relaxing. I didn’t even check email, which is amazing for me. Last week was a total wash at work anyway, so I saw no reason to clutter things up once I had home time.
I think I mentioned that I had signed up to take my PPR exam. I was scheduled to take it last Monday at noon, so I took the whole day off, put together stuff for the sub and didn’t sweat it. I only started getting nervous Sunday night, but it was just a little. Monday, I got there in plenty of time, went through the signing in process, waited a bit for the testing center to get everyone else straight (hello people! The ETS website says NO mechanical pencils, NO food or drink, NO purses or bags, NO electronics. WHY are you surprised when the testing center employees insist you leave these things in a locker outside the test room???), and finally was cleared to begin my test. Forty minutes later I was done. Honestly, I was a little nervous about being through so quickly. I could feel eyes following me as I walked out of the test room. I even had a moment when I was fairly sure that I had completely bombed the test because I finished so quickly. I banished that thought from my mind, though, because it’s ridiculous for me to think that I would bomb a test just because I finished fast. And besides, I think I was the only one there taking the PPR. Everyone else was taking a content exam of one sort or another. One lady I overheard, was taking the K-6 Generalist/Interdisciplinary test – for the THIRD time. The last time she took it, she missed passing by one point. She wants to teach kinder. I would not want my child in her class. (Of course, I don’t know this lady from Adam, so I should be giving her the benefit of the doubt and say that maybe she’s just not a good test taker, but I still wouldn’t want MY child taught by her.)
Tuesday was a difficult day, but not as difficult as I expected it to be. A lot of teachers were doing fun activities instead of an actual lesson, because we all pretty much figured that the kids would just not be focused enough, on the day before a holiday, to settle down and learn. Well, NOT IN MY CLASS. I taught, people! And I MADE those kids sit still for 90 minutes to work on the lesson I was teaching. I introduced patterns in a sequence to them (not a new topic for them, but some find it difficult), and I made a point of not pushing them into the more difficult area of finding their own nth terms. But still, they had a warm-up to do, notes to take, vocabulary to add to the “Mathanese” board, and problems to work on. No slacking in MY class! LOL! We’ll have time to slack off a bit right before Winter holiday, so I did not feel bad in the LEAST that I made them work on Tuesday.
Anyway, just as I was going to shut my school computer down for the day and go home, I thought to check my email one more time and I had a message from the ETS (Educational Testing Services) people. It was my test scores. ::gasp:: I was told that it would be seven days before my scores were released, yet here they were, the very. next. day!
Ah, I passed. 285 out of 300. I needed a 240, so I passed by a long shot. That’s an even higher score than the one I got for my content exam (by 2 points, but still), so I was tres happy with it. So, I am officially done with the certification process. I have observations that have to be done of me by various individuals (my ACP mentor, my school mentor, and my principal), but I’m not worried about those. The principal will be in my room to observe me on December 9th, Wednesday after next, but I refuse to worry about it. If I don’t do what I do every single day, my students will not respond the way I want them to, and my lesson will fall apart. The only thing I MIGHT do is to plan something that engages them a little more – like letting them use the whiteboards that day. Between now and then, I’ll let them use the whiteboards a couple of times, just so that they don’t freak out like the first couple of times I let them use them. I also need to check my supplies of dry-erase markers to make sure I have plenty that work. Other than that, no special lessons for Mr. F. He needs to see how I teach on an everyday basis, and I need to hear his comments about how I teach on an everyday basis. A trumped-up lesson plan does not accomplish that.
Moving on. Tuesday, during my conference periods and for about an hour after school, I put together this week’s PowerPoint, notes, warm-ups, etc. I already had the worksheet keys done (did those last weekend), so I was in pretty good shape going into a long weekend. I brought my lesson plan binder home, along with my scope & sequence, worksheet originals, and a digital copy of the PowerPoint, but I’ve refused to look at any of it. The binder, in fact, is currently buried under stuff I had sitting on the kitchen table that had to get cleared to make more workspace for preparing Thanksgiving dinner. I might dig it out before bed tonight, only so that I don’t forget to take it with me in the morning. I was pretty proud of myself for getting that whole thing done. It’s just proof that I spend too much time on it at home, and I really need to be putting more of it together during the week. I let myself get distracted with other things that, although they do need to get done, should be secondary to prepping for next week’s lessons. The more I can get myself to finish this week, the more time I have to plan for using manipulatives, games, foldables, or just allowing the kids to use markers and colored paper for guided practice time instead of regular notebook paper and pencils.
I had shopping to do Wednesday, so I headed to Wal-Mart, my least favorite place on Earth. Honestly, right now, I can’t even remember what-all I needed besides salad fixings, but while I was there, I spied a new paperback by Stephen King, Just After Sunset, as well as his newest, newly-released hardback, Under the Dome. I drooled over the hardback for a few seconds before I screwed my head back on straight and realized that I shouldn’t be spending money on such things right now. So, I bought the paperback and went home to whine at my husband about buying the hardback.
Actually, now that I think about it, purchasing Just After Sunset and whining about wanting Under the Dome may have happened last Sunday because I got clearance to buy the hardback and picked it up on Wednesday. So, sorry. I screw up my own timelines all the time. Short term memory loss and all that. Anyway…
I’ve been on a reading kick for the past few weeks (actually, I’ve been on a reading “kick” ever since I could read, but let’s not quibble about specifics), and I’ve been scrounging the bookshelves here at home for something to read. I picked up Dean Koontz’s Lightning, published in 1988, and got a kick out of coming across the pre-internet technology in it. I then picked up a John Saul novel, Darkness, and realized immediately that I’ve read it about four times already. These are books on my parents’ bookshelves, shelves that are not filled with tasty things for me to read. Mostly because I’ve read them all already. So, Sunday, I bought Just After Sunset, realized it was an anthology of short stories and was thrilled to have picked it up. Reading it took me through to Tuesday, but I still hadn’t had a chance to buy Under the Dome, so there I was, starved for something to read. So, I did what I should have done from the start: I browsed my own bookshelves.
A year or so ago, my parents were hired to do a clean-out of a foreclosed home. It was a house in a very upscale neighborhood. It was a very upscale house. Five bedrooms, four bathrooms, game room, upgrades all the way around. But you could tell that things had definitely been neglected on the upkeep, probably a symptom of the eventual foreclosure. Oftentimes, when people lose their home this way, they wait until the last minute to start packing, probably in the hopes that they will be able to hold off the bank for one more month. More power to them, but if you haven’t been able to make your mortgage payment in the past four or more months, chances are you won’t be able to make it this month, either. Start packing sooner, folks – that’s all I’m saying. It takes some time to find enough boxes and tape and packing materials for a 4,000 square foot house. Yes, I did say 4,000 square feet. These folks left so much stuff behind, it was unreal. Well, the bank isn’t interested in anything that’s not a high ticket item which might be sold to go toward the outstanding payments on the house. So, they saw all the stuff left behind as trash. But some of it was usable trash. For example, there was a china cabinet in the (4-car) garage that had obviously been used for storage. It was an old china cabinet, and had been well-constructed. The drawers were solid wood all the way around, with dovetail joints. The top had doors that once held glass, but the glass was missing (we eventually found all but one of the pieces). The drawers had junk in them that was generally uninteresting, except for the completely unopened bottle of whiskey bourbon. And it was not a small bottle, either. So, we took the china cabinet, the glass inserts, AND the bottle of whiskey home, along with some other odds and ends that we thought we might be able to put to use. Scavenging? You bet! One of the treasure troves we came across was in a den: A whole stack of hardback Steven King originals – most of which I have seen on the big screen, but have not read (Storm of the Century, for example). I keep forgetting that these tomes of horror are in my son’s room, on a top shelf of a bookshelf. It’s an out-of-sight, out-of-mind kinda thing, I guess.
Wow, that whole story, just to say that once I finished Just After Sunset, I picked up Insomnia, which I got by cleaning out this foreclosed house. I had never been able to buy it because it was published the year after I graduated high school. Lack of money and a chaotic lifestyle lead to not purchasing things like music, movies, or books, and then quickly forgetting that you wanted to buy them in the first place. Anyway, I tore through Insomnia, because when I went to the store on Wednesday, I bought Under the Dome.
Mr. King, plotting against me and my bank account, sneakily put an excerpt of Under the Dome at the end of Just After Sunset, and within two pages, I was completely hooked. When the excerpt came to an end, I was so frustrated that I nearly threw my brand new paperback across the room. But I controlled myself and vowed to pick up the new hardback. And I did. And it was TOTALLY worth it.
Under the Dome is a typical-length Stephen King novel – meaning it’s nearly as long as the Bible and probably should be published in separate volumes, much like the Encyclopedia Britannica. Reading it as a hardback is like lifting weights, very slowly, over extended periods of time. My right elbow is not happy with me today and I have Under the Dome to thank. But still, I am happy that I read it. I was so pulled in, so engaged in this story, that when I picked it up Friday morning to start reading it, I didn’t really put it down until 1am this morning. I slept Friday night/Saturday morning, but I dreamed of Chester’s Mill, Maine. I might as well not have put the book down at all that night. The story reminds me of a certain Twilight Zone episode, but I won’t say which one because it would spoil the end of the book. You need to wonder who put that dome there. And why.
If I had more than two thumbs, I would be pointing them all up for the newest release by Stephen King. I highly recommend it, but if you insist on buying the hardback version, stretch before sitting down to read it. Seriously.
