Doozy of a Day

Well this has been an interesting day. 

This morning I woke up from a dream where one of the 7th grade girls (the most pushy of them all) was screaming at me in class and I was screaming back at her.  I don't remember if there were other students around, but either way it was stressful.

The 7th and 8th graders had a test in Science today (and one in geography tomorrow).  Since they haven't been trying very hard on their homework, I thought I'd print off their grades so they know how they're doing.  In summary, not so hot.  I left a note on the whiteboard saying if they didn't like their grades, they should come talk to me about them before or after school.  Only a few people came to talk to me.  Most of them wanted some extra credit worksheets or assignments to do.  They kept bugging me about them all day and I didn't get the chance to print some off, so I'm going to have to do that tomorrow before school.

I was run ragged by the 1st and 2nd graders at afternoon recess.  They kept asking me to give them an "under-fish" (another name for underdog).  Since I'm taller than the 3rd and 4th grade teacher, I can push them higher.  We have four swings and I was in demand for pushes on all of them.  Whew!  I escaped only to be caught by two sisters who were digging in a sand hole by the playground.  They started screaming because they saw a little spider.  I convinced them that it was just a baby one and it couldn't hurt them.  They ended up naming the little guy, and while they were deciding on a name, I sat back, congratulating myself on changing the world, one spider-lover at a time.... and then the girls screamed again.  They saw a daddy long-legs.  I said, "Girls, that's just a daddy long-legs.  I thought you liked spiders now."  "We do, but we only like little baby ones, not big ones like that creepy daddy long-legs."  Then they started screaming some more as it crept toward them.  Thanks Lord for showing me humility.  I herded it to the grass away from the girls.  "Miss Heintz, is it gone?"  "Yep, it's in the grass."  "Good.  What are we doing for art today?" 

That was the question of the recess.  I'm pretty sure I got asked that question by at least four 1st and 2nd graders.  The answer was watercolor masking tape trees.  It's a super easy project that looks awesome.  First you put masking tape in a shape on your paper (we did tree shapes).  The hardest part of the project was getting the tape torn just right and stuck on the page.  After they had their tape situated, they could paint over the page with their watercolors.  A bunch of them were mixing colors to make some darker shades.  All of them were super careful with how they were painting.  That kind of surprised me; I modeled how to put the paint over the tape tree and was kind of painting sloppily.  One little boy said, "Miss Heintz, why are you scribbling?"  I didn't really know what to say to that, "Because I can" isn't the best response for any student.  I think I ended up saying something about wanting to get all the white around the tape covered with paint. 

They all wanted to take their tape off right away, but I told them they had to wait until it was dry.  One boy (who wanted his tree to look EXACTLY like mine) kept touching his paint, "Miss Heintz! I think mine's almost dry!  Can I take the tape off?"  "I think it needs more time to dry.  Why don't you finish painting the page before you think about peeling your tape off?"  I can't wait to see what their trees look like!  My 6th graders saw my example and got really excited, "Do we get to do that?  I think we should do that next.  It looks really cool."

Our test during 7th and 8th grade science went well behavior-wise.  I haven't corrected them yet; I'm kind of dreading it.  I think a lot of them just gave up on answering the questions and wrote down random stuff.  Since this test was a unit test, covering two chapters, I mishmashed a bunch of questions from both chapter tests together and the numbers didn't match up.   This really confused one of the eight grade boys; he kept flipping from one page to the next looking very perplexed.  Finally he raised his hand and I walked over to hear him, "Didn't you say there were two extra credit questions?  Well, where is the second one?"  I flipped to the second page and pointed to the number.  "What! There's another page?!"  Apparently he hadn't realized there was a second page.  Or a back to the second page. I don't think he was very excited about that. 

Volleyball practice was interesting too.  I did a drill with the older girls where I would throw the ball to them and they'd bump, set, or spike the ball.  It went fine until it came time to spike.  Then I had to dodge the balls!  The whole time I kept thinking, "Wow, Emily, what a great idea.  Give your students the perfect chance to hit you with balls as hard as they can.  Perfect payback for giving out bad grades and difficult tests."  I thought about making a joke with them about it, but decided I didn't want to give them any ideas, just in case.

After practice, I tried to catch up one of my students with her science vocabulary words.  She's over 20 words behind! I have no idea how this slipped under the radar.  Of course, her dad is sitting in a chair waiting for us to finish so they can go home.  He's hearing me load on the homework (that she should've been doing over the past two weeks), so he probably thinks I'm an evil teacher giving out tons of homework to make my students suffer.

Finally everyone left and I just wanted to go home.  But first I had to pack up and decide what I needed to correct.  My car has been having some transmission issues and I've been calling around trying to figure out what's wrong with it.  My dad gave me the number for the Ford dealer near my hometown, so I gave them a call to see what they would say.  I won't bore you with the details, but I ended up needing to check my transmission fluid.  So I head out to the parking lot with some paper towels, still in my volleyball clothes, ready to check this puppy out.  And then I couldn't find the transmission dipstick.  After calling Dad, asking him if he knew where it was, and reading the owner's manual, I learned that my vehicle doesn't have a place to check the transmission.  Wonderful.  Finally I called the guy I bought the vehicle from to ask his opinion about what I should do. 

He said I should just get the filter replaced and change the transmission fluid (with an additive in it).  He could do it and he could do it this weekend when I go home.  Perfect.  I drove home, finally ready for a break. 

I walk into my apartment and dump my stuff in my room.  And then I notice my alarm clock.  No lights are on.  "Nooo! My alarm clock died!  Now I'll have to buy a new one! But I love this one!  I don't want to change!"  Grasping at straws, I tried it in a new outlet.  And another one.  And another one.  None worked.  Then I thought I should try turning on my lamp to see if maybe the outlet was the thing that was bad.

My lamp didn't turn on.  Neither did any of the lights in my apartment.  Then I noticed my fridge wasn't running and there was no time showing on my microwave.  What did I do?  Checked the fuse box, flipped some switches.  Nothing happened.  Called Mom.  She told me to call the emergency maintenance number for my apartment building.  They said they'd be out soon.  Soon turned out to be forty minutes.  I tried to find something to eat, going in and out of my fridge quickly so the cold wouldn't escape.  It's quite a challenge to put a meal together without using electricity.  I ended up with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  Except it was frozen because my bread was in the freezer.  Not the peaceful evening I had envisioned.

The maintenance guy finally came and said the electric company had a power outage and they would hopefully have it fixed soon.  Sigh.  They joys of technology.  Now my power is back on.  I've eaten supper.  Some of my papers are corrected (not as many as I hoped).  Lessons are planned for tomorrow.  I think I'm going to call it a night.