The Last Hoorah!

And... we had a two hour late start this morning.  With the "extra" time I corrected papers, vacuumed my apartment, swept the floors, and brushed snow off my car.  I'd guess we got about 6-7 inches of snow overnight.


Next week we begin our standardized testing (Iowa Tests of Basic Skill).  Each teacher makes his/her own test schedule.  Since we had a little extra time with our schedule mixed up from the 2-hour delay, I figured why not get a head start and at least fill out the name bubble page ahead of time?  So we did.  While we were at it we took the 10 minute spelling portion of the test. 


5th graders are so fickle.  Teachers have to read the instructions word for word from the booklet, but my 5th graders kind of zoned out claiming they knew how to do everything.  When it came time to fill out the bubbles, half of them had to erase what they'd put down because they did it wrong or didn't look carefully at the headings.  Sigh.  Then they wanted to know why we do these tests in the first place.  So we talked about doing their best so that I can see how much they are learning/areas that we need to work on more. 


Another thing that got them up in arms was a phone conversation they overheard this morning... I've been hearing talk of teachers not being able to drive their own students to go on field trips, very concerning since it's ridiculous for me to get an entire bus to take four kids on a trip when they easily fit in my vehicle.  So I'm trying to get to the bottom of it.  I had called the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library to see if they'd heard of any law.  They weren't able to find anything, but suggested I call the MN Department of Education.  So I called them and spoke with the Government Relations and Communications department.  She said that there is such a law that was passed in 2013 and sent me an email of the statue.  I know I'm not the best at reading legalese, but I can't see that it forbids teachers from driving their own students on field trips.  It was also suggested that I call the Department of Public Safety since they are in charge of school bus regulations.  So that's next on my list.


My students all wanted to know if we were going to be able to take our field trips scheduled in May.  At this point, I don't know.  Of course they were outraged.  If the law is indeed true, next week we're going to write letters to our senators and representatives (which fits in very nicely with our study of American History).