What In Tarnation?!?!?

I went into school this morning to get my building’s census of technology. I unlocked the door to my classroom and entered. The first thing I noticed was this huge pile of trash just inside my door. “Gee,” I thought to myself, “I’m slob but I am normally not that bad.” I then noticed that several items that I had sitting next to my classroom computers were thrown in the floor. This was odd. Someone has been in my room messing around with things. I took a closer look at the classroom computers and noticed that someone had installed a new electrical outlet box behind the row of computers. Now I was relieved that someone hadn’t been stealing things from my room but now I was confused. Someone had been installing something, but what?

I took a bigger survey of my classroom. Then I saw it. There was a projector hanging from my ceiling that wasn’t there when I left for Spring Break. No wait! Look at that!. At the front of the room, installed over the center section of the white board was a brand new interactive Smart Board! I then did this grotesque little dance of joy. Thankfully no one else was around because at that point I wasn’t really in control of the happy dance.

This was quite a surprise and it made me want to go back to school right then. Of course our first day back, Monday, we have a field trip. I have a good part of the class will want to stay at school but instead we will be headed off the the Tyson Research Center, run by Washington University. The trip sounds like it is really going to be worthwhile. The activities that they have planned for us go right along with our third grade GLEs (Grade Level Expectations) in science. Good thing because the MAP (Missouri Assessment Program) is right around the corner, starting April 10.

One last thing to leave you with: during parent/teacher conferences I played this MP3 file (1.5 MB) several times to make me laugh. When no one was around of course. Enjoy.

One last funny before I leave for the night:

Class dismissed!

Anyone here? I hope so. Thank you for indulging my hiatus. It was a busy month of March. I lead several technology workshops for teachers, held parent/teacher conferences, helped with the third grade science fair, got ready for a field trip that was canceled and postponed to Monday, and finally I have been resting up on a much needed spring break.

For the most part conferences went okay. I had a few that I was not looking forward to. This will be the first that I will be recommending retention for one of my students. Thankfully, the parents in attendance at the conference seemed very supportive. It will be the parents not at the conference that will be the sticking point.

I had one parent of a new student get angry at me because I am not strict enough. Mom didn’t like my philosophy of wanting kids to have free play time rather than something else. If her daughter didn’t finish any (late or not) work, she told me, I was to keep her in from recess. Never mind that this is the same parent that complained to my principal a couple of weeks ago that I kept her daughter in from recess to do late work. I have a feeling that she just wants to complain about something.

The third grade was scheduled to go on an outdoor field trip as well. However the very cold temperatures caused us to reschedule the trip to this upcoming Monday. A high of 66 sounds much better than the high of 44 that we were looking at. This year, I have been horrible about getting pictures of my class. Over spring break I have been looking of a video camera that I can use with my class, that means cheap, however I do have kind of high standards on the picture quality. At church I have gotten used to using cameras with 3 CCD chips rather than just 1. In the 3 CCD chip, one chip handles each color rather than all colors being processed on one chip like on a 1 CCD camera. Of course the more chips the greater the cost. My mission was finding a camera that fit both criteria, cheap and with 3 CCD chips. It was quite an experience that Pressed explains in more detail at Avoiding Evil. The field trip on Monday will give me a chance to use the new camera and get some pictures of the class.

I will go into school tomorrow to finish up my building’s Census of Technology that is required by the state of Missouri. The info that I collect is much more comprehensive than what is shown on that website.

While I have been on break, I have been reading several books. One of them is by a male third grade teacher in California called 32 Third Graders and One Class Bunny: Life Lessons from Teaching by Phillip Done. It is amazing how similar the experiences of teachers within the same grade level can be so similar. So similar in fact that while reading the book, I went back to re-read because it felt like I had written what I had just read, except here at my blog. Like The Essential 55 that I have discussed before, this book has funny parts, sweet parts but mostly funny parts, just the way I like it. I recommend the book to teachers and parents of children in that age range. Some chapters ripped from my blog include:

• Names
• Classrooms
• Teacher School
• Picture Day
• Teacher Speeches
• Why?
• When to Stop Teaching

And I ‘m just halfway through the book!

Whew, I guess I had quite a bit of this trapped inside me. Hiatus for the blogger is a strange state of limbo. Throughout hiatus I would repeatedly think to myself “I need to blog about this,” just to realize a few seconds later that I was on a break from blogging.

Oh, and by the way, it is good to see you all.

Class dismissed!

It has come down to this. I have a few too many balls in the air and I am going to have to drop a few. Not forever but for an extended time, I am going to put the blog aside.

This week alone, I will present 4 different workshops in addition to all the normal teacher stuff and all that not normal teacher stuff that I am being required to do. Couple all that with the illness that I am trying to recover from and you got yourself one spent Christopher.

The illness seems to have totally disrupted my ability to sleep as well.  I can’t sleep through the night and I am sleepy at horrible times. I just need some time to heal and to get other things under control and the blog is one of the easy things to drop.

The hiatus could last two weeks or it could last longer. Keep your RSS feeder tuned into WIT for our return.

Class dismissed!

Also - Podcasts are also looking iffy. I have had one recorded for several weeks now and there has been an issue uploading it.

Wedding bells are ringing today for Craig (Pressed) and Kendall. Today I will take part in a ceremony that is centered not on two people but on a big God. A big God that can brings two people together and make the other person more complete. I know that God will bless the vows that are made today.

Head by Avoiding Evil to wish the blogging couple martial bliss.

Class dismissed!

I suspected it might have been Abner that had contributed to my catching the strep bacteria. He had missed a few days the week before because he got sick. At recess I decided to question him about his illness.

“So those days you were out sick, what did you have?” I asked.

“A fever.”

“Did go see a doctor?”

“No, not really,” Abner shrugged.

“Oh, really? I was just wondering if you had had something similar to what I had.”

“Well, this is how it happened: I got sick and had a fever and stuff. Probably completely fried a few of my brain cells in process. However, in taking a cursory glance,” he looks up and down his arms in a robotic fashion, “everything is back up and running.”

“I can’t wait until I am back up and running too.”

Abner looked at me out of the side of his eyes, “Maybe just a spirited walk, Mr. W.”

“What are you saying?”

He shrugged his shoulders with a smile on his face.

“You think you are funny don’t you. At least I can tell you were paying attention when we were talking about using colorful adjectives in class today.”

“Yes I was.”

Later in the day, I had Abner come over to my desk, to show him one of the recent Stongbad E-Mails from homestarrunner.com because it mentions robots. “Robots are just technology shaped like square people.” His favorite part was the Future of Technology section and wireless flashlights. He thought it was funny. He also liked Strong Bad trying to find his way through the catacombs. “Where are ya takin’ me Lappy?” He giggled at that part.

Class dismissed!

I have an odd and regretable tradition. A tradition that I could live without really. I have this tendency to get sick on my birthday, at least two major holidays (see last Thanksgiving), and weddings, especially if I am in the wedding. It is really annoying. Well the germs and bacteria had a choice to make recently. They could get me sick on my birthday, the first, or they could fool around with me for Pressed’s Wedding, the eleventh. Since I have relatively intellegent germs and bacteria dwelling within me, they knew that it would be unwise to get me sick for both days because I would most likely just die and they would have to find a new host to infect before they died. They decided to split the difference. I started to really feel the ebola virus kick in on Saturday night and it was full blown fever, aches, dizzyness, sore throat and an unending supply of mucus. (Why do these things always happen on weekends when the doctor’s office isn’t open?) It was all I could do to keep my head up. I managed to call and get a sub for Monday and then to open up Word and type out the most incoherent sub plans I have ever made. (No seriously, I went back and read them. This thing effected my cognative abilities.) I e-mailed them to the third grade team and retired to the fourth shower of the day (it was the only thing that made me feel subhuman.) I got into the doc on Monday to learn that the evil streptococcus bacteria had struck with a vengence. I believe the doctor’s exact words were “HOLY COW! Nurse you have got to come see this!” And then for the next couple of minutes I became the freak of the doctor’s office. I got my perscription for a Z-Pac and I was outta there.

Now I have had strep many, many times before and I can’t recall a time when I had so many white sploches on my tonsils. This was a pretty bad case. Still not feeling all that hot, called and got a sub for today.

I am going to try the whole school thing again tomorrow. The biggest issue will be my voice. It still hurts to talk at any kind of volume. I am pretty sure I know who gave it to me despite my near ritualistic hand washing during the school day, thanks Abner.

Class *cough* dismissed!