I just looked at the date of my last post, and while it seems like the stuff I was writing about happened very recently, I've gone almost a whole month without blogging. I blame NCLB and the SOLs. My kids are taking the eight grade writing test on Tuesday and Wednesday. They have gone three years without a standardized writing test... I'm responsible for teaching/making sure they know and remember three years of writing instruction in six months of classroom time while also preparing them for the reading test in May. Anyway, it's been a crazy short month with me grading lots of essays and worrying a lot. Although I do see lots of improvement in some of my students' writing, there are still a lot that I don't think will pass the test. Unfortunately, since they only get tested in eight grade, they bad scores reflect on me. I think we're running close to the deadline to make our failing sub-groups (African Americans and SPED) improve enough to near the passing percentage. But, oh well, I've poured so much of my soul and heart into teaching them how to write that if they don't do better this year, my feeling of self-worth is going to be trashed. I can't imagine how I can teacher where I am and have children. One group of kids is going to be severely slighted. Being a good teacher (I am going to say good teacher because there are plenty of teachers who don't care and who leave at 2:30 and don't do anything at home and don't wake up at three in the morning worrying about how many of your students understand the necessity of the three part parallel thesis statement) takes everything you have and everything you didn't think you have. I just come home and crash everynight. I don't know how much energy I can give to my own kids.
Okay, enough ranting about how much my job drains me of energy. I just have to say that I love my cats. Jack is so cute and is sitting on my shoulder and headbutting my ears. He was a good pick. Waffles is sitting on the Christmas tree box upstairs in the loft and looking at me. I feel like I've been neglecting them. Jack took a receipt our of a plastic bag, balled it up, and started whacking it around the apartment. Then, he started attacking the windows. Poor baby just wanted to play so badly. He was mewing up a storm last night when I started to play with the cat wand thingy.
Things to do this weekend:
1. Work out (since I've been too exhausted to do it much this week)
2. Go out to lunch with Antonietta
3. Clean up kitchen and living room
4. Go laptop shopping (I really want one, badly)
5. Purchase waning supply of beauty products (I haven't bought anything since Christmas!)
6. Put together wedding planning binder (Woo hoo! Planning! Wedding!) (I went to Staples yesterday and picked out a periwinkle binder - Ben's thinking about that as one of the colors for the wedding)
7. Go check out wedding sites (You know, it's really hard to plan for something a year and four months away and not want to do it sooner)
8. Plan meals for the next week and go grocery shopping -- I've been eating cream of wheat and bagels for dinner most of last week, well, on the days we didn't go out to eat
So in the tradition of Ben and I being totally untraditional, like, I knew exactly when my ring was ready, he's been helping me pick out wedding dresses online. How bad is this? It's hard getting married to your best friend who you share everything with.
