My head is pounding….
Thursday, August 23, 2007 at 
3:53 pm ()
My head is throbbing.
Today was just another long, busy day in my long, busy week. I’m so sick of testing. We’re still doing PLATO testing of course, and for the grade not PLATOing I’m giving them the STAR Reading/STAR Early Literacy tests. I cannot stand STAR. It is such an invalid test. It’s pretty useless actually. It gives teachers a reading level, but big deal. There are lots of ways to get a kid’s reading level. Most of them take more work on the teacher’s part mind you, but the teacher’s the one who should be dealing with reading levels, not me in the computer lab. 
I could rant and rave about STAR all day, but I won’t. I’m too tired to do that. :sleepy:
Funny how kids get dumped on me sometimes. There are three Jehovah’s Witness kids in our school. They don’t participate in any holiday activities, so they usually come hang out in the lab with me. Today, no one could deal with this autistic kid, so he ended up in the lab with me. Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against kids with different religious beliefs or kids with disabilities, I just find it humorous that I end up with those kids when no one else can deal with them.
And it’s now official- it’s so hot, kids are not allowed to go outside for recess. This means they have to stay cooped up inside watching movies or something. Poor teachers.
I have said news. Chunk is sick. He was sick about a month ago. He got this big swollen lump on him. I came to the conclusion that he had eaten too much. I have him a pea (this acts as a laxative for fish), and his lump shrunk in size. Well, now the dude is pretty darn huge and looks like a pinecone. He has dropsy. If you click on the link, you’ll find out that Dropsy is most often fatal for fish. I’m treating him with antibiotics, but I’m not holding my breath. He looks really bad. He’s still swimming around like crazy though. He doesn’t seem to be in any pain. He’s not gasping for air or anything like that. It’s sad though because I’ve had Chunk for over 2 years. I’ve had him since my first year of teaching which was in Lexington. He’s been through a lot with me! I hope he’ll get better, but I don’t know what the chances of that are.
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Filed in: Education, Pets, Work ()
6 Comments so far
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Miranda scribbled this note on August 23rd, 2007: 
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Awww, I’m sorry to hear about your fishy. I hope the little guy gets better.
Whenever I worked at a daycare last summer, we had those days when it was too hot for the kids to be outside. The playground is much bigger than the building, and we’d end up having 5 or 6 daycare teachers and 200 kids running around screaming through the whole building. Craziness. And at the elementary school I worked at teachers would sometimes pawn off their kids in the computer lab for some free time. I always thought it was unfair to leave the class (or just unruly kids, whoever it was they were trying to get rid of for a few) when they weren’t scheduled to be in there. Hopefully the testing will be over soon?
And tomorrow’s Friday! Have a good weekend -
I am sorry to hear about Chunk. I had a beta for 5 years & cried when he died. I dunno how many times I saved his fins from ick. Hopefully you caught the problem early on.
I hope they do not do testing at my kids new school. that would not leave a good impression on my kids. And when I was a kid we would try to get into trouble just to go to the lab. The lab is a magical place where the teacher is nice.
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you must be the patient looking teacher
i hope chuck feels better.
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I’m sorry your fish is sick! That must suck. But you’re doing all you can for him. Which is good. I lost a fish once. He jumped out of his tank during the night and I stepped on him when I woke up for school in the morning.
I really hope he gets better.As for the kids, I don’t think they’re really “dumping” them on you. I think, in the jehovah kids case, since they can’t celebrate anything (poor them) the parents usually write notes telling teachers to send them elsewhere and you’re the one they get sent to. As for the autistic kid, they may very well have done it to get rid of him which is sad. I didn’t think they were allowed to do that.
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@ Miranda: The testing won’t be over until September 14th for 3-5 grades.
I hate the testing. It takes away from the time where I could be teaching the kids things and doing projects with them.@Jessica: Well, Chunk appears to have gotten a bit smaller, but some of his scales seem to have fallen off. It’s pretty bad looking. He’s still acting totally normal though, which is good I guess. I hope your kids don’t have to do a lot of testing too. Testing takes time away from teaching.
@Jenny: Oh man, I can’t imagine stepping on one of my fish! :stunned: How horrible! And I don’t mind having kids get sent to me because they can’t participate in something. I think it’s funny they get sent to me because there are other places for them to go. But when a kid gets sent to me because the teacher can’t handle them…well that kind of lets the kid start thinking, “Hmm…if I’m bad, I get to play on the computers.” Not so good.
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Awww, poor Chunk. I think this is why I’ve not named my fish. Although, I would seriously cry if my pleco passed… He’s almost a foot long now.
I thought it was mandatory for school to have to take kids outside for at least 15 minutes a day..?
And, after reading the post after this… Yuck. I would have ran and called a Janitor and not returned to that room untill it was clean and smelled good. Can’t handle puke. Nope.
Ashley scribbled this note on August 26th, 2007: 
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