Skip to main content

Un-Wired

I keep having all these topics I want to post about and I haven't had time to do it because we were taken off-line at school. Apparently there's some sort of upgrade or something going on in the district as a whole and they have to replace all the wiring. So, instead of waiting the three weeks until summer when it wouldn't disturb anyone, the district - in their infinite wisdom - decided to do it now. Even better is how it's happening in my school. The people doing the rewiring came to my class and cut all the wires, then decided they didn't really want to do that building, they wanted to do the other building. So they went to the other building and are rewiring it, leaving most classrooms off-line for only a couple of days. We've been off-line for almost three weeks, with those cut wires just hanging out of the wall, taunting me.

There may have been more method to the madness, but I don't happen to know of it. The real problem is that a research project we were doing has to be scrapped now because we don't have a staffed library so all the research was on the Internet...

We let our butterflies go - this was the best picture I had of them. The kids were very sad to let them go. Some of them made little butterfly books that I'll take pictures of. Yes, I know I just ended a sentence with a preposition.

Good news: our assistant principal (who is really good) is staying next year!

Countdown: 15 days of instruction left. The fatigue is setting in. Two more field trips before school ends, which should be fun, but exhausting.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Loss

  (I have been putting off finishing this blog post for months. You'll see why)  Today, I was cleaning a bookshelf and I found the journal from one of my third-grade students, who I call Fred in my book , in 2001. I still had it because he didn't come to the last day of school to get his stuff this year and I guess it got put in a pile and somehow I've kept it with me.  He didn't come to the last day of school, probably because his family was a mess: dad in prison, mom in an abusive relationship, all the kids (understandably) acting out violently. Fred was expelled from our school in second grade for hitting a teacher. Then he was expelled from the other school, I don't know why, at the end of second grade. He came back on the condition from the administration that he be in my class because I had him as a student in first grade and he listened to me and worked well with me.  We had a really good relationship, although Fred was definitely not easy to have in class....
Post a Comment
Read more

A New Prison, Part Two

  Second very long part of the prison visit report.   After we got all the paperwork filled out and went through the metal detector, we got visitation slips with the name of the inmate, and made our way over to the other building for visitation. This is not maximum security so thankfully you can just sit next to the inmates, and not be separated by glass or have to use a telephone to talk.    First, you get a gate unlocked and go into a holding pen that is of course in direct sunlight (or rain if it's that season) and surrounded by fences topped with razor wire. You wait there until the gate at the other end is unlocked. This holding pen was a little bigger and less claustrophobic than the other prison (I do not have any claustrophobia and I came very close to a panic attack once at the other place) and they opened the other gate more quickly. Then you walk, again in blazing sunlight (or rain) to the visitation building. This one was less of a walk than the other pri...
Post a Comment
Read more

A New Prison, Part 1

My former student, friend, and co-author was moved to a new prison during COVID. We (myself, Mitali, and his Abuela) have visited a couple of times via the video visit functionality they set up, but we've also been trying to visit in person, ever since in-person visits were allowed again. After four of them being canceled (sometimes we were told why, sometimes not), we finally got a visit. I was super nervous about this visit. (I felt better when Mitali mentioned that she was also, because she is an inherently positive and optimistic person!) I am not proud of this, but there was a large part of me that was hoping that the visit would be canceled, just like the previous four were. I felt a little better when someone I know messaged me privately to tell me that they had had very good experiences visiting a family member in that prison. But I still didn't sleep well at all that night, worrying about the guards, the many things that could go wrong, and the projected 111-degree hea...
Post a Comment
Read more