Symphonies and Sickness...

This week was mostly slow and boring, except for a few details.  I have been sick since last Sunday.  It wasn't a full-blown illness.  It was more of a slight fever, achy, completely exhausted type of sickness.  I made it to work on Monday, I needed to because of our field trip (more on that later), but Tuesday I gave in and took a half day off of work.  I showed up for the morning and left by lunch.  I was hoping that taking a half a day would be enough to let my body start recover.  Alas, it did not work as I had planned.  I still felt awful on Wednesday.  I decided to stick it out and go to work.  Wednesday and Thursday are slightly easier because my class goes to the library and the computer lab.  By Thursday, I had started to feel a little better.  I actually didn't have a fever that day!  Yes!  I am over the illness.  Then Friday came, and I was proven very wrong.  On Friday, my slight illness had turned into a full-blown cold and I felt worse than ever.  So, here I am.  Sick on a Saturday.  Yea!  At least I got through the work week.

So, back to the field trip.  Every year, the fourth grade takes a trip to a local high school to the Utah Symphony perform.  It is always at the same high school...until this year.  This year, it was at a school that wasn't even in our district.  I was feeling sick that morning and was regretting not getting a sub.  Then, our intern showed up looking awful.  She had been throwing up all night.  Kristy told her to go home, and she took her place on the field trip. We got the kids all ready on Monday morning.  The buses were supposed to show up at 9:45 and the concert was scheduled to begin at 11:00.  Well, the buses were late.  They weren't really late, about 20 min. or so.  We finally got on the buses and got on our way.  It seemed to take us forever to get to the high school.  When we finally got there, we were told that the last performance hadn't finished (is was running late) and we needed to wait.  We were told it would be about twenty minutes and we could wait on the bus or out in the parking lot.  We chose to wait on the bus.  If I had to guess, I would say that it took closer to forty minutes for them to tell us that we could go in.

Out bus was literally the last bus to be unloaded, and that meant that we were the last group to walk in and get seated.  By the time we got into the auditorium, the performance had already begun.  A brief note about the building.  The school (like the one we usually go to for this field trip), has a massive auditorium.  There are really nice seats, balconies, and a huge stage.  Apparently, there were over 3,000 fourth graders attending the performance.  Kristy and Marlene had already walked their students in and were seated.  They later asked us what took us so long to get in.  We had no good answer for them.  We were just following orders.  Shannon and I walked our students in as quietly as possible because, again, it had already started.  We were following a high school student who was acting as one of the ushers.

Apparently, they didn't plan out the seating well enough that day.  They had a lot of single chairs here and there; but they didn't have enough seats for all of our students to sit together.  This is where things get rally crazy.  When you are on a field trip, it is important to keep all of our students together so that we don't lose anyone.  This is especially true when you are in a new, huge place with 3,000 other people.  The usher came over with the arts director, who told us that "even though it wasn't ideal, we needed to split up our students." It took everything we had to keep from getting really mad at the situation.  "Not ideal."  You think!?!  We agreed to split up the students, because there were no other options.  Half of Shannon's students were taken to the main floor.  And I do mean "floor."  The students were pretty much right in front of the stage.  They were told to sit on the floor.  The other half of her students were in seats in the upper balcony.  Half of my students were across from her's on the opposite side of that same, huge, balcony.  Someone had left a ladder in the front row of seats.  So, my students didn't really have enough room and they kept kicking the ladder.

The other half of my students were also sitting in balcony seats, on the complete opposite side of the room.  We were closer to Marlene and Kristy's groups.  So, between Shannon and I, our two classes were split into four groups that were no where near each other.  I told half of my class to wait for me to come get them, no matter what anyone else told them.  They were not to move until I came for them.  I was hoping that this would keep anyone from getting lost.  A few minutes into the program, Shannon and noticed the same issue. They had placed our students in the balcony, but the railing was so high that the students couldn't see over it. The students on my side were sort of leaning in order to see.  On Shannon's side, she had the students move from their seats and sit high up on the floor (so they could see and it would keep them from kicking the ladder).  It was ridiculous and unacceptable.  They gave us a review form to fill out.  Gee, I wonder what it will say...

The performance was about forty-five minutes in length and they didn't play a single song that the kids could recognize.  This has been different in other years.  The first year that I went, they played a few songs from "Harry Potter."  The kids were totally bored.  I saw some kids falling asleep.  When it was over, the director told the people on the main floor to leave first, because they had been sitting the longest.  Umm, shouldn't you let the classes that had kids split all over the place be able to at least collect their students first?  Nope.  So, we waited until most of the room had emptied and then I went to get bring the halves of my class back together.  Thankfully, I didn't lose anyone (and neither did Shannon).  Next, we had to wait in the huge line to get back to the buses.  We finally got on and headed back to the school.  We got back, sent our kids to lunch (late), and went to go eat our own lunches.  It was a crazy, long, day.

On Wednesday, I met with the principal to go over my score report.  When a teacher gets observed, they are giving a score and then have to meet with the principal to discuss it and set goals for the next session.  I got a pretty good score, considering that I was teaching from a new math book that seems to be written in Klingon.  The biggest part of the meeting, came at the end.  She asked if there was anything else.  I said that there was.  I told her about my decision to look for a new job.  Funny thing, when I told me friends, I did so calmly.  When I told the principal, I cried.  There is something about having uncomfortable conversations with authority figures that makes me very emotional.  I told her how much I loved the school and everyone who worked there.  I explained a few of my reasons for leaving.

I also told her that there was a chance that nothing would happen and that I would stay next year.  I explained that I felt like I had least had to put myself out there.  If I didn't, I know that I would regret it.  She was very understanding and told me about how many times she has had to change jobs.  She agreed to write me a recommendation letter after my next set of observations, in January.  I was hope to have everything together before than, but I will live.  I am really glad to have that conversation over and done with; I was worried that someone would tell her before I had a chance to talk to her about it.  So, now I just have to wait until jobs start opening up.  If everyone will please keep me in their prayers, that would be great.  The districts that I am trying for are really competitive.  I need all of the help that I can get!

On Thursday, we had our PLC meeting in the conference room.  We do this every Thursday for an hour.  An aide goes into each classroom to do a shared reading lesson.  We get a chance to meet as a team and discuss how to help our students.  Plus, there are usually cookies!  We were told that our iPads were almost ready for us.  By the end of that day, we had them!  Our district is working to get every teacher an iPad for their classroom (in theory, by the end of the summer, each teacher will have two).  There are a lot of applications out there that can be really beneficial to students.  We are still learning about all of the benefits.  So, far it all seems really great and useful.  We are very excited.  I have mine with me this weekend.  I am just trying to get used to it and figure out some of its basic features.  It will probably take some time before I really start using it with my students.     One of the other things that we did in the PLC meeting was start to write grants.

I have never written a grant before; it was interesting.  Our district advertises a specific grant at the beginning of each.  You can get this grant every other year.  It is for, up to, $500.  We decided, as a team, to write grants for another iPad.  There were only five questions on the form; but they were really hard!  I probably won't get the grant, because I had no idea what I was doing.  At least, I now have experience writing grants! It doesn't matter much to me until I know where I will be next year.  If I do get the grant, the iPad has to stay within the district; this also applies to anything that I have purchased with legislative money.  That part doesn't make as much sense; mostly because this money isn't from the district, it comes from the state...whatever.

I think that is all of my news for the week.  I fully plan to sit around and do nothing but be sick this weekend.  I actually really want to get some apple juice (the only time I ever drink apple juice is when I am sick--otherwise, I don't really enjoy it), but I really don't want to leave my apartment.  Maybe I will just sleep instead.