After tens of thousands of miles, I discovered I like a new feature on my car's heads up display. I used to mentally calculate trip time and miles, but this is much easier!
For a week, I started off my day nice and nerdy: Collecting data.
At a quick glance, it looks like it's true that you get better gas mileage when it's warmer out!
And apparently, when going home (However, that data is unclear, since I only remembered to take a picture once!).
If there was school next week, I would have tried to let the car run for a couple of minutes before driving off to see if that changed the average MPG any.
Talking about calculating my average MPG going to and from work seems like an odd way to start a post about school, but I am a math teacher.
The other set of numbers looming over the school year has been COVID cases. They seem to be holding steady.
The week that the numbers went down was right after the county changed quarantine procedures. Any student was allowed to return to school after 10 days if they developed no symptoms without needing to supply a negative test result.
Whatever the case, absences have been high. Personally, I think there many cases of absenteeism are a mix of kids who don't want to go and parents who keep their kids back if they have a sniffle out of fear they may be put on quarantine.
And the absences are affecting teachers, as well. I peruse the "Open positions" for the county every so often out of curiosity. There are definitely more openings, as of late. It's not an overwhelming flood, but I know when there's not enough subs or teacher coverage kids at my school are supposed to report to the cafeteria as a holding space.
I haven't seen my school show up on the openings list too much, thankfully! We did hire a couple of new hall security staff about a month ago, though. It feels like there have been a lot more fights this year than previously. We've had a couple of partial lockdowns thanks to school threats made online. I saw an article that the local police force was planning on coming up with some sort of presentation to address it with students.
Side note: I apparently made one of my student's days by helping them become a social media star. She asked me to look side to side like someone had said something really stupid and took a video. I ended up in a compilation of funny looks that ended up with over '212 hearts.' "It's the most one of my posts has ever gotten!"
I'm not saying that her post was well liked because it included me, but I'm definitely implying it.
Anyway, I don't think poor student behavior is a phenomena only in our county. This article popped up in my newsfeed the other day.
The article cited that HCPS were shortening their days to help combat teacher burnout, bad behavior, and staffing shortages. The idea started as a temporary measure in October, but they decided to make it official for the rest of the year.
Behavior for me has been better-ish. I've managed to (mostly) crack down on bathroom breaks of over 10 minutes and wandering off, but now that I have the students in the classroom I have to deal with them there!
I had one moment I was proud of on a B day. I had a student (who was a serial wanderer) that really wanted to go to the library to drop off a book during Mustang Morning.
"Sure....after you do some work," I said.
The student begged and pleaded, but I held firm. He had plenty of missing assignments and I wanted at least 10 minutes of effort.
The student went back to his desk and played Clash Royale on his phone for about 10 minutes before asking again. I could see online he'd never logged on. I pointed this out and it looked like the begging and pleading was going to begin again.
"Hey, what book is that anyway?" I asked. "Can I see it?"
The student handed me the book. I looked at it a moment and then put it in my desk drawer.
"Alright, now go finish something and then you can have your book back."
His mask didn't hide his shock!
About 7 or 8 minutes later, something got turned in. I can't swear it was high quality, but the kid did what I asked. He got the book and ran off to the library with my blessing. His friends laughed, because they said he was trying and make a pass at a girl. I didn't care as long as he played by the rules and came back within 10 minutes!
You have to enjoy the little successes where you can find them....and making it to Winter Break is a great success! I'm looking forward to having time off to catch up on anything and everything!
Some of my colleagues have been openly wondering about after break. Omicron is in the news and new case numbers are up in the community. Will we have a week of virtual when we get back? Will the school board look at doing something like Harrisonburg did? I don't know and at the moment I don't care. Winter Break is here and it's time to push school to the backburner for a week! I'm looking forward to seeing family and wish you all a Merry Christmas!
No comments:
Post a Comment