Six Weeks

I got grades in on time. Now I have more work. I used the online gradebook the district is looking at adopting. I'm going back to my old GradeQuick. It's more robust and easier to use. I was so tired of the new system by the time I finished that I couldn't take pleasure from the fact that I could submit just by pushing a button.

Tomorrow we start two days of open house. I'll be talking with the few parents that come by. I enjoy that. The rest of the time I'll be working at transfering the semester from the online system back to GradeQuick.

Grading

The six-weeks ended Friday. Now it's marathon grading. What a way to spend a holiday weekend.

Metanza

Last Saturday we went to a metanza, a traditional pig roast dating back to Spanish colonial times. My wife comes from a town about 30 miles south of here. Two of her cousins, with adjoining property on the mesa overlooking town, hosted the metanza.

I rode down with our nephew. We got there at dawn, just in time for the killing. Then we stood around drinking really good coffee while the viejos (old timers) got the pig ready, dressing it, shaving it, cleaning it, skinning it, cutting off the legs and head. Once they had it prep and parcelled out to the rest of us to cut all the meat into something we could cook, they sat in chairs around one of the 4 fire pits and started passing the whiskey.

I spent two hours cutting meat for chile. It's something I'm good at. My wife didn't show up until 10:30, but she'd already done her part. She spent 5 hours Thursday evening making chile & adova.

After half a day of work, it was time to eat. We had chile, carne adovada, beans, calavacitas, Navajo fry bread, and more. The fresh chiccarones were heaven, and my mother-in-law's biscochitos melt in your mouth.

Winter Wonderland...Again

Another snow day. (I'm including a picture of our house from the last one, because it looks the same. That bright dot in the sky is the sun, not moon.) This one is a bit different. Not only is it Wednesday & St. Valentine's Day, it's also a long scheduled In-Service day. Students were off anyway. They're not missing anything.

The day was planned for us to train for Next Step meetings at the end of the month. Next Step was ordained by the state legislature to track and guide students to life after public school. We teachers meet with parents and their students to go over transcripts and discuss options. I and others have been requesting better training. This was to be it. We also were to go through an "electives fair" to learn about electives available and how they relate to the Career Pathways we're going to next year. I consider this a big loss.

My wife and I are going in to work for a few hours, then off for a Valentine's Day lunch.

Schedule

I went to a meeting after school today about next year's schedule. It was an emergency Instructional Council meeting where the Schedule Task Force presented their findings and recommendations to the IC and anyone else who wanted to attend. Most of Social Studies was there. We had by far the largest turnout of any department. But we've got one member who's on the task force and others who have had a rather heated email discussion going with him for over a week.

We're going to a block schedule next year. That's a done deal. Teachers get to vote on which type of schedule, AB or 4x4. The task force is recommending the 4x4.

I've never worked under either schedule, so I have to go by the information they presented today. I know which way I'm leaning. We probably won't know the results until March.

Seniors

My seniors surprised me on Friday, in all three of my Economics classes. I gave them the assignment sheets for the project and told them to get into groups of 4 and start brainstorming. And they did! I didn't have to keep reminding the groups to stay on task. The questions were, "Can we do this?", not, "Would this be right?"

This is a one-semester, core class. This semester's crop aren't screwing around like last semester's seniors were. I don't know if it's because it's so close to graduation. I still have a lot of ditchers. I still expect them to start panicking around April. But for now, I'll enjoy the work ethic.