I'm in a Meme Mood, so Here's Saturday 9

I've been slacking at blogging of late in large part because of the end-of-the-school-year crunch. Although I've already posted today (a compelling piece on the prevalence of tears at graduations), I'm in the mood to do a meme.

Fortunately, my good bud, Bud, has satiated my need (and kept me from having to wait until tomorrow's Sunday Stealing) by offering his Saturday 9.

Also, it's quite possible that I'm procrastinating writing exams ;-)

1. What is the craziest thing you've done in the last year?
One of the drawbacks to being a teacher is that you can't really get into the crazy stuff you might hypothetically have done in a quasi-public forum. I'll leave out any sort of calisthenics in a two seater sports car out of it and instead go with doing karaoke to Natalie Imbruglia ;-) Of course, the fact that I teach middle school means that my entire life is crazy ...

2. What is something that you've lost recently?
A rough draft analysis essay written by one of my students. Despite my disorganization and the fact that my desk is pretty much a landmark because it's piled high with random papers and such, I take great pride in not losing student work. This is a first, and I'm sick over it (and of course it's a wonderful kid who worked incredibly hard on the essay ... I officially suck).

3. Where does your patience suffer the most?
I hate hypocrites. And liars. And unprofessional jerks. Put the three together into one person, and you'll understand why my hair is going gray this year.

4. Have you ever reread a book?
All the time. Books are magical in that, although the words on the pages don't change a bit, the experience is completely different based on where you are at in your life, the mood you're in when you read it, new background knowledge you've obtained since the last reading, and so on.

5. What is a TV show that you absolutely HATE to miss?
I don't love TV. I can't think of a show I'd hate to miss, but if I had to choose one it'd be NCIS.

6. How old do you wish you were?
I'm actually pretty good with being 34, much as I complain about it at times. I'm old enough to have gained quite a bit of wisdom about how the world works and young enough to enjoy pretty much everything.

7. Do you know your neighbors?
Actually, I don't. I know their cat, though. Grrrrrrr. Seriously, though, the combination of a fair amount of acreage and being located on a busy road isn't conducive to the neighbory kind of thing.

8. Do you believe that opposites attract?
Have I dated people a lot like myself (well, as much as that's possible ;-))? Yes. Have I dated people that could be considered my opposite? Yes. Am I currently single? Yes.

9. Who was the last person that made you laugh?
A very cool person ... and the context is something that is not typically laugh-worthy, so I guess he found out something very odd about me ;-)

Procrastination Problems

The girls and I (and Addie's best friend) are leaving in a few hours to go skiing with Andy, his daughter, and his neice. We're staying at his grandparents' condo right on the mountain, so tonight will be all going in the pool and just hanging out and tomorrow ... tomorrow will be lessons for the little girls and Addie (who's a pretty good skiier) learning how to snowboard and Andy and I ... well, either helping the little girls out with lessons or helping Addie and her buddy with snowboarding or maybe even getting to make a run or two of our own. I'm wicked excited (and I have to offer a giant shout out to my brother, Adam, who is VERY generously going to stay at the house with the dogs so we can go up tonight with everyone else).

The purpose of this post is to flagellate my procrastination tendencies a bit. And by the way, yes, I'm aware that blogging instead of doing the huge list of things I need to do is just perpetuating the procrastination. Okay, here's what I need to do ... and, yes, most of it could have been accomplished yesterday or the day before. I'm horrible!

1. Get dog food. There's no excuse on this one ... I mean, I've known that I had to get dog food for days. The situation is a bit complicated by the fact that my dogs eat a specialized dog food that's only available at one store, a store that doesn't open until nine.

2. Pack. Yup, haven't even started. Also not sure where my bathing suit is.

3. Take a shower. Oh, and give Belle a shower.

4. Go to the grocery store to get juice boxes and stuff for breakfast and so on.

5. Take Addie to get a top for her bathing suit. Or, if that's not possible, to get her a new bathing suit. The child has got to stop growing!

6. Clean the house up a bit. And try to remember to make coffee for Adam so he just has to press the button tomorrow morning.

7. Go get Addie's friend.

8. Drive to Andy's house, where he will also have procrastinated packing. Since he had to work today, he at least has an excuse.

Somebody told me once that making a list to prioritize is helpful. I'm just feeling even more overwhelmed now. Looking at it like that doesn't help at all ... I'm still not even sure where to begin. Shower then pack? Pack (because I know there will be lots of stuff I won't be able to find and I'll get all upset) then shower? Go get the dog food? Tidy up the house?

Is procrastination (and disorganization) an issue someone can overcome? I mean, I seriously disgust myself sometimes ...

Well, anyway, it will all get done eventually, and it's going to be a great weekend :) I'm bringing the video camera (and my computer, although I'm not sure whether or not there will be internet access), so you'll no doubt hear all about it over the next few days.

Procrastination Friday

I have so much to do that I don't even know where to begin. (I know, I know, at the beginning ... but what if you're not sure where that is?)

I even had goals. Yeah, seriously--a home goal (get all my clothes put away finally) and a work goal (finish typing meeting minutes for a committee I'm co-chairing). What happened? Well, isn't it obvious? I had a quiet evening at home with no one but Belle, and she was so exhausted from staying up late last night that she fell asleep watching television.

To be fair, I paid a bunch of bills. That was pretty big. I also wrote a long and difficult e-mail to Pythagorus (the gist being that he needs to take responsibility for his actions, not blame his problems on other people, and that I really want to support him in his sobriety endeavour, but it's hard to do that when he takes everything I say completely wrong and then doesn't call for several days--I'm guessing it wasn't well-received since, true to form, he hasn't called despite a promise to do so. Jesus, the whole situation could almost be comical if it didn't hurt so damn much.

After that, I went on Wikipedia and read details about characters in "The Godfather" (yes, I know Wikipedia's an unreliable source--I'm an English teacher, after all--but it was mindless and interesting and, most importantly, relaxing.

I had to wake a rather annoyed Belle up so we could pick Addie up after the football game at her school, so we all just got home from that little jaunt. She's asleep again, and shock of shocks, Addie went to bed as well.

I have to go let the dogs out again and make sure the light's on for my mom (she gave a party at the beach house tonight and will be home late.

I just wanted to share my contemplations on procrastination. Basically, why is it so easy to complain incessantly that you don't have the time to get things done that are important yet, when the opportunity to accomplish something useful arises, you do stupid things like research the complex relationship between Don Vito Corleone and Luca Brasi--and on freaking Wikipedia, no less?

Final Exams and High-Stakes Opportunities

Today was the last day of final exams for my students.

As someone who struggles mightily with high-stakes testing (I had to take the SATs five times to get a decent score, my GRE math score was in the third percentile which was fortunately overshadowed by my ninetieth percentile language score, and so on), I find myself questioning the veracity of putting kids under the proverbial gun as the school year winds to a close and there are various other things hanging over their heads. I decided this year to make the most relevant final exam possible.

My final consisted of three parts--a multiple choice section, a formal essay due on the day of the exam that had been assigned two weeks earlier (drafts were strongly encouraged), and reading a short selection and writing a "Found Poem" on it. The multiple choice component was focused on The House on Mango Street, To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, and Romeo and Juliet and included an element of reading assessment and test-taking strategies. What this means is that students willing to take their time, read carefully, and synthesize information given out in various questions did very well on this.

The found poem was intended to assess on-the-spot reading and taking out what was important. Not surprisingly, this was considered the easiest part of the exam for my students.

And then ... the essay. My hope was that students would use the two weeks to create drafts or, at the very least, to put some thought into what they would slam out the night before. To be fair, a number of students did this. Several went so far as to provide me four or five drafts of their essay over the last week and a half, I gave them feedback, and their essays are unbelievable. The kiddos that worked the essay are the ones that received the highest scores on the overall final exam grade. However ... the number of students that seized this opportunity was just not as high as I would have hoped.

I am myself a world-class procrastinator, so I guess I can understand the lack of enthusiasm for doing multiple voluntary drafts. I just wish that there was some way to demonstrate to kids that, if you aren't able to pull off the last-second magic, you should probably emulate the workhorse.

This post is nowhere near as clear, concise, and (I admit it) interesting as it sounded in my head. However, I needed to get back on the blogging horse, so I guess I accomplished that, at least :).

What do you think of final exams for high school students? Are they worthwhile or a waste of time? Are they similar in value to high-stakes tests like the SAT, the GRE, and (for us educators) the PRAXIS? Does this really mean anything?

Structure--Good for the Soul or a Necessary Evil?

Perhaps because I work in one of the most structured places in the world--a public school--I find myself wondering whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.

I've come to the dubious conclusion that, for me, at least, the structure of my work is necessary. I have a set schedule at work; the classes may differ, the collection of characters in any given grouping of kids makes for great variety, but it's a given. A known.

Last week, I did almost nothing. I played with my kids, did some light editing of my finished manuscript and planned some mental outlining for my novel-in-progress, and toiled to get this blog out there. It was a very necessary easy week, but I'm still disgusted with myself for not getting accomplished a fraction of what I should. Why did I suddenly become a focus machine when I was back at work?

So here I am back at work, and I've got grades entered and informal progress reports printed for two of my classes. I managed to achieve this amazing feat (this is sarcasm ... my classes are blessedly small) in about half an hour. I did nothing for work over vacation--no planning, no grading, very little thinking about it (although I adore my job), and I didn't make it in to clean up my desk as I'd planned to do at some point during the week.

So are you a person that needs structure in order to get anything done, or do you thrive when given your own time and task? Many writers that I've met on the great blogosphere set writing goals, keep track of word count, and do amazing things ... all self-initiated. What is wrong with me?

I should probably mention that I'm teaching summer school this year for the sole purpose of keeping myself occupied so I can actually get things done. How pathetic is that?

Oh well ... I'll just jump on the "I have ADHD" bandwagon and smile cutely. That often works : )