No more pencils, no more books... ?

I know... I know...

I disappeared for a month. Or more. Again.

I had every intention of keeping the blog going, but it's so hard for me! Anyway. The school year is over at last, but don't think that means vacation time! The week after school ended, I spent 4 days in teacher inservice... the scintillating topic was "Creating Quality Assessments." Ooh... bet you're jealous. At least I got paid to go, so it wasn't a total waste. And for two of those days, I got to stay for several hours of summer school training.

The week after THAT (which was supposed to be my only free week until August), I got to babysit my adorable 13 month old godson. His father (my cousin's son, and also my godson) called me in a panic asking if I was free that week. Something about a scheduling conflict and his regular sitter being on vacation. Sigh. Of course I said yes. So I spent 5 days playing with the baby... watching the Sprout channel... changing diapers...

Which leads me to this week and (drumroll, please) ... summer school! Yeah, I caved. I'm teaching summer school. Not only am I teaching at my schoool, but in my own classroom. In fact, I'm teaching some of my former students. Talk about no vacation.

Today was the first day, and it was not without its mishaps. Per the instructions given in the tedious training sessions, I was supposed to test the kids in my group today. Each child is to be tested at their grade level, even if you have multiple levels in one group. Two minor setbacks... I had a K-1 group first, followed by a 2-3 group. All the K-2 tests have to be read to the students. I can't read two different tests at the same time, so that posed a problem. Turns out it didn't matter much, because they didn't send enough testing materials anyway, so I had to go right to Lesson One. Of course, today was the first time that I've actually laid eyes on any of the books (including the teacher's guide), so I had no time to review anything I was supposed to teach. The good thing is that it's a scripted curriculum, which I would normally hate. But it means no planning, which is awesome for summer school.

So that about brings us up to date. I'll make every effort to write more. I promise.