Have you noticed there has been a dearth of blog posts? That is because this term has been the hardest in my teaching career, bar none. I got up at 4 AM or earlier more days than I cared to count, just to keep up with marking. I wrote and rewrote and rewrote a couple Year 12 tests (called SACs), the results of which go into their exit scores, called ATARS, that could make or break where they get into university. I held extra classes every Monday at lunchtime for the aforementioned Year 12 students after some bombed the aforementioned Financial Maths SAC in a desperate attempt to get them up to scratch before the big exam, only to find out halfway through the term that they bombed it because they prefered to study for art/drama instead of maths. I cried at work, twice.
This is the year of five different preps, three of which were completely new to me, one of which wasn't new but is serving students with special needs. This is the year Joel studied for his exams for six months, leaving me to hold down the fort at home.
But we've reached the end of the term, and things are looking up. My Year 12 students have two more weeks of school once we return to school for Term 4, then they're off to study independently for their exam the first week in November. My Year 9 students go off on a month-long trek around the same time, so I'll be down to three classes to prep for.
Joel passed both his last remaining exams - hooray! He's now a fully
qualified (the word here is registered) pathologist with the Royal
College of Pathology. He is now around a lot more, doesn't need to go to two review sessions per week,and has thrown himself into child-wrangling/landscaping with gusto. And we have a two week break. And the weather is getting warmer. And I took a four-hour nap on the first day of Rosh Hashana. Life looks pretty good.
Lest we relax too much, it's time for registering for summer sport. We discovered a softball league that Ruth decided she'd rather participate in instead of baseball because there are more girls in softball. She's already been selected for the Under 13 team, even though she's only 9.
Isaac is registered for Little League Majors instead of Minors this year, who play Sunday mornings rather than Friday nights. Hooray! Whoever is in charge decided that they would use white baseball pants rather than gray this season. This whole country is made of red dirt, and he's going to be sliding around in white pants.
A nice surprise for Isaac - he went to Ruth's softball training today and was offered a job as a line umpire for softball games - a paid job! He's pretty excited.
Joel, during his renewed interest in the garden, noticed that one of our garden beds was a little boggy. He went digging in the garden bed to see why the drainage pipe our landscaper had installed wasn't draining and discovered . . . no drainage pipe! He's now dug a 1m deep trench where the garden bed used to be, through rock and clay, installed a new drainage pipe and went to Bunnings (the Home Depot of Australia) to buy 40 bags of topsoil, etc to refill the trench. The topsoil that the landscaper put in was about a centimetre deep. That landscaper we used is the gift that just keeps giving. I'm trying to be forgiving - Yom Kippur is coming.
We're heading to Tasmania the day after Yom Kippur. Looking forward to the break. I imagine Tasmania to be like Minnesota only hillier and with more colonial prisons. Stay tuned for our Tassie impressions and photos.
No comments:
Post a Comment