DENIED!

Fucking denied, man. I took an entire day off of school to go to OSSE to drop off my licensure packet that I slaved over for an entire year, and I just got a letter saying I was denied!!! All for one stupid thing: I didn't score high enough on my Praxis II Pedogogy test. Ugh!

Now, I have to take the test again, fork over another 50 bucks for a processing fee, wait another five weeks for the scores again, get another transcript from my college and graduate school, get another letter of clearance from my graduate school and another freaking background check letter, and submit it again!!!!!!

This is the most annoying thing ever. I'm so disappointed, OSSE. What the fuck, man. Jeez.

a quick word about obama

I don't know if anyone caught Univision today (everyone was talking about it at school), but Obama said something to the tune of how we over-test our students.

"Too often what we have been doing is using these tests to punish students or to, in some cases, punish schools," were his exact words.

He said it's boring to have schools teach to tests, and it won't make the student learn in the least. I'm all for that. But what are we going to do about it? That's the next question.

one small step for man, one giant leap for RTD

So, Reading the District is finally getting himself organized. Better late than never, I suppose! I've bought my MS students binders, and am going to instruct them on how to organize them. The reason that this is so late coming is several-fold:

a) I'm not a very organized person

b) I was placed in this class midyear, without much of an organizational system intact already

c) I'm not a very organized person

Binders haven't been my thing, mostly because I think I just never thought of them. We're supposed to keep some form of a portfolio, so I thought that I was covered. Falsity. Binders are the shit, and will help you and your students immensely IF you keep them organized and make sure they are counted every week.

Here's my management system for this, so far. Let me know if I need to work some kinks out:

1. Divide into sections: reading logs, homework, projects

2. Have a checklist or table of contents (?) for all projects and homeworks

3. Check this every week for completion

What say you? Organized finally?

In other news, I'm looking for jobs at public, charter and private schools. Let's see what happens!