Not waving but drowning

I just edited last week's post to embed the video in it, which I didn't have the patience to figure out how to do at the time. Now last week's post has today's date on it, rats. This week's post is 24 hours late but it's been that kind of a week.

Year 10 marking done; English and form class reports gone. I would have liked to get students to write their own suggested report comments, as one of my colleagues did, but there just wasn't time. This wasn't only because my reports were up against the deadline, but also because the Year 10s were finishing their NCEA static images assessment last week, and I really needed them to concentrate on that. Well - that was what should have been happening - as it was they seemed to be more focussed on the lunchtime touch tournament, could we have secret Santa, could we have a Christmas tree in the classroom and could they make decorations please? (yes, yes, and only if the assessment was finished).

I've had a few senior assessments handed in over the last few days, and am frenetically trying to mark these before the 1 December data export. Very few of the Year 10 extension class look like finishing their wide reading in time (they've had 3 terms to do it....).

On the personal front I went down to Wellington at the weekend. Amongst other things I collected some boxes of books I bought from another school, shopped, had a haircut, and stayed overnight with my mum. We watched the election coverage on TV on Saturday night - extremely depressing. Even the fact that the referendum supported retaining MMP didn't cheer me up given how low the support was compared to when MMP was first voted in, and the hugh informal vote on the second question, which seemed to indicate widespread apathy and ignorance, guaranteed to make any political animal depressed.

On the positive side, I have next year's Year 11 programme all typed up and finalised, and the Year 12 programmed finalised - I only need to finish typing it up. Yeeha! We had some great discussions in the department last week about possible themes and texts for the year 11 and 12 classes next year. We are all reading various books at the moment so that we can discuss possible purchases further, although with the Y12 classes so dependent on option lines and option changes after the results come out in January, it is hard to plan ahead - things may change when we see the actual make up of the individual classes, so I probably won't be ordering new books until early next year.

This week: finishing off final marking and getting results tidy for export; senior sign out on Wednesday (pray for optimal text book return), Y9/10 Prizegiving on Thursday afternoon, Y13 Leavers' Dinner on Thursday night, marking AsTTle writing on Friday. Not to mention the M word - magazine proofing. Thank goodness I am not marking NCEA this year. Breathe... 10 days to go. :-)