Is This Normal?
The chaos that is the KerbersArchive for teachers
More testing
It’s not April until all high school Juniors in the state of Illinois take the Prairie State Achievement Exam, better known as the PSAE. The ACT test is included in the PSAE, and of course that is a very big deal for most Juniors. One nice thing about the test is that there is some of it done in the IMC, so we are always closed during these days. This year, though, I was asked to proctor the exam. What that means is I had to be in the testing room walking up and down the rows making sure the kids were doing everything right. It’s an easy job, but pretty boring, too.
However, it was nothing compared to what those kids were doing. You could see the stress and nerves all over their faces. I forgot what a big deal the ACT test is when you’re that age. Three hours of your life can basically determine your future. Crazy.
It was a quiet two days, and I still got a lot of free time to get a lot of work done. All in all, my days weren’t so bad, and I definitely would not have traded it for one of those Juniors for anything.
Karnival Knight
I had been dreading the Northpoint carnival, affectionately called ‘Karnival Knight’ (because the Northpoint mascot is the Knights), because I knew it would be a crowded, crazy madhouse full of screaming kids and frustrated parents. This isn’t my first rodeo…I remember going to far too many school carnivals with my nephews. Why on Earth I would have subjected myself to that is beyond me. But anyway, I digress. Dave really had no reference points for school carnivals, and I think he may have even been looking forward to it a bit. Then we got there.
We headed for the balloon animals first, but saw there was a LONG line for them. Dave almost had Ben talked out of waiting until he saw his friend Griffin in line. Then there was no talking him out of that line. Emma desperately wanted to head for the bouncy houses, so we headed back to the gym. About 35 minutes later, while still in line for a bounce house, I got a text from Dave that contained two words, “This SUCKS.” I cracked up…that didn’t take long.
About a half hour later Emma had her 30 seconds of bounce house fun (after about a 45 minute wait) and Ben and Dave met up with us in the gym. The kids waited in line for a few more bouncy things, and then we headed to put our tickets into the raffle baskets. They had about 50 different baskets with all kinds of fun prizes and toys. The kids both found things they desperately wanted, and while Ben spread out his tickets among 5 or 6 different baskets, Emma put all of hers in one…the American Girl doll. She loved that thing. She didn’t even want to leave that gym because she just wanted to stand in front of it and wait to win it. I tried to explain to her that her tickets were just a chance for her to win and that we didn’t know if she would win just because she put a tickets in there. Reluctantly, she agreed to go do some more games.
The only thing we really had time to do after that was the book walk. It was pretty successful; Emma won legitimately, and we were there when it ended so everyone still in there got to pick a book, which meant Ben got one, too. Then it was time to head for the gym to hear the names of the basket winners. When they started drawing, and would get to a basket Ben wanted, we’d make a big deal about crossing our fingers and hoping. When his name wasn’t read, we’d snap our fingers across our body in the “darn it!” motion. He totally understood the raffle concept. Not so much for Ems. When the American Girl doll was given away, and it wasn’t to her, she burst into tears. The poor thing really thought she was going home with that baby.
Thankfully, this was the end of the carnival and we headed home. I cannot say it was a fun night, but I think the kids kind of had fun. Kind of. I know Ben was just excited to be at school at night and to see a bunch of his friends there. So I guess even if it wasn’t that fun, it was a success. We have 364 days until the next one. Let’s hope we can think of some plans that we can’t get out of that night next year. :)
Can we still call this book club if we don’t talk about the book?
Tonight the staff book club I belong to met here at our house. There are technically 14 members of the club, but typically because of scheduling there are far fewer people actually at the meetings. Tonight was no exception, as there were only six of us. But it’s all about quality, not quantity, right? It was a great group and we really had an enjoyable evening.
But here’s the rub…we rarely end up talking about the book very much. This month, especially, we talked very little about it because no one really liked the title we read. I guess the important thing is that we’re all reading and trying to get together to talk about what we’ve read. Maybe next month we’ll focus more on the title and less on our school gossip and general camaraderie. Then again, maybe not. I kind of like the school gossip and camaraderie with these awesome ladies. I say that no matter what we talk about we’re still calling this book club and getting together under the guise of literary discussion and criticism. So there.
Another Kindergartener
I’m not sure how this possibly happened, but today I registered Emma for Kindergarten. As of August, I will no longer have any preschoolers and will officially be out of that phase of our lives. It’s unreal.
Emma and I went to Northpoint, and I have to say that it was much more relaxed for me this year. It’s amazing how much better things go when you’ve done them once before. I guess Ben is a little more like me than I thought. Anyway, as we were walking in to the school, Emma said to me, “Now I will be a Knight!”. She was so excited. As we walked into the multi-purpose room where the parents were gathering, we saw Mrs. DeBord, Ben’s teacher. She made a very big fuss about Emma being a Kindergartener next year, and Ems was beaming.
The teachers quickly took the kids into the classrooms where they did some activities and heard a couple of stories. We parents began the endless filling out of forms. But again, it was way easier this time since I knew we were already in the system. I didnt’ have to worry quite so much about getting something wrong. Ha!
As I went to pick up Emma it hit me that everything would now be different in our world. With both kids in the same school things should be a bit easier to keep straight next year, but soon we’ll find ourselves delved deep in the world of homework, school friends and drama. I really hope I’m ready for this.
More trivia
There was another fund-raising trivia event with friends from work last night, but this time Dave went with me. It was four couples on our team, and we didn’t have to make and creative hats, either. This time our team name was “Snowball’s Chance”, because we knew that we would not come close to winning. But since a lot of the questions were more in the pop culture genre, so we definitely did better. And again, most importantly, we had a lot of fun.
I have to note after attending these two trivia events…I’ve definitely lost my touch. I used to be unstoppable in the trivia arena, and now I’m only ok. I guess I just need more 80s oriented questions. Or maybe I’m just getting old. *sigh*
Trivia
As a fundraiser, the Catholic High School in Bloomington has an annual Trivia Night. This year a group of ladies I work with decided to form a team and attend. It’s called the Mad Hatter event, so part of the fun is coming up with a team name and creating hats for your team. We decided that since we were an all female team, a good name would be the Hooters, and we could make hats with owls on them. Get the double entendre? The Hooters…all females…owls?? Yeah, we thought we were pretty clever. Even if you disagree, you have to admit that our hats were pretty darn cute. Unfortunately, the questions were less of the trivia kind and more of the brilliant scholarly kind. Let me sum it up like this…there was an entire round dedicated to Native Americans with questions like, “What Native American fought Custer at Little Big Horn?” Sure, my dad would know, but come on…who else knows this stuff??
Let’s just say we didn’t win and be done there. But, we did win second best hats…although I think we were robbed because ours were clearly the best in the room. Nonetheless, we had a great time and as always, I completely enjoyed the company of my wonderful co-workers.
We’re going retro
This morning when I came into the IMC I thought I may have stepped back in time, because this is what I saw:
You see, we have to clean out two of our back rooms in the library because they are going to be used for a new tutoring center next year. So our assistant Sean and my colleague Caroline found a bunch of these old READ posters and thought it would be great fun to put them all over the IMC. Ugh. I’ve never been a fan of the READ poster for this exact reason. While I love the idea of celebrities promoting pleasure reading, they get outdated so quickly that they become silly after a very short time. I mean, really, Tim Allen? Tim Robbins?? And Nicholas Cage looking like he’s 30? It was a bit fun to hear the students’ reactions, though. Many of them didn’t even know who a lot of these people are!
But, I guess I can live with them for a while. After all, I enjoyed the 80s and 90s a lot. Maybe reliving them could be fun.
Surrealism times ten
Surreal is a word I use often, because I like it, and I often think it describes my life well. But today, I truly discovered what the word means during our afternoon staff meeting. It was a school improvement day, which means an entire day of meetings…typically not a thrilling, fun event for us teachers. Our morning was spent with only the IMC department, and it was awesome. We’re revamping our website, and got a lot of work done on it. It was a good morning. Little did we know that our meeting after lunch would be so tumultuous.
I can’t really tell the entire story, because there isn’t enough time or space to type everything out, and this really isn’t the venue to do so. But I will say that something happened last week that had some of our staff upset. It was frustrating. But our Associate Principal, who was recently named Principal for next year, decided that we needed to talk about it instead of keeping it all inside and stewing, like we usually do. It was frightening, to say the least. He told me later that when he opened the floor up to people and he looked around the room expectantly, all he saw was fear. We haven’t been given the chance to voice our opinions much over the last 10 years, but I think we’ll finally be getting it more and more with our new administration.
It’s definitely surreal to speak our minds around here, but it’s nice to feel like we finally have a voice.
I love these girls, but…
Tonight we had our monthly girls night, and we were all excited to try a new Italian place in town. It’s called Café Italia, and one of my friends, whose parents are from Italy, had nothing but good things to say about it. So every was pretty excited to give it a try. Little did we know that it would turn into the longest girls night ever.
I knew we were in trouble when I got there and two of our party was already there. They told me they had come early to have a drink and catch up while they were waiting. They had been there about 10-15 minutes. Yet, they didn’t have drinks. Oh man, this was not a good sign. But I tried to be optimistic. That lasted for about 20 more minutes, when almost our entire party was there and no one had received a drink yet. Literally, we had the worst service I’ve ever experienced in my life. I won’t got into specific detail, but it was consistently bad, right down to the 50 minutes we waited to get our checks. Yes, I said FIFTY MINUTES. Now, granted, we did ask for separate checks, and there were 10 of us. But they could have said no. Instead the said, “sure, we can do that.” And did I mention that it took our waiter fifty minutes to split one check into ten checks? Yeah, we were not thrilled.
By the time I walked out of that place it was 3½ hours later. And we didn’t just sit around chatting, either…it took 3½ hours for our dinner to go from start to completion. Needless to say none of us are anxious to head back there anytime soon. I mean, I really do love my girls nights, but I have very little patience for inept servers. Hopefully next month will be a bit more enjoyable.
The Polar Express Party
Our friends the Inces have the best ideas for parties. You may remember me writing about their drive-in movie party last year. Every kid made his or her own “car” out of a box and they all watched Toy Story 3. It was big fun. This fall, their family went to ride on the Polar Express over Thanksgiving weekend, and that spawned another brilliant idea in Addie’s head. This time we could have a Polar Express party, and the kids could come in their jammies and watch that movie! It was brilliant timing, because the Bears were playing tonight, too, so the grownups had their own entertainment. Well, the way that game turned out I’m not sure we could call it entertainment, but it was good in theory. We ordered pizza and the kids ran around
The kids, however, had a blast. Addie borrowed a projector and showed the movie on their wall. Everyone brought sleds or saucers to sit in while they were watching, and most of the kids brought blankets and/or pillows to snuggle up with, too.
The lights were out for the movie so the kids could get the full movie theater experience. During the scene when the kids on the train were served hot chocolate, we served hot chocolate to our kids. Addie had thought of everything.
It was such an awesome evening…until it was time to go home. As always, we waited just about 10 minutes too long to leave. Emma was tired beyond belief and she absolutely melted down. You see, Ali just got a new kitten (named Pepper) and Emma just wanted to see her once more before we left. Pepper had been man-handled enough for the night, so we told her no. That was it, she was gone. She cried the entire way home, sobbing that she “just missed Peppa so much” and that she “just wished Daddy wasn’t awuhgic!” (Dave’s allergic to cats so there’s no chance we’ll ever have one). Thankfully they were already in their jammies, so as soon as we got home we did our best to calm her down and just threw her into bed.
It was a really fun party, and a great night with our friends. Hopefully soon nights like this won’t always end the same way…with complete meltdowns.
