Joy of Grading

I freely admit that grading is not my favorite thing to do. I'm always doing things to make it either more interesting or at lest seem like it's not taking too long. Today my strategy was "look for good quotes to put on my blog." I was part way through the first class of essays when I couldn't help but almost die laughing. Students say the most interesting things sometimes. After that essay, I kept an eye out for more quotes.

As a point of reference, the students are persuading someone to watch less T.V. The students, of course, are not named, and the spelling is their own.

Student A: The only person that comes to my mind that watches six hours of T.V. is my friend but than it is not his fault it is the movie's fault the godfather siereis is abou 6-7 hours long. I think if you watch six hours of t.v. you have no lif. Yet that is only my opinion (Pleas don't get mad).

Student B: Their is alot more in Life than T.v Like Camping, exploring, reading But most of all, Family. Sometimes you get so into T.v That you Forget about your Family and other important things.

Student C: My first opinion is to convince them to watch less TV. TV can roten your eyes if you watch it to much.

And my favorite:

Student D: If you love tv so much why don't you just go out side and act like your in a movie. Act out of pretend your a spy of something like that have a picnic out side and watch the cloud's. Look at the beutifule nature that was atended for us in the First it's not like god made a tv and said watch this six houers a day and become fat and stupid like a couch potato now did he.

So there you have it--some gentle reminders about why we shouldn't watch too much T.V. Now I just need to help them re-read what they've written so they can catch some of those mistakes.

What's better than a snow day?

How about a snow week! So I haven't gone to school once this week. Okay, that's not entirely true. I swung by quickly on Tuesday to pick up some papers that needed to be graded. The roads were not too icy so I made the journey. I was glad I did.

So what does a snowed/iced in teacher do with a snow week? Well let's see . . .

Monday: Slept in a bit. Got up when my sister called. Exercised, took a nap, finished grading a stack of persuasive essay first drafts. Found out FHE was canceled, so called my sister to see if I could join her family for FHE by web cam. Prepared a lesson on the birth of Christ. Had FHE. Held copies of December Ensigns up to the web cam for my niece to see. Ate gingersnaps for refreshments while my sister and her family had angel thumbprint cookies. "Helped" put Anna to bed by listening to a story, singing, and saying her evening prayer. Afterwords, I did some cleaning and then watched a movie and quilted.

Tuesday: Had a family from my ward over for lunch. They have taken care of my cats before and will be taking care of them over Christmas. Ran errands after lunch--including picking up papers from school. Mailed my teaching license application, retirement information, and insurance information. After dinner, I watched another movie while quilting. I'm getting close to being done with this part of the quilting.

Wednesday: Exercised, and figured out if I would be able to get my hair cut. It snowed all day, so I wasn't about to drive, but I knew that the bus went right past the shop in Forest Grove and would pick me up only about a 1/2 mile from my house. So I spent from about 11:15 to 3:30 traveling and getting my hair cut and colored. It made a nice change from sitting at home. I finished all the grading, but the essays I'd picked up Tue. I dinked around on the computer for a while and finished the night watching Mr. Krueger's Christmas while quilting. I'm about 12 inches of sewing away from rolling it for (hopefully) the last time.

Thursday: Slept in again. Made sourdough waffles for brunch. Graded three classes of essays. The cats thought I should spend the time with them and even went so far as to try to keep me from my work. Here they are sitting on some of the essays. You can only just see the paper Sambo is sitting on.
Mixed up the dough for some sourdough bread. Graded the last two classes' essays. Formed the bread into loaves and went Christmas shopping. I'm basically done, but I had an inspiration for one more gift and since I had time . . . Well, I forgot about the bread and so made a final stop to get some new tennis shoes. My only good pair are mud covered from playing ultimate frisbee. When I got home, the bread was definitely ready to be baked. I had dinner, pre-shrunk some fabric for a project, and waited and waited and waited to find out if we would have school tomorrow. I finally decided that if I did have to go in, the only productive thing I could do with the kids was to review their grades with them. So I put all the grades in the computer. Half way through that, I got the voice mail--no school. I'll go to bed as soon as this is posted.