Frogs, Testing, and Centers

I woke up this morning to find a fluorescent green frog sitting in my bathroom. I think it was lost and confused and it did not move when I walked in. The only thing I thought was…bizarre. Noting its brilliant electric color I decided touching it would be a bad idea, dare I turn into a frog myself and having no idea when the next princess would be coming through, I went and got a cup and a magazine to carry the frog outside. It left some slime as I dragged it onto the magazine. Who knows what’s poisonous down here. I already have North America’s most deadly spider patrolling the hallways and crevices of my house.

I figured the flamboyant reptilian creature was an omen or sign for something. Possibly that I need to move somewhere that can keep the outside, outside.

School disorganization was in rare form today. This is exam week and the students need an hour and a half for the test. So, when I asked my principal why she created a schedule that mangled the organization of the day she told me, “We are preparing them to take long standardized tests.” Ok, then why not leave the block scheduling that affords 100 minutes or an hour and 40 minutes, more than the requisite 1.5 hours needed for testing instead of getting all fancy. She told me, “Mr. Castagnola, we are using this schedule.” Cool, moving on. The announcement comes over the intercom, “Teachers, nine weeks tests are not ready, continue with your day and follow the testing schedule.” I cannot express how absurd this is. The first tests were not ready until there was an hour and a half left in the day. Experience has told me to expect this sort of calamity.

This is how we occupied our day. I am trying to build an overly complex centers system. It is overly complex and needs to be streamlined. To prepare for our foray into centers we had a community meeting to generate classroom love. We said something nice to the person to our left (left is still a confusing concept for some students) and talked about how we feel when people say nice things to us. The overwhelming response, I feel good when someone says something nice about me. Now that everyone was in a good mood, we got on with business. Check out some pics.