December Heat Wave

Thanksgiving has come and gone, all the kids have gone home, grades are finished and teachers have to stay around until Wednesday. I made a small but tasty feast of fried chicken, mashed potatoes and green beans to celebrate but my enchiladas last night were even better. Several of us worked through lunch until about 5pm to complete the enormous grade sheets, in triplicate, by hand, and then read through each grade to verify that the transcription was accurate. Monotonous but finished. In an attempt to be concise I'm going for a sports page style approach:

 

November by the Numbers

 

3750 multiple choice questions marked on the grade 9 physical science final examination

 

300     photos printed for kids (this is actually an October statistic but too impressive to leave off this list) and I'm printing another 100+ today for teachers

 

91       top score out of 130 on my final exam (thats a 70%), the worst score was a 5 which is shocking because there were 30 multiple choice questions; guessing should yield at least 7 without getting anything correct on the other 11 questions that supplied the remaining 100 points

 

82      degrees inside my house this morning after the windows were open all night, it was 89 when I went to bed

 

38       movies recorded to show the kids next year and a few of my own interest, this month was a jackpot with several Chuck Norris films and all three Robocop offerings. I also got some Disney flicks for the little ones.

 

29       average percent correct on my Physical Science exam which brought down the year average to 36%

 

22       kids in my class of 31 that have previously failed either grade 8 or grade 9

 

10       books read during the month of November

 

9         movies watched and more to come during the beginning of this week while we finish up end of the year paperwork

 

8         Newsweek magazines plus 2 copies of the quarterly Peace Corps magazine that all arrived this month in separate packages mailed in November, October and September

 

6         football games watched including the Broncos losing to the Chargers with a vintage Plummer meltdown and a scintillating draw between Manchester United and Chelsea leaving the deadlock at the top of the Premiership

 

3         episodes of Seinfeld

 

1         trip to town in the back of a bakkie that left me with a nice sunburn.

 

0                   classes taught in the entire school for the duration of the month