Progress reports...never have two words combined to make my day feel more broken. Let me say this...whoever designed NCWise was not thinking 'user friendly' when they conceived this program. Not to even mention that I had no proper training on the guts of it all, but I was literally scrambling to get my grades posted by 5pm Tuesday. Only thanks to the help of a couple kind colleagues was I able to do it. I dub thee 'NCStoopid'...

I felt bad when I saw some of my kids grades. The problem is that I haven't really given many grades so far. I don't assign homework every night, the first test didn't make it in time, one quiz and a couple of weekly participation grades, and that's all I had. Sure, I could have wore my brain cells into the ground trying to come up with all these graded assignments in two weeks time. Would it be beneficial to my overall mental stability? No.

I wish my room better represented a Spanish classroom. There's nothing really wrong with it now but it could use a couple $100 Staples gift cards. I feel like it's not setup to create the best possible learning environment, simply in terms of how many chairs I have and the limited amount of room with which to arrange them all. If I had it my way, I'd be smack in the middle of the room with the kids surrounding me...there'd be Los Lonely Boys playing each day as they entered the room...giant posters of far away places hanging on each wall...chips and salsa on Fridays...oh and one of those Smart Boards would be nice, too.

Something else has been nagging me lately. Oh yeah, sub plans. Haven't even had a chance to start on that yet. They'll be turned in when I can get to it. I'm not Superman, ya know?

Blog posted by September writer Charles Detmar, spanish teacher Glenn High School in Kernersville