Crash & Burn

We're finishing up our Julius Caesar unit and it has been miserable. I know I'm already on record with how much I hate, hate, hate, HATE this play, and how infuriating it is that I'm required by my school to teach it despite having other options that I feel are far superior.

It doesn't help that I'm sick. But with the test tomorrow, of course I dragged myself in today so that we could review. I'm stopped up and dizzy and exhausted and now I'll probably be out for TWO days, instead of just one, but you know what? I really don't care.

And after getting called on the carpet yesterday for not having enough test grades in my gradebook, I started thinking about what exactly constitutes a test, rather than a quiz.

Our calendar was frickin' GUTTED by the state, so now our quarters are eight weeks each instead of nine weeks. And the principal is saying that I should have at least five test grades. By my way of thinking, that's an awful lot - it's about every week and a half or so.

But my units run about four weeks long. So this means I need to shorten them, or else test part way through the unit. I figure one test every other week is about as often as I can manage without feeling like it's just test-test-test.

And I've also been told that ad sales for the publications are now to be done by ME rather than by students. I mean, it's nice to know that they'll be handled accurately, but it's getting to the point that I'm like WTF am I supposed to have them doing?

Image thanks to http://www.gamereality.org/peliarvostelut/xbox_crashnburn.html