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Monday, March 19, 2012

Testing & Safety

The standardized testing continues to be colorful.

The tests are timed and last a maximum of 90 minutes.  Good luck trying to teach anything after that.

In fact, the kids were roaming the halls and playing outside - unsupervised - as soon as the testing was complete for the day.  The testing grades are 3rd-5th.  Once the 1st and 2nd graders saw everyone else roaming the halls, it took more than a notion to keep them focused.  Remember, the classroom walls facing the hallways are made of glass, so whatever happens in the hallways can/will be a distraction.

I spent the last hour of the school day trying to keep my girls from heading to the busses to go home.  After a half hour, I gave up.  Thankfully, the busses arrived early so they were able to line up and board soon thereafter.

Teachers were making a mad dash out of the building soon after the kids.  The stillness in the school was noticed, so they will have to stay until normal dismissal time for the rest of the week.

Remember also this is the last week before our two week Spring Break.

The grades are inputted into the computer and report cards are generated from that.  Each student has a minimum of seven teachers putting in grades for them.  There's the English-speaking teacher who teachers English/Math/Science.  The Arab teachers teach Arabic, Music, PE, Art, Social Studies and Computer.  The computer program that is being used to input this data is not user friendly, making the tedious task even more laborious.  It crashes a lot from all of the traffic on the server during the grading periods.

Side note - Car seats are not used for babies and children.  Kids ride in someone's lap, usually the nanny's.  Kids can be seen sitting in the father's lap as he drives or hanging out the windows.

Side note 2 - Hotels, apartments and other high-rise buildings are being advised to put safety measures in place to prevent children from falling.  There have been over a dozen toddler/child fatalities in the past year.

As I close, here's giving you permission to do something wild and crazy and totally selfish.  Have a ball doing it.

OK.  Maybe not too wild.

Your blogging buddy

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