Not All Who Wander Are Lost

It's the end of the term, I said. I have all these papers to grade, a backlog produced over two weeks with a sub, and only just now handled. So much multimedia to revisit, PowerPoints to peruse. A low hundred grades to calculate.

I might be a little late from school just gathering it all in, I said.

She was on line 1 in the office at day's end. It's such a nice day outside, she said. Let's go to Northampton.

I had spent a day saying farewell to this term's students, techtip teaching as needed as students wrote letters to next term's students, an exercise which I find makes painless the self-assessment so valuable to the grading process.

I sat in on a special ed student's yearly Independent Education Plan review. I filled planning periods and lunch delivering a redundant series of one-on-one last-gasp just-in-time training sessions on grading software for my teaching peers.

I stayed an extra hour with the school technician, in on his off day and after school to finally grant me local admin-level access to my own laptop.

And so I threw my grading fodder in the car, and we headed up to meet Ginny for sushi. And the original Herrell's ice cream, where in a fit of menu pressure I accidentally invented the world's best milkshake: premium Cocolate Hostess Cupcake ice cream, chocolate syrup, milk, and half a banana.

And now I sit, planning yet another desperate weekend's dance routine, the old soft shoe shuffle around the teacher's bane.

So much to do.

Tonight on my newly mutable, finally trustable computer, I've reinstated the iTunes/iPod synch, enabled the flash and shockwave plugin base so necessary for everything from online kidplay to truly multimedia cybersurfing. I'm drinking the first beer since my birthday bronchitis.

Tomorrow we're going to the Worcester Science Museum. They've got free museum passes at the library in town, natch, so a bookbrowse first.

Monday brings mandatory attendance at an all-day writing-across-the-curriculum workshop, another full day of just-in-time solo support for peer teachers' grading software submission, and another professional development day workshop, this one on curricular integration models for streaming video, in my lab, and under my tech support. All simultaneously.

Three years ago, in a particularily generative, hyperfocused moment of grading period procrastination, I started this blog.

80 hours 'til deadline, I've already invented the perfect milkshake and reinstated my beloved digital media cocoon.

Stand back, world. Stress creates diamonds from coal.