When I agreed to participate in the DiTLife project and was asked what specific day of the month I would choose, I chose the 11th. The 11th is a special day for my family because of numerous birthdays and anniversaries that occur on the 11th of various months of the year.. However, I perhaps, should have looked at the teaching calendar first.... because this is my 4th post and it's another non- school day.... making my posts 75% on non- teaching days.
Having said this, however, I'm very excited about this post and 11/11. Veterans Day. My day started, I guess at midnight since I was still awake. On 11/10/1775 the United States Marine Corps was born and to celebrate this occasion my husband and I attended a USMC Birthday Ball, which marks the 241st Birthday of the Corps. It was amazing to see the camaraderie of these fine group of humans just two days after the most decisive election of our time.
I carefully chose the word humans instead of men and women because this election seems to have pointed out every single difference we have with one another and make us angry about it. But when you truly boil us down into our day to day life, we are all in the together as one. Last night, as I got my fanciest clothes on and watched my husband and our friends celebrate the Marine Corps birth, I was filled with pride to be there. We were all humans, celebrating a honorable branch of the United States Armed Forces.
Even though the Ball ended at 11, our very bestest friends ever (can you tell I work with teenagers?), had ride arrangements for 11:30. We were at the Ball because of them, as they are entering in their last year as an active duty USMC family and this was their last active duty Ball. Their ride was late, and they carpooled with several others who all needed to be dropped off, their kids were tired, so my husband and I took the two kids and their fabulous mom home while their Marine rode in the big van making sure everyone got home safely.
Dropping them off gave us a chance to change out of our fancy clothes and into something more comfortable for the rest of the ride home. When we entered into our house it was 2:43 am. I have not see that time of day in a looooong time! And this was after I spent the full day teaching, so I have been up for approximately 22 hours!
My husband and I were quickly off to dream land, both very thankful that we had the 11th off. But, no time to sleep in! My husband and son were off for a college visit, so the alarm sounded off at 5:45 sharp. They're off to Rose Hulman Institute of Technology for the weekend.
I, on the other could sneak in a few more winks, as my day didn't have to really get started (again) until about 8.
Up, showered and packed - I'm ready for a road trip with a teacher friend and her boyfriend (yup, I'm a third wheel... this was supposed to be a couples getaway, until the college visit came up) to go to Ocean City, Maryland.
My school bag packed, I grade papers (sorry kids, my handwriting in the car is not super awesome) as that is four and a half hours I can sneak in. I plan to do the same on the way back, but with planning my lessons.
Traffic was bad (Myth: traffic is only bad going to the beach in the summer....) so it took longer to get to our destination but I was able to grade a ton of papers! Did you know that head rests can make for an excellent place to prop up your grading rubric so you can reference it?
We arrive safe and sound and now it's time to relax at our host's house while we wait for everyone else to arrive. The conversation turns volunteer with Relay for Life and Bark for Life - two events that raise money for cancer research. Most of the people I'm with are the heads of their local committees so it's really great to participate in such an invigorating conversation about doing things to help others. They have been working on committees together for years, and are sharing new experiences since one couple has moved.
I sneak off and grade a few papers and catch up on a little bit more school work like entering grades and checking email. I'm hidden away for about an hour and half before resurfacing. As I enter grades in the grade book, I start a to-do list of tasks that I need to think about for next week when I formalize my plans. Things I include on this list are like - analyze part 3 of the performance task and make instructional groups to help reteach; need to design and print a recovery option to offer; think about incorporating similar questions in December's homework as recursive review.
Then it's time to go to dinner. We head to a quaint little town and do some retail therapy. They have some really cute shops in a town called Berlin, Maryland. Shop Local. I managed to pick up 4 Christmas presents! After retail therapy we head to a local restaurant for some fresh and creative meals. We ended up at a place called Blacksmith and they had one of the best cheeseburgers I've had in a while and hands down the best fries.
After dinner we head back to the shops only to discover that most of them are closed. Bark for Life was having a bake sale, and we thought we'd hit that up for dessert. They were just cleaning it up when we got there, and you know what? Teachers are brave people. We walked right up to the man in charge as he was closing his trunk lid after putting his goodies away and asked if we could make a purchase. I've got to say, that's the first time I've ever purchased a bag of snickerdoodles out of the back of a car trunk. In a dark parking lot. From a stranger. But it was all for a good cause.
We head back to our hostess's house for fellowship and end up watching a few HGTV shows. Most of the shows were about buying a farm, something I can't imagine doing.... cleaning up after animals? EEEWWWW. But, see, there's a difference I have with other humans. I totally get that some people dig that and love that life style. And I can't see ever holding that against them.
We keep looking at the clock only to realize it is not even 9 pm. 'Falling back' to standard time has really got us thinking it super late. I'm tired, and we're headed for a big day of retail shopping again tomorrow so we decide it's time to call lights out. I head up stairs to bed, only to finish grading the one set of papers I left in the middle of earlier ('cause I knew I would be fretting about them in the middle of the night if I didn't!) and finish up this blog post.
But before signing off for tonight, I decide to check what day of the week the 11th of December falls on..... Sunday. Another non-teaching day. I am thinking I may turn this into a probability question for my math students to figure out when we do our probability unit in the spring. In my wildest dreams, I never thought I would pick a random numerical day to blog about a day in the life of a teacher and have so many be outside of the teaching days!
~Until next month.....
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