Thursday, September 18, 2008

Holy Cow! It's been a week!

Wow, wow-o-wow! I finally have a moment in an evening to sit and blog! I just put the girls to bed and waiting for DH to get home so I can go downstairs to run. (ALL thanks to Angela's running post!)

So...the quick run down since last Thursday

No further action on the OTR---no shopping done to buy batting.

NO running on Friday, Saturday OR Sunday, and I fought the inner-guilt-battle because of it! Specially since I had a 17-miler on the training schedule for this weekend and the marathon is looming 4 weeks (now just over 3 weeks) away. But, I buckled down on Monday night and ran for 6 miles. After coming in the house, DH told me he was NOT going to be heading off it a buddies house, so I went back out for another couple miles to bring the total to 8.3 for the night.
Tuesday night I worked the Vball game and got home just after 10:00---whew! That was a long, exciting match, and then I decided to do some quick paperwork in my classroom before heading home.

Last night was actually a somewhat quiet evening, but I was exhausted, so I didn't accomplish much other than finish fussy-cutting 82 diamond-shaped pieces for my BIL's Nautical C'mas quilt (pics to come later). I then parked my butt on the glider and poked around the web for an hour; during which time I finalized my registration for the marathon, verified travel plans for this Saturday's half-marathon, and emailed Julie (running-buddy) to get plans lined up for next weekend's Half-marathon.

Amidst most of this; evening school work has started to become a common occurrence, but I'm working on fixing that. I'm really contemplating the amount of HW I'm giving out to my students----How much is too much? What is the actual purpose of each assignment? Is it just busy-work? Is it for accountability? Isn't 84 minutes enough (we run a block schedule at school) So.......slowly I'm going to be making changes, and hopefully will be for the best for everyone.

ahhhhhh....the front door just opened----DH is home.
I'm off to change and run.......and MAYBE even sew??? I don't know---I won't push my luck.

Happy Thursday

3 comments:

Julie said...

I spent 2 hours after school today grading and am still not caught up!! It never ends.

Amanda said...

It's probably different in secondary schools, but I always felt the amount of homework we were required to give even primary age children was too much - for them and for me! I always tried to make it something that didn't need marking, or that they could mark themselves, like research, or quizzes, or making up their own games to swap. Anything to make it fun for them and no marking for me.

scraphappy said...

Ah, the eternal question. How much is too much. Are we giving homework because we are supposed to, or does each assignment have meaning and value. I pondered this as I sat and watched huge crocodile tears rolling down my sons face while he copied definitions out of the book. He isn't one to complain, but he said, "Why am I copying these out of the book if I already learned them when we went over them in class?"
I have a nice schedule worked out I think. My students usually alternate nights, either reading a short section of the book or doing a couple of problems. Really no more than 10 minutes I hope. I always give it to them at the begining of the chapter so that they can work ahead if they have something planned during the week. Do they have math every session, or do they rotate through on the block schedule?