Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Retirement?

I really do need to be more retired. I've put over 100 miles on my car in the last two days and haven't left the county!

One of my homebound students lives way out on the northern edge of the county, and I'm going to the high school where I last taught which is 10 miles from my house and 18 miles from the homebound student's. I have also been going to school to do mentoring duty and to drive Tina home. I'm not complaining about any of it but just saying. About Tina - she has been forbidden to drive until the doctors find out why she passes out and has other symptoms. They think it might be seizures but need to be sure before putting her on anti-seizure meds. I enjoy driving Miss Tina because we get to visit. Today she had a school improvement meeting, and I opened the door to make fun of them and got roped into being on the committee. When will I learn? I thought I was finished with that stuff. I like the group, so that part will be fun unless they try to get me to do work.

I got another homebound student who is supposed to be on homebound for only two weeks. Both of the students are honors students. I can handle all of the courses they are taking except for pre-calculus that one of them is taking. I don't even know what it is. My only experience with calculus is watching Stand and Deliver many times since it's one of my favorite movies. It's based on Jaime Escalante, a real teacher in California, and his calculus students' outstanding scores on the AP test. Edward James Olmos played him. I'm a sucker for those inspirational teacher movies. I'll have to get help for this student. Fortunately, his girlfriend is in the class, so she can explain things to him. When he gets better, he might be able to go in for that one class. One of the committee members who taught math explained part of it to me after I looked at the assigments and asked, "What does this even mean?" I think I might have been able to learn this if I'd taken it but probably wouldn't have really understood it.

Tomorrow I go to the homebound student's who lives so far away and then to Creek Wood to sign papers for the new one. I'm planning to see Lillian, and the guidance teacher who used to teach those remedial algebra classes is going to talk to her about how he did it. I asked him if he would. She wasn't expecting them to be as remedial as they are. On a quiz she gave them, they were supposed to simplify some fractions and for 4/12 over 90% of them wrote 3 for the answer! Sheesh! A few got it right and put 1/3. I told her to tell them that we'd like to go to a party they had because I'd like to know how 12 people could divide 4 pizzas and each get 3 whole pizzas. It's frustrating. Based on what Kris told me, I think he can give her some helpful pointers.

Well, I'd better get to bed so I can do more driving and interacting tomorrow. I finally caught up on my regular blogs and hope to see what all of you write tomorrow.

10 comments:

Unknown said...

In our particular school, retired teachers have felt hostility and coldnesss when returning. The most popular of us, a phys ed teacher went back a few times, getting things and running errrands for new teachers to help them out, stopped going because the admins just cold stared her. Even meeting face to face in the hall, they refused to even acknowledge her presence. Strange attitude. Needless to say, you're even on the staff or you aren't. You are either with the school on payroll or you are not. Now I understand how visiting parents and PTO must feel.It's not us teachers at all.

Joy said...

I've been made more than welcome, but I know what you mean. Most of the teachers I saw in the hall or workroom asked if I were back and some now say it just seems normal to see me there. What helps is that I have a purpose for being there with homebound and especially the mentoring. Otherwise, it would be more like what you described - not necessarily a cold shoulder but no time to visit.

You can't step back into the river in the same place. It moves on.

I have a bunch of these sayings! LOL

David Dust said...

Ya know - I am just SICK AND TIRED of you lazy, do-nothing retirees sitting on your couches all day and not contributing to society.

You should be ashamed...

:)

XOXOXOXOXO

P.S. - "Pre-calculus"?!? That would have given me a panic attack. I barely passed geometry.

Anonymous said...

Pre-Calculus - want's that Latin for an early calculator?

Joy said...

Ha! You know what it is. I know what a math nerd you are. LOL

Anonymous said...

Math nerd? Yeah, but I can't spell wasn't....

Joy said...

No, you can't TYPE wasn't. Big difference, Oxy!

Anonymous said...

Very true! Now, here's an interesting thought. We used typewriters to 'type'. What do we do when we use computers to enter our words of wisdom? C'mon Joy.... you're the expert at English, you must be able to 'invent' a word! Might be computype? Enterword? Time for bed methinks....

Joy said...

There might be a word for it. Anyone? If not, lets think of one.

Unknown said...

for me it approaches cerebral masturbation? And with all my typos, one could say I can really screw up a j.o.