Today is a beautiful yet
breezy day. I should know. I open the door exactly once to check it
out. Other than that, I have been
working at my desk and at the kitchen table all day. Sometimes life just rolls that way. Hopefully, if I don’t crash later on the way
to or from trivia, I will live to see another beautiful day.
Today is spent uploading
pictures from my son’s lacrosse game yesterday, heretofore to be known as Snow Fest. The pictures are grainy because the
snowflakes were coming down fast and furiously, and they were flakes the size
of cinema popcorn kernels.
Then, I have to organize
all of the classwork I brought home to see who owes me what out of the six
assignments I have still to correct. I
even manage to do some correcting, but, with almost a hundred students and
several essay assignments, I should probably just put my head through a brick
wall right now.
I have a mini panic attack
when I realize that I didn’t do the laundry today, and I really must because I
have to wear something clean to school tomorrow. While the laundry is in, I probably ought to
do some time on the treadmill since I can’t leave the house while the laundry
is going lest I accidentally burn down the house with my dryer or something.
The bulk of the day,
though, is completely ruined by PARCC testing prep. In case anyone lives under a rock, PARCC is
the new MCAS, which was the new Iowa test here in the state of Massachusetts. It has taken me no less than four hours to go
through the manual. I discover that the
directions to the two math tests are going to take about twenty minutes just to
read out loud to the students, and there’s no way anyone is going to remember
anything I say. I will become Charlie
Brown’s teacher … mwaaaah mwaaaahaaaaaaa…
The best part of the
manual comes when it says, “Say to the students, ‘Do you have any questions? If
so, answer their questions.’”
Dude. I have
questions! I don’t understand a
frigging word of this manual except “pass the booklets out … collect the
booklets.” The rest of it just sounds
like horseshit. Don’t get me wrong; I’m
not saying it is horseshit; just
that it sounds like horseshit.
So, being the smartass
that I am, I highlight the part about student questions. I write in highlighter, “Move along” because
that’s what I intend to do. Then, in
pencil, because I suspect someone will be collecting these manuals eventually,
and since my name is stickered on to the front of it, I write: HTFAISTKTS
It’s code. It’s a very special secret code that anyone
who truly knows me will be able to figure out.
It’s special PARCC language that only we professionals will get. It’s not some universal thing like SOS or
HOMES or PEMDAS or ROYGBIV. This is
edu-ma-cated ciphering, and I’m going to crack the code for anyone who hasn’t
cracked it already.
You see, when students ask
me questions about PARCC, I have about as much information as they do, so my
stock answer to them will be, “Gee, let me check on that and get back to ya
later.” In reality, though, my true
professional answer is: “How The Fuck Am I Supposed To Know This Shit?”
So, now that I have
completely obliterated the sunny part of my Sunday, and since Monday is biting
me in the ass as I type, I am going to go to trivia and attempt to make my
brain do something other than PARCC prep.
After all, the truth hurts.
HTFAISTKTS, indeed.
