Oh, the joy.

Today a colleague (and sort of mentor) resigned his position. He will remain on staff until a suitable replacement can be found, which is a very kind thing to do for a school with chronic substitute problems, but that is the only positive thing that can be said for the situation.

On that note, I spent the early morning with a combined class as my 7th Grade co-teacher was unexpectedly ill, and was reminded of the horror of a huge class as (in a shocking turn of events) two chronically truant children finally showed up. And as a suitable ending to the evening, after I had just spent two and a half hours rewriting and reorganizing my (paper) gradebook to reflect my new grading standards and style, I received a phonecall from my principal stating that, come next Monday, we were going to reorganize the homerooms and classes all over again (thereby, of course, making my entire afternoon a write-off).

Thankfully, I hadn't gotten to all the planning I was going to do. More importantly, I am grateful that Monday marks the beginning of a new unit. It would have been too much to expect that a reorganization of this kind would have been attempted prior to the beginning of the 2nd quarter last Thursday. Thankfully, we'll only be a week into the term.

Quote of the day on excite.com (oddly suitable once again - excite people, how well you know me!)

A professional is someone who can do his best work when he doesn't feel like it.
(Alistair Cooke)