All the comforts of home have been denied (The Only Ones)

I'm just emerging from a marathon marking session and I'm cream crackered. My brain struggles to remain on task for long periods of time generally but when faced with a continual stream of essays it overloads and turns to mush.

It's been a dollop of English internal standards for three year levels with multiple essays for each student followed by a plethora of benchmark practice exams which generated a whole new pile of essays to mark. Student reports were thrown into the mix as well.

Sadly the Wozza blog and the lawns suffer at these times as a consequence. As well as exam marking I also spent nine hours over the course of last weekend trying to tame the lawns at Red Phoenix Farm. 

Inconceivable.

We do have a study break coming up next week during part of which I am attending the ulearn conference in Rotorua. The break will, at least, provide some regular lawn cutting days, smiley face.

I feel like I've short changed you a bit with this post so here's a poem to tide you over.

This is a little something I call...

Discovery 

I awoke close

by the trouble on the bus.

Fuming alongside the conductor 

I discover 

the day inside my life.

Love and peace - Wozza

Don't worry baby, everything will turn out alright (The Beach Boys)

This week has been about senior benchmarks (a.k.a. mocks, assessment opportunities, tests, exams).

Whatever you call them, it means two things to teachers the world over.

One - boring boring supervisions (there is only so much you can read on the hall walls where the students are sitting their exams).



Two - a seemingly endless marking grind (reading the same stuff over and over again makes my brain hurt).

Next week will be about students clamouring for their grades. They seem to forget that it takes them three hours to sit but we have to mark more than one student's work!

How did it come to this?



Ha ha - oh yeah baby!

Love and peace - Wozza