Small Sigh of Relief

But not really, as my responsibilities are mounting daily...

Super Saturday and the Irish Fest are over...
The Saturday extravaganza went without a hitch, and in stepping back I can see that my students really did learn a lot, weather or not they can see it or appreciate it... Some of the highlights from my Saturday morning include:
Riding a lowrider Schwinn Stingray through the halls of an elementary school... Spinning tires and screeching around corners between carefully placed tables and chairs as fast as I dared to go. A site that would have left many children in awe. Seeing a teacher, still dawned in full professional attire, riding an odd shaped bike, reaching awkwardly for the oversized handlebars and fighting my instincts to gracefully maneuver the pedal breaks before crashing into something expensive...

This is the one break from work I was able to enjoy, and it didn't last long enough, though it was an experience I can always look back and smile at.

After that it was back to exporting and burning 45 projects onto disks for the children, one of whom made it explicitly clear that she would be needing it to be sent and received by the following week, in time to present to her class. No pressure there...

Usually I take it all upon myself to cart the work home with me and sit for endless periods of time, sorting, retrieving, organizing, and burning little CD's and putting them into labeled paper sleeves.

Not this time... This time I decided to wait it out and get it all done in one fail swoop... I even had a few helpers to direct through the process, continually reminding them not to forget to hold down the option key when transferring files to avoid the dreaded "Shortcut to Nowhere" CD... An almost unavoidable outcome with helpers, but the last thing I wanted, seeing as I planned to be completely done with the process on the first try and desperately wanted to dodge the prospect of upset children and families eagerly opening an empty CD...

So I waited it all out, only to encounter 3 projects with technical issues that made me rely on my resourceful nature and revert to my McGiver way of problem solving...

One student, who has attended all of my classes since the beginning put in more work than most on his 30 second video, and I was saddened to find that when the time came, his video would not export like the others... It had to do with the audio he had recorded in combination with the timings he had set... So in a last ditch effort to save all his hard work I took advantage of the light weight machines in the lab and repositioned two of them face to face so that one could play the sound recording while I re-recorded it onto the new project with the new timings... It was pretty funny to see and took quite a bit of coordination. With myself on one machine, and my helper on the other, both of us poised over the record and play buttons... Three, two, one... Go... We both hit our buttons and I began to time the show with mere seconds between slides, furiously taping the arrow key to keep in time with the original show... The end result was almost perfection, with the only added downside being the distant tapping that was me, attempting to save his project. The arrow key could be slightly heard in the background, but I was happy with the end result... With that dragon slayed I was able to save the project and get back to backing up the 30 some odd machines still left to go....

The other mishap was well timed on my part... I saw some of the tell tale signs of insubordination rising in one of the lab machines and quickly had one of my students save her work to CD, just in time as the dreaded spinning beach ball of death swooped down to steal her work... I beat it by moments, and was so relieved....

One last tale on that note was the unexpected response of a talented little 7 year old that was in the back row of my class. Many of my students are very bright and are vastly above the level of their peers, but every now and again I get one that is off the charts... This little girl was 7 going on 25 and had all the mannerisms of a full grown adult, politely waiting as one of her fellow students went on and on about something, and casually rolling her eyes as she waited for him to finish speaking... The comment came when I was recalling an encounter with our school secretary the day before.... I mentioned that after bringing her a new camera to take a few pictures of some new students she promptly called my room and informed me that the camera was "Broken". She said that when she looked in the finder window, all she could see was black...

A moment passed and the small girl rolled her eyes once again. She looked up at me smiling and coyly said, "She didn't even have it in camera mode?" and laughed... The parent standing near by waiting for the end of my class looked up with a strange face and couldn't believe what he had just heard. A second grader had just schooled a 40 year old... Brilliant.

So that made me feel good to know that a little girl who had probably never held a digital camera was so comfortable with them now that it seemed like second nature and completely made sense...


The rest of my day was pure chaos just as I had planned it to be... I arrived at the Irish Festival just after leaving my school, a short commute to find two high schoolers manning the volunteer table... All seemed fairly calm, and I had to shudder at the morning they all must have had, with over 40 extra people showing up at once all wanting to help out...

As I came in it was perfect timing as one of our volunteer photographers had just arrived to begin taking photos and was wondering where the cameras where... I was ready after finishing my class I still had 4 cameras from home and over 30 batteries ready and at hand... So that was one fire out... I soon noticed that there was little organization at my table, something I immediately set out to fix. As participants and festival goers wandered in, a swift breeze would blow past our table, sending the little helpers into a frenzy chasing after our various sheets of paper...

One girl went as far as to tape a sign over one door that said "Exit Only"... I found it funny later that she had used the back side of a flyer that had originally said, "Enter Here"
This attempt at order was soon ruined again as we soon found that one door was plenty to manage the job of blowing away our sign in sheets... I finally took action and taped the whole thing down to the table... At this maneuver I received shocked looks, and they all wondered why they hadn't thought of it earlier....

So I was slightly disappointed at not being there in the morning to handle the mad rush of helpers and to have abandoned my team in their time of need... But the same scenario took place the year before with carefully planning landing the festival date on the last day of my University class...

Oh well...
So the rest of the weekend I thought I had single handedly ruined the festival by having too many volunteers and not being more helpful... It seems I may not have completely done it in, but I still felt a little guilty for not doing more...

Once that fiasco was over I selfishly set aside a few hours to visit the coast and one of my old friends whom I had not seen in a very long time... I was excited and disappointed to find that her demeanor and antics were still very much immature and that she couldn't stop for one day to just relax and spend a little time... All that aside, we were still able to go to the beach, have a nice breakfast and catch up just a little. Though most of it was lost in commuting and problem solving....

So I set back out on my way at around 6 after having my favorite ice cream... Arrived home at 7 and was completely disoriented on account of the time shift and not having slept in 3 days...
I instantly fell asleep to wake at 3 AM to the overwhelming list of things that needed to be done by that morning... And with the added stress of not knowing the real time on account of all my highly placed clocks that cant be reached without a chair...

Then on to the impossible day of testing, teaching, creating, directing, fixing, creating, planning, and driving that were all part of my non stop day. I often get scolded for not checking my email, a funny thought for someone who is surrounded by electronics throughout the day... But the truth of it is I have little time to sit down, and even less for something like getting online.... So I always come home to about 40 unread messages, waiting to hear from me, and having wanted a reply the day before....

Done.