I can always tell when April is here – my work calendar is filled to the brim, the seniors have turned their brains off, the weather is alternating gorgeous and icky, and I don’t sleep well… Actually, that last one seems to be true most of the year. 😉

Anyway, I’m glad April’s almost over, but then there’s May. And in some ways, May is even worse than April. I’ve already figured out the physics lesson plans from now until the end of their stay (they get out WAY too early, if you ask me!) What I do is start with the last actual day that I’ll see them (May 24th in this case) and work backwards. Final exam on the 24th, the Dreaded Beaker Test the 3-4 lab periods before then, squishing magnetism & nuclear physics to 3 days, max, etc. etc. They had a test last Monday (which I’m almost done grading) and they’ll have a test this coming Friday. There’s only one more test of them after that (on electronic circuits – an easy-peasy test, actually). The Dreaded Beaker Test will then be the last actual test grade. And my final exam is fun – it’s all Wile E Coyote questions. “The Coyote pushes a boulder off of a cliff that’s XXX m high, but he falls instead. How fast is he going right before he hits?” and things like that. Sure, it’s short answer, but since my last day with them is the 24th but they don’t actually graduate until Memorial Day, I have a bit of time to get them graded.

In the “Woohoo” side of things, I got my very first grant awarded today! It’s the first one I’ve written and, as grants go, it was pretty easy to write. I worked with the business/computer teacher (hereby known as MBA) and we wrote one to get Macromedia MX 2004 for our school. It’s $2500 for a 500 computer license and as we’ve only got 270 computers in the school, that’s practically a site license. 🙂 MBA and I will set up a Technology Club or somesuch and train HS kids in how to train the elementary kids how to use the programs. I can just see the little kids flipping when they realize they can make their own animation with Flash. And the HS kids are thrilled we’re getting something other than FrontPage XP which has been a pain in the ass on our network. (I could go into a fine rant about that program, but since we’re replacing it, I won’t have to – ha! Take that, Micro$oft!)

So, back to the busy grind tomorrow. If I seem sporadic in updating my LJ, at least you’ll have an inkling why. 🙂