Can we pencil you in for a snack break?

The Reading TAKS was today, and I think that we all learned a very valuable lesson. Never trust an engineer to make a schedule.

I was tasked with the seemingly simple job as 3rd-grade chairperson to come up with a bathroom and snack schedule for the fourth and fifth grade teachers who would be monitoring the third graders during the test today. Here was my schedule:

TAKS Test 8:00 – 3:00

OK, it wasn't QUITE that vanilla, but it really wasn't very helpful either. I put the bathroom breaks on there, both morning and afternoon, but I forgot to put the snacks on there. And what time lunch was. And the second afternoon bathroom break. All in all, it was a pretty miserable excuse for a schedule.

That was what I turned in yesterday. After seeing one of the other grade’s schedules, I realized how lame mine was, and so I went home and made up a new one last night. Of course, after realizing how lame mine was, our test coordinator also went home last night and made a new one. So when I got to school this morning, there was a bit of a clash over which schedule would be accepted, and to make a long story short, I basically came across as a total Type-A Jackass.

Thankfully, my principal and test coordinator did not take offense (at least not outwardly so), and they substituted in my new, less-lame plan.

After that, it was seven hours of complete, unadulterated, stand-on-your-feet boredom. The eight 5th graders in the class that I was in were perfectly behaved, so there were no problems. MY class, on the other hand...

Ms. Five reported that one of my kids, A, had fallen asleep twice, while another one, A, had finished his test and then announced loudly to the entire class, "I'M FINISHED!” And that one of my little girls, A, had basically just played with her hair and nails all day long. (In the interest of extreme anonymity, I'm just going to call all of my kids A from now on.)

But hey! It's over! At least for another couple of months. Then we get to do the whole shebang over again, with math!

And maybe next time, they'll know better than to trust me with a schedule. On a side note, I really shouldn't be trusted with weapons-grade plutonium, either, after the whole "Incident of ‘04” and all. But that's a whole ‘nother story.