I Have a Crappy Day.

Well, this one has been coming for quite awhile, I think. I had to stay late at school on Friday, because there was a home football game and I am the "Spotter" for the games. That means I was here from 7:30 a.m. until 9:45 p.m. Long day.

I got up the next morning with a scratchy throat, runny nose, etc. I had cold symptoms all weekend. I still feel a little under the weather with that yucky "I'm Sick" feeling in my mouth.

Plus, today, I had to go to traffic court. Yeah, I was going 70 in a 55 mile an hour zone a couple of months ago and got stopped. Dumb thing was, we didn't have our updated insurance card in the car, so I had to go to court to prove that I had insurance. OK, fine. I arranged for someone to take my 1st Period class for me and showed up for court at 8:15 a.m. Ticket said to be there at 8:30 a.m. I was early. Not early enough. Apparently, the building opens at 7:30 a.m. and I showed up being about #175 in line to see the District Attorney. I sat and waited, but there was no way that I was going to finish in time. I had to reschedule the court date for next month. Apparently, I will either have to take a personal day from the school to get this done, or I will need to be at the courthouse at about 7:15 a.m. At least now I know.

Then, I get to school just in time for my 5th Period Class. Today was the day that we were to start AutoCAD. I had a nice little lesson planned out that was going to discuss "line" drawing, using absolute, relative and polar coordinate systems, as well as the direct distance method.

It just didn't go very well...

I don't think that I am teaching it right, as only about 5 kids in the class understood what I was talking about. The rest didn't get it.

Argh!

It's a coordinate system. You indicate, using coordinates, where you want your line to start and where you want your line to end. You hit "Enter" when you are done. Doesn't sound that hard, but it didn't work.

At all.

I now have a group of 5 kids that get it and are bored and a group of 15 kids that don't get it and have no clue.

I need to regroup before tomorrow.

Then, I am trying to do some basic photo manipulation in my Graphic Arts and Web Design Class. Again, I tried to step by step the process and it didn't work. Very few people got it.

I think its me.

I need to work on something different.

I think that perhaps the problem is that I have been starting projects and then showing kids how to do stuff along the way. This may not be the best way to go about things. I think that I need to be more subtle about things. I need to start with just the little tiny techniques and tips and make sure that the kids get them, completely out of context. Then, I need to apply them to a project. I think that would work better.

As for the AutoCAD stuff, I don't know. I think that I may need more visuals or some "Expert Groups" or something, because this is the Day One easy stuff and 75 percent of my class is stumped.

Yikes!