The Current Craziness

I was sitting in our first collaboration this morning, chatting with the intern (read: poor schmuck who thought that teaching while going to school to get a credential was a good idea) who had the other exit exam prep class. We've been working together to develop this class that has little curriculum; she's been (understandably) a bit nervous about the whole thing. Well, we were scheduled to collaborate together. Yeah, were.

Turns out that our enrollment ("our" as in "school") is waaay down, and we're losing about 2.5 FTE, including all of her. She's not out of a job, but she is changing sites. Wow. Our 'hood was hit hard by foreclosures and the economy in general, so students just don't live here so much anymore.

This, of course, throws everything into a big ol' mess. Sections are closed and all those students need new schedules. So, I have a list of about 25 schedule changes on my computer system. Some students are just shifting from one class to another, but a good 15 of them are brand-spanking-new to me. I go from 30-32 in a class to 36-37. I have only 36 desks in my room. At least I have a table and a couple of chairs that can function as overflow.

Now, I have to figure out how to keep the kids who are staying on task while quickly incorporating all the newbies into the room. Ugh. It's a logistical nightmare. And, I'm picking up a student I was really, really, really glad I didn't have. Well, HellStudent is back. Joy. So add that to the nightmare of tomorrow.

On a side note. I figured out who is going to replace the poor intern as my collab partner. When I told him we were gonna be collab-buddies, he smiled, gave me a side hug, and said, "I can work with that." (Or some such thing.) Awww. Sometimes I think being (relatively) young and (relatively) cute and (relatively) nice work in my favor. --Not that there was anything creepy or icky going on, but if you can hang out with the young, cute, and friendly, that's inherently better than the old, ugly, and grumpy. Hell, you can even get rid of the young and cute -- that's just icing anyway -- because nice is always better than grumpy. (I don't have enough senority to be grumpy.)