I had work off this last week. It was October break for everyone at my school, and so I was at home all week cleaning and getting ready for the baby. I'm taking an online Master's program through Grand Canyon University. Each of my ten classes is six weeks long. I have to post every Saturday and Monday, and every Wednesday is a big project due. Heather suggested I look at those early, so that I wouldn't procrastinate. So on Tuesday I get on and look at all the future assignments I have to do. It turns out that for some of them I needed to have observation hours. Usually when I needed these I just used my school because I could go during my prep, which is what I did the last time I needed some of those, including interviews. Well, it turns out that this time it needed to be in a Title 1 school (which mine is not) with ELL (English Language Learners) (which my school does not have). So I would need to go to a different school and observe.
Wednesday comes around and I think to myself, I have this week off. This would be a perfect opportunity to get in those observation hours while I don't have to go into work. So I start looking at some Title 1 schools around that I can go to. Um, so the thing is, is that they all decided to have a short little Fall break. That Thursday and Friday. Every single school district (with the exception of one down in Saint George) in all of Utah was not going to have school that Thursday or Friday. And I'm just like, What the heck!?! Here I am, getting all prepared to actually be proactive in my education and get these observation hours done a month in advance, but because I was a day late it all doesn't matter!? If I was a day more prepared I could have observed on Wednesday, but that's too late and I was planning on Thursday and Friday but now all the schools are going to be closed!? Anyway, I was frustrated and upset that even though I had looked up my assignments way before and had the week to do them so that I wouldn't have to take work off to do my observation hours, it didn't even matter.
That's when my good darling wife Heather helped me out and found me a Title 1 school with ELL that wasn't closed Thursday. The reason? Because it wasn't in Utah. It was in Wyoming. The corner of Wyoming that sits in the little seat that Utah makes in its upper-right corner. here, I'll just put in picture:
I called the school and barely managed to talk to someone (because it was at 4:00 which is when everyone leaves) and they said I could come in the next day for observation hours. It was an hour and 44 minute drive, but the next morning I got up early and drove there while it was still dark. I needed nine hours, and only had seven, but thankfully there was two hours of stuff going on that night with the ELL teacher that I stuck around for to get my nine hours. I left home around 6:30 in the morning and got home around 9:00 at night. And that's my story about going to Wyoming. I think that's the first time I've ever been to that state.
In other news, it took me about three days to do, but I finished my newest How to Play video. It didn't take me three days in the sense that it took me 72 hours, it took me three days in the sense that I started on Thursday and finished on Saturday night, with various hours and times each day writing the script and filming and editing and what-not. Anyway, for my Game Design Winterim class I made a whole bunch of videos on how to play the games so that the students could watch them and learn how to play them so that the first two days of class we could just play those and they would all know how to play. This year I think I'm going to replace some of the old games with new ones, one of the new ones being Kingdomino, the winner of the Spiel des Jahres 2017.
So, school. More specifically, work, APA, American Preparatory Academy. So in my last blog post I mentioned how the building had about three inspections it had to pass? Well, it didn't pass one of them, so we're not going to be teaching in the new building on Monday like we had hoped. The good news is though, I got an e-mail Friday saying the building was finished and it had afterwards passed the inspection, so this upcoming week we're going to be moving stuff to the new building, it's just that classes won't be starting there until the following Monday, October 30, the day before Halloween.
APA is a uniform school, and costumes are not allowed. Both years I've taught there I've gotten away with a tiny costume. For example, my first year all the students said I looked like Linguini from Disney Pixar's Ratatouille, so that year I put a little toy rat on my shoulder like Remy. The next year I wore a baseball cap and I was a sports fan or something, I can't really remember. This year I don't know what I'm going to do. Something small so I won't get in trouble (fingers crossed) but something so that everyone will know it's for Halloween. We have a big creepy toy spider, maybe I'll put that in my hair.
You know what's in five days from the day I post this? Stranger Things season 2 comes out. That's right.
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