Crunch Time!

Tomorrow we begin our Plus-30-minutes days of punishment. (You know what I mean--we've had so many snow days that they've added 30 minutes to our days until after our state testing.) It has been decreed that these 30 extra minutes will be devoted to Math, and one of the specials teachers or educational assistants has been assigned to every class during that time. I'll have my usual SpEd aide--she's fantastic and easily wins the award (if we gave one) for being the hardest working person in our building.

What will I do with this bonus time? CATCH UP.

I'm so far behind our math curriculum map that it's shaming. Especially since I helped make the darned thing.

It's not like I didn't know it would be impossible to stay with the map. Our standards have increased in rigor, and just by adding up the lessons that had to be taught, I knew we were screwed. But my princiPal doesn't seem to understand. I sense this because she's asked me many, many times why we, as a grade level, are so far behind where the map says we should be. She always gets the same answer(it's not possible!), but she's not happy about it.

I say she should ask the district math curriculum coordinator. It's her fault that we're not able to maintain the pace--she made us trim days off of units to add more days for review before the state test. What a dummy. I still don't understand the reasoning--trimming the days off didn't change the fact that those lessons needed to be taught.

Anyway, it's crunch time. I'll probably dream in mathematical symbols.