Grading and such

So here I am, making sure all my grading is up to date so I can do final grades for the mid-marking period. Up here it's not grades every 6 weeks, it's grades every 9 weeks (which they call marking periods). The end of this past week marked the end of the mid-marking period, so progress reports go out starting next week. So far I've only given one test and 2 quizzes along with homework and classwork. I'm going to try to give at least one small quiz a week and a test every 2 weeks or so. That way the kids don't have as much to study for each test and I can see how they're doing more frequently. The only thing with grading is that it takes me a while to grade everything. There are short-cuts to grading (such as having the kids grade it themselves, counting only a couple of problems, just seeing that they did it, etc...), but I want to find my balance of giving good feedback and making time for myself. Right now, it's not too bad since Jocelyn is having to study a lot, but as life gets busier, I'll make adjustments.

Yesterday at Jocelyn's softball game, we brought 2 recycle bins and labeled them for cans and bottles. They were one of the first teams to play, so not very many people had been drinking (which is a very popular thing to do at these softball games), so I just put the bins next to the trashcan. I saw a couple of people use them and when we came back to the park a little after 5:30pm yesterday, they were both full with two other boxes full of cans and bottles! So yay for recycling! We brought them back and emptied them into our apartment's recycle trashcans. I was looking online at any place nearby that might have larger trashcans for next week, but couldn't find any that were anywhere near cheap. So we might just keep using our small trash cans and hopefully if there's overflow, people will use the boxes that they bring their drinks in.


Besides that, there's not much other news to report. We went ahead and bought our plane tickets now for the Christmas break. We'll leave here on the 23rd of December, have the folks pick us up and take us to Temple where we'll spend the next 4 days. Sunday morning, we'll head to Austin for church and to say hi to everyone at Simpson UMC, then off to Houston for the next 4 days. Friday morning we'll head back to Austin, have the folks pick up the Jeep that we'd have borrowed for our Houston trip, and head back to Phila. Ironically the best timed flight will take us back to Houston with an hour layover before going to Phila. Well, it's now noon and I want to get done with all of this before dinner, so I'm going to work hard at it!

peace and love!
-jas ... (c: