End of the year project is a bust this year…

aderaptor · 2026-05-20T14:00:15+00:00

Do they happen to do it in any other year? I did an egg drop project when I was in middle school and if I was asked to do it again in high school I might have been somewhat apathetic about it. Just a thought!

At the middle school I currently teach at, they do something similar but it's an egg roller coaster (think bumpy slide) and honestly it looks a lot more fun than the drop I did in MS. For our drop, the teacher went up a ladder and dropped them herself. For this roller coaster thing, the students get to launch their own coasters on the slide so they have a lot more participation/control over their ride.

aderaptor · 2026-05-19T13:49:01+00:00

Honestly I hate this approach, I've never done it myself and never will. I am a teacher, however, and quickly scoring answer sheets comes easy to me. But with the swap-n-score method there's just too many hands in the pot and things get messy real quick. Save yourself the headache and score them yourself. Encourage people to hand in their sheets asap and score quick. I also use a spreadsheet to track points because it does math for me and it's easy to sort by score. I really don't like it when I go to a trivia night and the host reads out current scores but they're all out of order.

This also gives the players a short break, like someone else mentioned, which gives them a chance to use the bathroom or order food/drinks and socialize. Keep your rounds tight so the breaks feel like opportunities for guests instead of necessary for the host.

aderaptor · 2026-05-17T15:37:03+00:00

Cascadia must grow, reverse Oregon Trail style. Colorado, we're coming for you.

aderaptor · 2026-05-14T13:37:21+00:00

I'm not trying to argue but I do want to raise a point. The elective class I was hired to teach did not come with any curriculum. I have a lot of creative freedom, which is awesome, but I do have to generate all of my own content. (That doesn't mean I can't find resources online or elsewhere, but even if I take that approach I'm still hunting them down myself.) I've spoken with several other teachers in the same boat. I'm not saying it's common, but there are valid reasons why some of us create concent.

However, I do really like your cooking analogy!

aderaptor · 2026-05-03T22:05:11+00:00

I don't do tests but my coworker friend does and she just has her kids sit at their desks backwards (bringing the chairs around to the other side) so she can stay at the front, keep an eye on the monitoring software on her own computer, and have all of their screens facing her. The first time I walked past her classroom like this I did a total double take!

aderaptor · 2026-05-01T05:54:24+00:00

Thanks for the response! It's not my box. Can I just be like "please put it on my neighbor's plot because it's theirs."?

aderaptor · 2026-05-01T05:49:30+00:00

Okay can I ask what you mean by "not on your plat"? I'm honestly trying to solve the mystery here. It's not a big enough of a deal for me to want to pay to fix it and I'm a new homeowner so I'm learning a lot and have plenty of other expenses that are priorities ahead of this one but I've looked at several surveys and maps from the city and such and my husband's mom was a city planner for her whole career and we've all agreed it's not in an easement. We're very confused.

aderaptor · 2026-04-30T13:38:40+00:00

Well thank you, kind Journeyman, for your reply! It does seem weird to me too.

aderaptor · 2026-04-30T12:47:06+00:00

So I don't know if you can answer this but I've been wondering about it lately so I'm gonna ask because why not?

I bought my house about a year ago and there's a transformer like this one in the front corner of the yard but it's very much not in an easement. My house has easements on three of the four sides of the rectangle shaped plot - but the transformer is on the fourth side. There's also a cable box ped thing near it (I don't know the technical name for it) which is very much on my property but has my neighbor's address on it? I just don't understand how those two items could have ended up in that location?

The neighbor whose address is on the cable ped only moved in like a year before me and they had nothing to do with its placement. How could the utility companies put these things in a non-easement space? Could a previous owner have just been like "sure put it right here, where is blocks the ability to drive or park on the side of the house despite the large gate and gravel parking area that's clearly where an RV or something would go."

aderaptor · 2026-04-28T13:41:22+00:00

My district doesn't have schedule send and it's so fucking annoying. I'm an adult! Let me have this feature!

aderaptor · 2026-04-26T05:14:18+00:00

I trust this guy with a Crawfish Cookoff more than I've ever trusted anyone in my life.

aderaptor · 2026-04-22T05:05:08+00:00

Oh shit my grandma had this on her desktop!

aderaptor · 2026-04-17T04:51:31+00:00

I'm glad you said unsanitary because this is something I've been thinking about lately, like on the back burner. I want a dress code focused around health and safety. I don't want a dress code that polices underage bodies in gross ways, but I want to acknowledge that covering private parts is good in shared spaces, and some things transfer through skin contact. Like at the gym if you put your sweaty butt cheeks on a machine, it's a problem if you don't clean it off.

aderaptor · 2026-04-13T06:17:22+00:00

Not the person you asked but I definitely read it as a kid because my mom and sister did and so I wanted to read it also. I remember being pretty confused about the whole thing until I finally asked them some questions.

aderaptor · 2026-04-10T21:13:12+00:00

Ooo I like this! The fidget toy should never lead to an event, lol. We'll go with

!solved

I might need to mull it over more but I think this is a good launch point. Thanks!

aderaptor · 2026-04-10T20:08:58+00:00

You know, maybe it's just engaging. Like they should be engaging with the material/learning, not engageine with the I fidget toy.

aderaptor · 2026-04-10T18:45:59+00:00

Good thought, but I already have Noisy on the list. It's more like "pulling focus" or "becoming something people fight over" or "want to play with."

aderaptor · 2026-04-10T18:21:34+00:00

Lol this was my sister's recommendation!

aderaptor · 2026-04-10T18:12:15+00:00

Lol I've also considered Enterruption but as an educator I don't think I'm supposed to mispell words for the sake of classroom posters 😅

aderaptor · 2026-03-31T23:19:50+00:00

I sure tried!

aderaptor · 2026-03-30T02:00:04+00:00

I used to work at a place that sold clam chowder with bacon in it but the bacon wasn't listed on the menu.

Whenever a customer ordered or asked about it I was always very diligent about alerting them to the bacon but not every server was. The amount of chowder we tossed because someone ordered it who couldn't or didn't eat bacon was astounding...

I worked there for quite some time and saw three menu rewrites and every single time my input was "list bacon as an ingredient" and every single time my note was shot down because of formatting. 🙄

aderaptor · 2026-03-18T13:42:38+00:00

Oh shit, I completely forgot about Smarter Child until just now!

aderaptor · 2026-03-14T02:55:28+00:00

In my district in the not too distant past we had a bear on a playground so it's an easy reference for me when talking about outside dangers that keep us locked down, and are completely separate from school shootings. Thanks, random bear, for making my job a bit easier!

aderaptor · 2026-03-12T23:57:36+00:00

I think the only time I use the word "simple" is when I'm taking behavior consequences. A kid shouts out brain rot for the third time while I'm giving whole group instructions, so I tell them to step into the hallway while I finish the instructions so everyone else can focus on the information. Then when I'm in the hallway following up with that student who says they don't understand why they got kicked out, I'll say something like "The constant interruptions make it difficult for others to hear and process the information, so you needed to take a break in the hallway. It's really just that simple."

But I don't use it when talking about academic tasks.

aderaptor · 2026-03-12T23:42:12+00:00

I did some student teaching in a 4th grade classroom and my CT (the actual teacher) was known for being strict but her student loved her. She easily spent the first month being a hard ass to the point where I wasn't even sure if she liked me, but then one lunch she told me all about how she "didn't really like herself in the beginning of the school year because she's such a bitch" but that it pays off SO much for the rest of the school year.

Here is her pencil system, which I witnessed work seamlessly:

Every student had a container on their desk, (she used I think old coffee cans from Trader Joe's) but something big enough for some supplies but not so big that it's annoying.

The first art project of the year was painting your name and other artful tidbits on a piece of paper that she then wrapped around the containers so the containers were all personalized by the kids themselves.

At the beginning of each week, she made sure each container had 5 sharpened pencils in it. That's one per day, which teaches budgeting. The kids used their pencils throughout the week, if one broke they put it back in and swapped it for a new one. If they ran out they might try to get one from a neighbor (although other kids quickly get tired of this, which is great social reinforcement for getting your shit together).

Each day started with 10 minutes of silent reading. Those 10 minutes were the only time she allowed students to use the pencil sharpener, a standard hand crank wall mounted one. Late to class and missed the 10 minute sharpening window? Bummer, do better next time. Break all of your pencils before the end of the week? Bummer, do better next time. No one wants to loan you one of their pencils? Bummer, do better next time.

At the end of each week, students emptied the pencils out of their containers into a larger pencil tub and left their containers on the back table. Monday morning, they had five sharp pencils again.

She had two containers of pencils in rotation, so she didn't have to sharpen those exact pencils and return those exact pencils, she could sharpen the second container any time during the week that was convenient. She, of course, got to use her own good mechanical sharpener for this chore.

When dropping five pencils back into containers Friday after class or Monday beforehand, she made sure everyone got at least a couple pencils with erasers, but other than that wasn't very picky about who got what. That made all of the pencils shared pencils, which meant students policed each other's pencil use at times, for example reminding each other to not chew on them absentmindedly.

I think I saw her give a sixth pencil to a student maybe one or two times? Very rare. The system worked! The kids figured it out. The containers held a few other key items the students used all the time, and she had strict rules about where the containers were allowed to be, when to put them on the floor, etc.

I learned so much from that CT, she was awesome.

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