Report Card Writing: Finished! I spent time thinking about each student and what I so appreciate about her or him. I wrote that stuff, as well as some suggestions for the future. I simply cannot believe that I have no plans to write report cards next semester, or the semester after that. I can't really picture what my life outside the classroom will look like. We may fear the unknown, but we must venture ever forward. Someone famous must have said that, and that's my plan. But, in addition to the unknown, I think I'll also do something familiar...

Marathon Training: I haven't run 26.2 in five years, but I feel confident that I can do it again. I signed up for our hometown marquee event, the Twin Cities Marathon. In part, I chose this race because it's in the fall, and fall marathons are usually problematic for me because of my day job as a classroom teacher. Now that I do not have that particular day job, it should be easier to keep running come August, and the marathon in early October can be a celebration of my new gig. Maybe it will be my best marathon ever? Or, maybe I'll just cover the distance. Either way is good, and my sister-in-law, Steph, also signed up. Last time I ran a marathon with Steph, it was a total blast.

Writing: I've been telling myself it's fine to not be writing my book or my blog while I do my report cards. Unfortunately (and, of course, THANK GOD), I have now submitted my reports. I have no choice but to go back to my other work. I'm warming up right now, preparing to type some words of my god-awful first draft. I'm dying to return to the beginning of that novel, to make the story make sense and to make some of the chapters not suck; but I think it might be smarter to go push through the end and then have a whole manuscript to revise.

At the very least, I think I should write 10,000 new words before I go back. Let it be so. Ugh.

I’m not sure what to say as I’m coming down the homestretch. I’m actually going to miss most some of these sophs. They’re cute and kind of earnest. We’ve gotten along for the most part. Still, there’s a lot to grade, and a lot of it is half-assed and crappy. The sophs, it seems, are readier for summer than their teacher, who becomes depressed when sitting idle, but remains happily distracted from her woes while trucking along at a breakneck pace.

In this trying time I’ve reverted to Aaron Sorkin. Dan and Rachel have been aiding and abetting my addiction. At home, we’ve been watching Sports Night, a show on which the two lead characters are named Dan and Casey. Dan and Casey! Like us, only I’m an initial KC who prefers to be pronounced as a real Casey.

And at home and abroad (at Rach’s house), I’ve been re-living season one of The West Wing, a show I loved so much I thought my heart would burst if I wasn’t home on Wednesdays at eight o’clock from 1999-2004.

I’ll let you know if anything exciting happens between now and Friday.

There’s bound to be at least one thing, I suppose.

I had to have a sub, and all of my classes were perfect except one group of enriched sophs.

That one group told the sub that they didn’t have to pick up their trash because the janitor would do it for them. They also told her that presentation skills didn’t matter in the projects they were doing (a lie), and so a couple of boys did their talk while lying on their backs, kicking their legs. They also played their videos in slow motion because the group slated to go after them wanted to stall one more day.

Some other kids refused to give the sub information about the activity they were requiring of the class. She wrote to me that “the class has a lot to learn about self-control.” When she told the kids she’d never seen anything like their behavior in all 30 years of teaching and subbing at the high school, they told her that maybe they were acting that way because their teacher wasn’t there.

It’s fair to say I was less than pleased.

A letter was written and read to the class expressing my distinct displeasure. The letter was designed to elicit maximum guilt. The letter included information about the dangers of by-standers: if you think I'm not speaking to you, the letter said, you better think again.

The letter said that the sub report reflected a failure of the whole. The whole certainly included me, the letter said, because I had made the mistake of trusting them with too much independence.

And so we go to 9. Days, of course. I’ve decided I’ll forgive them when they work up the guts to speak to me.