What goes on inside their heads

I am grading some piles of homework and its so crazy-making how some kids, week after week, just don't do their homework.

I was a goody two-shoes so the idea of not doing my homework even once was completely unthinkable. So it's just so out there to me to consistently, stubbornly, defiantly come to class every week without doing any of the work. Like what is going on in their heads? I'd suspect that maybe they decided they can get a good grade without doing any of the homework, but that would involve them actually doing some math to figure that out.

What is particularly bizarre is that at Eastside, you can't leave school on Friday until you've done all your late work. In the absence of this policy I could kind of understand the rationale. I don't want to do this work, and I won't do it.

But we *do* have this policy. And the kids know it. And they know the VP is militantly determined to make them do their work and will not let them go until they do. So WHAT ARE THEY THINKING!?!?!? They know they will have to do this someday. They will be forced to stay late on a Friday to get this stuff done. This has happened every week for the past 4 months. But they STILL won't do it.

Finals approach

Finals start two weeks from last Weds: less than 2 weeks. Can't believe we're already halfway done. Time goes so fast.

I started doing review with my 'resource' class today (kids who need extra help). I was dreading it, afraid we'd be starting from 0. But it was actually really encouraging. Some of the material from chapter two (the logic proof business) they were more comfortable with today than they were when were covering it in class.

More panic/anxiety on the job front. I have never been that self-motivated with engineering: all projects have been for school or for work, on school/work machines/systems where all the tools are there for you.

I have a little project I want to do for the kids where I'd like to process some files using a little Python script. I spent several hours mucking with getting Python installed on my Windows machine last night, finally just punted. I could get it installed and kinda running, but it doesn't seem to work or play well with Cygwin. What I'd really like is to run python scripts the way I can on Unix:

% somescript.py

and boom it does its thing. I couldn't quite get that to work.

This this AM my machine starts giving me blue screen of death. The recovery wipes out the past few days of files, so I'm back to no Python at all. Grr.

What's next

I just got an email from a recruiter for a position at 'Quantios'. Somewhat interesting/relevant because the company deals with college readiness and admissions, and I'm seeing another side of that right now. I told them I wouldn't be available until May but I might look them up then.

Then I looked at the site and the job description in detail.

It's kind of scary when the first n items on the requirements are a 'no' for me. Ruby and Php? No. Experience in Agile/Scrum, pair programming? No. Experience in MVC, Rest? Had to Google to find out what those meant.

Uh oh.

Ahhhh SSR

Tues-Fri my day ends with a 1.5 hour "tutorial", which is essentially study hall. I try to get the kids to do homework, and they try to not do homework.

But some genius in years past decided these tutorials should start with SSR: Silent (something) reading. 20 minutes where they read a book in absolute silence.

I. Love. Ssr. It is so peaceful.