Ashley EntLady Beans

Took the district up on the offer of some therapy sessions for an event in my classroom and every session was just an hour of talking about what I'm doing in my classroom to help the other students process (none of them were present at the time and most don't know).

Sorry, that turned into a rant at a stranger. Just feeling very discouraged this morning and lots of horrible stuff happening at school lately, meanwhile our PD was almost two hours straight of ice breakers because the company we hired has nothing better to say to us.

And when we watched a simulation together and wrote down comparisons of how fast planets were going compared to their distance from the sun, only a few could identify the pattern and several asked "how are we supposed to know that on the test?" when the answer was farther= slower.

An uncomfortable number don't know whether the moon is a planet or not. Some are still asking "doesn't the sun go around the earth?". On an average day, more than 10% of any class just didn't come to school. Most will outright tell you they copied someone else rather than even open a simulation.

Overall understanding of most things has. My class just spent 6 weeks learning how stars work, what gravity is, and how orbits work. Only about half can correctly predict whether they'd experience more gravitational force on Jupiter or the moon. Most report that they just randomly picked.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm universalist because I'm scared. Other times I have a brave moment where I feel like I'm willing to burn as long as Rubio does too. I should probably go to confession about this if I'm totally honest with myself. I can't imagine the hell of my dying child begging for food.

Native South Carolinian checking in. Anyone who thinks the south is full of good people is just someone the southerners didn't talk candidly to. 90%+ of them have wanted this violence for decades and they'd love nothing more than to have the torture be made public so they could watch and j/o to it.

It's gonna be something weird like voter registration.

Yeah, that one's throwing me too. Unless it was sarcasm. I haven't followed this field, but I imagine that's been published on to death already, too? It's killing me.

Maybe it's filling for unemployment? August would be end of construction season. You'd think January would uptick from seasonal job loss.

I saw someone mention August as divorce month. I could absolutely see it being a thing that all the summer divorces got pushed back and dads finally had to use their days as single parents. Also court houses opening back up. January stumps me.

This is the most enjoyable puzzle in a long time and you have to tell us once it publishes. This is better than spot-that-lizard.

I'm going to say not depression, because you'd see more seasonal affective disorder in January. Unemployment? Men's seasonal work drops off in August if it's cold enough.

January being super low screams pto to me, but also people going remote would explain it falling after March. I cannot explain the August peak for men, for the life of me.

I feel like it can't be childcare because you'd see more mirror in the peaks in Jan through March. If women go down, men would go up, eg. I'm assuming that you didn't separate the lines, so women do it more anyway. August is weird. I'm going to say taking sick days/pto/vacation time?

Lol. I'm a teacher, a profession famous for good insurance making up for the bad pay. I pay almost $900/month and that doesn't include what the district also pays on my behalf. Our deductible is huge. I changed to the district I'm in now for the *better* insurance.

I didn't want to end up at "I'm here because it pays my bills and I see my own children more often". I have not been able to offer an educational opportunity is want my own kids to have four at least a couple years now without major pushback.

So now I'm not supposed to make them read. Or do math. Even having them practice remedial math as we ease into the class is multiple parent emails. I reminded them how to multiply fractions together. They used calculators. They're high school juniors.

The standard to fail is "did not partially complete/engaged totally off-topic".
When almost half of our graduates don't read at 3rd grade level or do math at 8th grade level, please don't call that gatekeeping.

I'm realizing every year that I'm closer and closer to genuinely hating my job. Not because of the students, though that's definitely a factor. I'm honestly just sick of being accused of gatekeeping high school diplomas by not auto-passing every student.

All I want in my heart of hearts is for the Chicago teaching union to show up when the national guard does and just quietly outnumber them. Then silently stare at them like they're waiting on the national guard to get quiet.

Meanwhile, the second kid keeps saying "they're really going to have to cope when I get there" with NO prompting and I'm cracking up

It's hard to follow after the fact, but I think someone called him gay weeks ago, a parent took it seriously and got "concerned", then the glitter made them lose it.

But we need to stop the bad representation of...???? Being friendly? Getting in the way of their middle school boys scoring? Idek. Proud of my kid, who told them to "cope".

Also that he is gay (derogatory), because he let the girls put glitter in his hair for a race. But I didn't get the concerned parent texts about it for weeks because my phone turned into a brick.

If anyone is interested in knowing how weird the right is being today, we are apparently going through a whole thing where the oldest kid is getting called the antichrist for hanging out with girls (friends), by the conservative parents of other boys who are upset they're not hanging out with girls.

My husband @fadeno.bsky.social did an amazing job on the first of his kids' science series. This one is kindergarten-standards physics. If you like science...or birds....or fun rhymes and hijinx, please check it out. He is currently only on Amazon, but is planning to expand in time.
a.co/d/g5PQJiX

Ours is called Big Penny. It has warning lights, eyes and teeth, signs, and a counter for "trucks munched". People drive mindlessly.

I've said this for years. I like to get mine crispy and then put salt and vinegar like they're potato chips.

Worst haircut I ever got was the most expensive one I ever got. She gave me an undercut I didn't ask for. I ONLY do $20 haircuts by other curly haired people now.