Back in the saddle after the weekend, looking forward to Thanksgiving vacation, and then the mere 2 weeks of actual teaching after that, followed by a week of showing videos and playing jeopardy or something since grades are already in and kids aren't allowed to bring backpacks and nobody does any work. We had a meeting just to show new teachers how to waste that week by playing 7-up in class. Given that I have kids that can't write a simple declarative sentence without seven grammatical errors, it's kind of nauseating to think of using the week that way... I'm hoping at least to play some review games and maybe watch movies and write about them. I guess most of my time will be taken up getting everything ready for going off track, a process that sounds only vaguely less intimidating than prepping for a moon launch, but apparently is doable, given that hoards of incompetent LA teachers do it regularly.