Tomorrow is the last day of school with kiddos, so today we took final exams in the odd hours.
First hour goes by smoothly, I'm on plan so not much to do there... renew my teaching certificate online (only took 1 phone call to the state department to figure it out!), run a test over to in-house, visit with our district director for AVID, make copies, etc. All the makings of a good day :)
Third hour comes and I get the kiddos started on their test, all is fine. After their test, they say it's pretty easy. Repeat this for fifth hour.
After school, the "sh*t hits the fan" so to speak :) I go to the scantron machine to grade my finals around 3:15ish and there's a kid using the copy machine. I tell her she's not supposed to be using it, only teachers. Because I got sidetracked, I go off and leave the answer keys to the final on the scantron machine. I don't notice this until about 30 minutes later - OMG, adrenline starts pumping, I'm freaking out. I run over to the teacher workroom, they aren't there.. holy crap! I am going to have to go home and write new finals for geometry and go to Kinkos to make copies for all of the other Geometry teachers (common finals) - total freakout!
I go to the principal's office, afraid to tell many people what I've done. I'm a veteran teacher, pretty respected most days, and for me to lose a final is not the norm at all. I can't find the secretary, but instead I find our department curriculm coach (who is retiring) and her replacement. I sit down with them and about to burst into tears - this is SO unlike me to lose anything! The new curriculum person (a teacher I've known for years), goes with me to find the girl that was using the copier and she had already gone, but the teacher she was helping was still there, so we were able to get her phone number. The girl remembered a male teacher going in there and described his clothing. I went back to the office and asked the asst principal to show me the security tapes so I could figure out who it was. After about 30 minutes, we figured it out and the secretary let me into the teacher's room and thankfully he had picked them up and put them in a drawer.
My heart is STILL pounding!!! What a day!!! I want to show all of the helpers a token of appreciation, so I'm grabbing a small giftcard from a popular drink spot to tell then "Thanks for saving my rear today!!"
*Sigh* Calgon - Take me Away!!!
Dang, T!!! If there was any cause for a complete freakout, that would be it. Glad it all worked out for you. Hope everything runs smoothly tomorrow - I'm going to check on you during the day, though!
ReplyDeleteMiz T,
ReplyDeleteYou don't know me. I get an alert from Google any time the word "Scantron" is published online. That's because I work for Scantron's biggest competitor, Apperson Education Products (www.appersonedu.com). Just wanted to let you and your colleagues know that you could have avoided this little slice of Hades by using one of our scanners because our scanners allow you to create electronic keys. You can email the keys and, if you notice after giving the test that a question wasn't covered and you want to kick it out, you just remove it from the e-key and click one button and it recalcuates all the scores so you don't have to go wait in line for that Scantron again. Answer sheets are about half the price, too. Anyhow, you should check it out!