This week in bullets

• Department Chair 1 calls them "ping pong" kids, Department Chair 2 calls them "boomerang kids." I call it "Ms. Ng's Headache Machine." The Admin - in their grand and almighty wisdom, and without any advice from actual math teachers - have decided to rearrange the placements of 20-odd 7th and 8th grade students, redistributing them among the Algebra Readiness, and Algebra 1 classes. Most of my time and energy this week have been taken up with keeping track of who is in my classroom and who is not. It is no fun. Thus, I volunteered myself to make sure these seemingly random schedule changes get minimized for next year.

• BSTA coach keeps telling me to pre-test my AR students who have behavior or academic issues already - and then offer them alternative assignments if they pass the pre-test. I'll do it, but give me some time lady! Planning, preparing, and implementing that activity won't happen overnight. It won't even happen within a week. But it will happen. So chill out.

• I spent five minutes trying to decide whether to get the super big post-it notes or the 3in. x 3in. post-its that I normally use. I just stood there, staring at them stupidly until a store clerk came up to me and asked if he could help. I replied, "Only if you can somehow make each day 30 hours instead of 24."

• Bought myself the most comfortable pair of shoes for teaching. Why are they so comfy? Because I splurged $30 on them instead of limiting myself to less than $15 like normal.

• Can someone show me how to either grade more efficiently OR create fewer things to grade? I would really like some practical tips.

• It is an everlastingly long time between my last paycheck of the previous year (June) and the first paycheck of this year (October).