Do open eyes keep the ghosts at bay?

First day back at work since the 21st!  Also, first time I have blogged about the new job.  I teach a literacy class lasting one and a half hours and including a reading and writing component, twice a day, to two groups of 12 kids each.  The rest of my day is taken up with planning, taking kids to specials classes, meetings, or recess or lunch duty.  Today, as at the beginning of nearly every week, I gave the kids a spelling pretest, which they grade themselves and then assign themselves words from based on how well or poorly they did.  I passed out and explained the first homework sheet of the week (Ms. Yule and I write our own homework sheets, or, more precisely, I write them, at least most of the time).  Then the kids met their book partners and discussed their reading with each other, as well as assigned themselves their own reading for tonight. They made notes about the books they were reading as well.  I read aloud to them a few chapters of a book, and finally we played a matching card game about analogies.

Also, after school on Mondays I teach le français to kindergarten kids.  So I stayed about an hour later than usual.
 
Which is too bad, because taking three days off means a lot of make-up work for a teacher (which is why I generally never take days off --- I have to work harder to arrange plans and catch up in grading than I do to actually go to work.)  Here is what is waiting for me to grade, or at least look over, from twenty-four kids:

last week's spelling test
Monday homework sheet
Wednesday homework sheet
apostrophe in-class worksheet
analogy in-class worksheet
fiction reading comprehension test
nonfiction reading comprehension test
descriptive paragraph about inferences

Whew!  But!  There was no time for all that, because I was required to return to school in the early evening to hear an author talk about his book on Why Johnny Can't Achieve, and What You Can Do To Help Him (Hint: It's Parental Attention and Good Attitude).  I read the fellow's book last summer, so the talk was mostly soporific.

Texted with LD both after school and before bed.  After she returns to Europa, she says she needs to clear her head and not text with me as much (read: literally constantly, every waking minute).  So I'm getting what I can.

Mood: Mostly too busy to be sad, mostly.