Finished the Course!

Hooray!
Today I officially submitted the last assignments for my Honours Specialist in English course. For those of you who are not high school teachers in Ontario, this means I just finished four months of spending WAY too much time reading articles written by people who have never been in a classroom. After that, I had to comment and analyze and critique said articles, and applying them to my teaching practice. Then I had to reflect on their success or failure.

Oh, my poor little guinea pigs of students.

This also means that I get a BIG pay raise. Well, after all the paperwork. Did I mention paperwork?

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As far as I can tell, my prof tells the university that I passed. (I'm pretty sure I did. I got honours standing on the first 5 of 6 major projects.)

The university sends that information to the Ontario College of Teachers. I have opinions about them, but I'm legally bound from stating them. Yeah, those sort of opinions.

The OCT waits for me to send them a request, then they send me an updated teaching certificate that includes this course.

Meanwhile, I request a transcript from the university. Yes, for some reason, I do need it.

Once I get the transcript and the OCT certificate, I send both off to my union. THEY send me a rating statement.

I send the rating statement to my school board, who then increase my pay.

Now, please note, all of the above institutions communicate regularly with other other via email. Each will allow you to perform SOME tasks on their websites. The course itself was conducted entirely online. But the paperwork, for some unknown reason, must be sent through Canada Post in every direction.

I might believe that this was because each organization is worried about security, but for one final factor. All of them are sending out E-tax-forms this year instead of mailing them.

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But, hey....I'm done.

In knitting news, I've almost finished the fuzzy blue mohair baby hat. No pictures. What? That wasn't on my list of WIP? Umm....Shhhhhhh.

I've also finally passed the midway point on the SnB baby blanket. I figured out the trick to the seed stitch. Stitchmarkers of different colours! Putting a green one (green for go ahead and knit) on the rows that start with a knit stitch and a white one (pearls/purls are white) on the rows with a purl stitch (right and wrong facing rows) works beautifully. I'm just whizzing along now. Considering that this project was started a year ago while I was teaching myself to knit, my tension is remarkably consistent. Furthermore, I notice that I knit much much much faster than I did last year.

Currently, both DW and I have a fever/cough thingie that's going around. I can sit up and type for short periods, but sitting to mark is difficult. My marking pile looms above me, and chases me in nightmares. Looking on the bright side, exams are this week, so there is nothing more that students can submit to make it grow any big other than the exams themselves.

So, I must finish the English marking by Tuesday morning, the CanFam marking by Thursday morning, and the exams by Saturday night. I can do it. The house isn't going to be pretty, and we're likely to have what my mother used to call "icebox soup" for dinner, but I can do it!

SUPER ME!!