A leap of faith

I inherited a school printer in the fall and bought a $150 toner cartridge for it, which was in itself a leap of faith since the toner was not returnable and there was no way to tell if the printer actually worked without trying the toner. It has been worth every penny. After heavy use (including running off a full set of handouts for the days when the copier is out of order and/or features a really long line), it now says its toner is low.

As a first-year teacher in a time of deep budget cuts, I almost certainly will be laid off this spring. My administrators claim it is a near certainty that they will be able to hire me back in the fall, but I am interpreting their stated 99.9% as more like 65%.

So, the big question is, do I order a new toner cartridge? Do I really push my luck and order the $220 high-capacity cartridge?

Caught up... sort of

I am finally caught up on grading, after falling almost 2 weeks behind. I dug myself out from under a 3" high stack of ungraded work in the past 2 days. That feels good.

I also made equation posters today for the "new" equations, some of which are now a month old. Nice to cross that off the to-do list too.

Unfortunately, it's 10:15 PM and I don't really have any idea what I'm going to teach tomorrow. Not as caught up on planning. Or sleep, it appears.