Zentangles - July and August and a Little More

So now that September is almost over, sigh, I am finally getting around to posting the tangles from July and August.  Truthfully they were done at the end of August, I've just been so busy with school starting, trying to find time to photograph them and then to edit and post.  

But with two weeks behind me at school, I am slowly getting back into a somewhat normal routine.

Typically the beginning of the school year is busy for me, and I can't say that this year has been any different in that respect.  But our staff is really feeling the stress of new protocols and changes in curriculum and the whole evaluation process.  And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

I empathize with them and have tried to listen and help as much as possible.   But there's a general sense of being overwhelmed and it's not good.  

I told someone recently that you can't rearrange all the furniture in a blind man's house all at once.  You need to go about it little by little so he can acclimate and master his way around.  And that should be true of changes in education.  Educators need time to acclimate so they can master their skills or they'll be overwhelmed and either we'll start losing people to other jobs or retirement, or someone's going to have a meltdown and hurt themselves or worse, others.  

It's just a mess.  

And forgive me for this tirade, but don't people read directions any more?  I've been updating our student information and just cannot believe how people cannot follow simple directions.

We ask our parents to log in to our database and update their "demographics", which means changing contact information like e-mail addresses, phone numbers, and emergency contacts.

Then it's my job to go into the database, identify those that have made changes using a system search and then I have to go through each student on that list and "approve" the changes.

Three-quarters of the students in our school had changes to their demographics.  And I would say that about 1/3 of those people could not follow directions even though they are repeated throughout the page.

The system only recognizes phone numbers in the 000-000-0000 format and at the top of the page they're asked to use that format.  But that's not the only place they see it.  Beside each box that would get a phone number, this 000-000-0000 is next to it as a reminder.

If a hyphen is missing, (000 000 0000) the system won't recognize the number.  If there are brackets around the area code (000)000-0000 the system won't recognize it.  If there are no hyphens and no spaces (0000000000) the system won't recognize it.  Or if there are dots instead of hyphens (000.000.0000) again, the system won't recognize it.  So I have to change every darn phone number that is not done in the correct format.  

I mean, really - is it that hard to figure out????  

Phew, that felt better.  Sort of.  

Okay, enough ranting.  I think I need to do more tangles to relax.