I have no words
I was running very late this morning because my oldest daughter decided that she wanted me to french braid her hair for her school pictures today. I got them done, her hair looked great, and I left the house about 15 minutes later than I should have. I would have been fine if I hadn't been assigned duty this week, so I totally missed that. I am incredibly thankful that I work at the same school my mom does, so she picked up my duty for me this morning. PHew.
On my way to the main building from my car, the head custodian stopped me to tell me that many of the classrooms were flooded in the 6th grade hallway. OH YEAH. It does tend to flood a bit in there when it rains, but for some reason I wasn't thinking that the damage was going to be that bad. For the past four years, if it rained outside, there was water in my classroom. It's not easy to reinforce how important education is when there are six buckets catching leaks from the ceiling. My ceiling has holes in it where the tiles have become so water logged they have come crashing to the ground. Really, my students are beginning to think nobody knows about them.
After today I'm beginning to think they are correct in their assumptions. I was hesitant to open my door when I finally reached my room, so I did it as slowly as I could. Little Amalia though, she was trying so hard to be helpful so she barged ahead of me and plowed into the room. She should have been wearing waders to avoid the water on the floor. I was flabbergasted. There was two inches of water on the floor, and it was still flowing freely this morning promising even more of a pool. I couldn't believe how much water my room could hold. I actually had to study the floor to figure out why it didn't flow out the door. Haha, turns out the floor isn't level. Imagine that.
I couldn't remain in my room, so I quicky moved all that I needed into the library, only to find myself joining two other teachers who were forced to abandon their rooms as well. It is a sad day in American Education when teachers are forced out of their classrooms because of water damage from a simple rainstorm. My students were as discombobulated as I because of the move, and it took us a while to get into the swing of the day. I am very appreciative of all of the students in that class this morning though. Had it been my fourth period class that had to move the entire classroom, we would have fallen apart. I had a great group of students this morning.
I survived my first two classes this morning. During the middle of the second class, I had to send a student to my room to pick up my stapler. She came back looking white as a sheet. She said that as she was wading through the lake in my room, one of the ceiling tiles fell. So I decided to go back to survey the damage. It rained all day, so I figured that the damage would get worse. I didn't want to be right, but unfortunately I was. Almost all of my ceiling tiles fell out, and my light fixtures were starting to fall out as well. Thank god there were no students in there, otherwise we would have had injuries.
And to top it all off, the air conditioners are still on. So even though the temperature outside never got above 55 degrees, we were subjected to freezing air being blown at us all afternoon. By the time the bell rang at 3:05, it was 46 degrees in the library. I have learned that I need to keep a sweatshirt or a sweater in my classroom because the temperature in there is so picky, but unfortunately, my sweatshirt was wet. So it did me no good.
Despite the rainy day, we had a positive ending. My husband found out he is getting a brand new squad car, and we got approved for our home loan. So my family and I will be able to move out of this 1200sq foot apartment, into a 2789 sq foot house. I am so happy I'm in tears.
Lesson Plans, parent conferences, staff meetings, and somebody else's insight into homeowrk.
Over the weekend, I spent a large amount of time working on my lesson plans. I have always known that I write an awesome lesson plan. I have spent much of my five years as a teacher teaching other teachers how to write an effective lesson plan. However, I have had a hard time trying to get all of my lesson plans to tie into each other. So this year I have developed my course outline first, then my lesson plans will be required to fit into the outline. I thought it made sense. So I finished my outline, which was an undertaking in itself, then I tweaked my lesson plans based on last year's reflections for each lesson, and I put it into my outline. So when I finished I had this great notebook full of my outline and the lessons that fit into each unit. My only problem is that there are not dates on my lesson plans. I can't seem to figure out how much time each of my lessons is going to last, so I don't date my plans. My principal has commented more than once about my lack of dates. So this year, I also added a monthly calendar that I can use as a daily agenda. That way I can keep my lesson plans date-free, but still show who ever may read my lesson plans when each of my lessons will be given in the classrom. At the risk of sounding cocky, I am a lesson planning goddess.
This morning started with a parent conference. We schedule conferences during our team time, so we're pretty spoiled compared to other middle school teachers. I do not, nor can I, stay after school to meet with a parent. I'm pretty selfish with my time. This woman that we met with this morning is actually the grandparent of one of my students. This student isn't a behavior problem, nor is he chronically absent, nor is he one of those kids that sits and does nothing the entire time. For some reason, he is just doing badly. He is missing some of his assignments, but a lot of the stuff he does turn in he does very poorly. So he is indeed failing. We discovered that he lives with his grandmother, because his father got remarried and the new wife doesn't want to deal with his kids. PLUS, we also were able to read the criminal complaints against him because he has a history of beating his children. It's a sad story. Not the worst I have heard, but it's pretty bad.
We are going to start using some strategies to help this child actually accomplish his work in class. We are also going to be sending him to tutoring after school three days a week. Because my school happens to be a very low income school, we get tons of afterschool programs completely funded by outside parties. I feel like this child has extreme potential. He loves being at school, and he WANTS to learn, he just has a hard time paying attention. So, we work with him. He is going to be one of those kids that we will be able to work with.
I love to read other blogs. I spend large amounts of time doing so. Today, I ran across
this post and I wanted to share it with any of my own readers who are also interested. Two years ago, my school did an SQS project concerning homework. Please don't ask me what SQS means, because I really have no idea. What I do know is that it is a continuous improve program where you collect real data, and use it to make improvements. Three years ago, the teachers at my school felt that the lack of homework completion has important enough to do a two year data collection on. For two years, every time we assigned homework, even nightly assignments such as reading logs, we had to keep track of how many students turned in each individual assignment versus the number of students enrolled in each class. It was amazing to see that I averaged less than a 30% overall return on my homework. After a certain number of weeks, we had to sit down and analyze our findings. Turns out most of us had very low returns on our homework assignments. So for the second part of our project, we didn't assign any homework except for nightly reading.
We found that our students' grades improved greatly. It was astounding. So we all agreed at that point that homework was actually causing harm to the students' grades. Now we needed to decide whether or not the students can meet the state education standards WITHOUT the homework. Without any type of research, we decided that if the student is doing all of his/her work inside the classroom, the teacher is actually able to witness the growth and thus be able to see if there are any areas in need of rehabilitation. Now, the team that started the project is still researching the advantages and disadvantages of homework, but after the first few homeworks I have assigned this year, I am in the "no homework" camp. If the kids aren't turning their work in, I am really unable to see if they are meeting standards. Whereas, if they are only doing it in the classroom, I can see it all.
Every other Monday, we have a meeting after school. The first Monday, the meeting lasts for two hours, every third Monday, the meeting is only an hour. Today was an hour meeting, which didn't make it any less annoying. Is there anybody that actually enjoys staff meetings? Today we did the "System Check." This is a questionarre that the entire staff fills out to let the State Department of Education how we feel our school is doing. At the beginning of last year, the State Department said each staff member was to fill one out, and the results were to be tallied and the average of all the answers is the data that gets turned in.
That is no longer the way we do it. Now, we sit down in a "discussion" with the principals and decide together how we feel we are doing. So essentially the principal gets to argue with us, then tell us what is going to go on the Systems Check. It is pretty frustrating. I like my principal, I really do, but I feel like she just doesn't get it. When you hit rock bottom, you can't go anywhere but up. So in this age of sensationalizing the disparities of our education system, would it not be better to hit the ultimate low, so that you have to improve? She does not see that. She hides many of our problems to make us look better than we really are. Which also doesn't solve the problems.
So this quarter's systems check is not an accurate representation of how we, as a whole, feel. But whatever. I am not worried.
I am going to give you the weekly update. I realize that I am not very consistent, so I am sorry for that. I have a hard time getting to the computer on a regular basis, and when I am here, it typically takes me half an hour just to check my email, and that is my family's time length for me on the computer. However, on a Saturday evening I am not restricted, so here I write.
I have learned that keeping this blog has been quite therapudic for me. I have never told the story of Victor to anybody, so instead I pour in into my keyboard, and all of a sudden it's out there. And I learned that I am not horrible. I am human. Even a teacher is going to break every now and then. I'm proud to say that Victor is the only student that actually received negative feedback from one of my breakdowns.
This past week was a bit of a trial for me because of this nasty headcold that likes my sinuses quite a bit. It's not willing to move out. So I had a substitute on Monday and was pleasantly surprised to find that my lesson plans had been followed all day and all of my markers weren't gone. My chalk had remained on my desk and in one piece. It was a good day.
Tuesday and Wednesday were a blur. I hate that I can't remember what I did on those two days. I know I met with my team, but I don't know what we talked about. I know I taught, and based on the assignments that were turned in, I assume I taught what I had been planning. However, I have no memory of those two days.
So I took Thursday off. I figured the failure to remember two days of my life and the complete lack of feeling in my extremeties due to the cold were reasons enough to stay home.
Friday, however, made up for the entire week that I didn't remember.
I co-teach one class a day with another teacher because of the large number of special education students that are enrolled in that class. It happens to be the first class of the day. I think the administration at my school did that on purpose to the both of us because we had both been quite used to not having a morning class at all. The past two years my prep periods have all been the first period of the day. As have my co-teacher's preps. So it became quite simple for me to not be at work on time every day. It was a gradual late problem for me. I came on time religiously for the first semester. Then I began to notice that nobody really saw me get there, nor did they care, just as long as my classes were taken care of.
So I started coming later and later. I got so bad that I wasn't getting there until right before my class started...at 9:45am. Yeah, it was pretty ugly.
Turns out somebody did notice, and during my annual review, my principal sat me down and commented on the number of times she saw me drive up at 9:30. I'm supposed to be there at 8:10 every day, so 9:30 was QUITE late. I apologized, told her I would definitely work on it, and all but RAN out of her office.
The beginning of this year rolled around and I was not at all surprised to see that my first period prep had been pulled and I had a prep later in the day instead.
My co-teacher tells of a similar scenario. Haha, we're so bad.
The year started ok, but it slowly went downhill. I got much better at making it to work on time, and I am at the point now where I actually make it to work early.
My co-teacher, on the other hand, is continuing to not make it to work on time. In fact, she isn't coming to work on time in any way, shape, or form. In fact, she gets to work late, then she goes to her classroom for whatever reason, THEN she gets to her actual class about 20 minutes late. This is an every day thing with her. I have learned to accept it. It bothers me that she feels ok going to her EMPTY classroom before she comes to her students. But whatever. I'm not her, and I don't want to make a big deal out of it. However, I am feeling put out, and I don't know how to handle the situation.
On Friday, my co-teacher came in twenty minutes late. When she came into my class she complained about the thing that were missing from her classroom after she had a sub. So solidfying that she did indeed go to her room first. THEN, she got into my room and informed me that she was needed in a parent conference. Ok, a parent conference shouldn't take that long. However, she was gone for half an hour. Upon her return, she said that mom hadn't showed up. Well that's a bummer, but why did that take half an hour?
At that moment, my phone rang and it was my husband with a dire emergency (to him anyway. He was ordering a birthday cake for my oldest daughter and he needed to kow the specifics) so I had to step outside. The students were all on task and I had to reservations about stepping outside. However, as soon as I got done, my co teacher informed me that the parent had showed up and they wanted her for the conference now.
Hmm, ok. Have fun hun. And she's gone again.
Upon her entrance in third time, she talked about the student, how horrible he is in her class, and how mom wants to blame him failing on her, which is pretty normal in this job.
Then she tells me she is going to leave to go get herself ready for her next class. That's about ten minutes early, so she spent a grand total of maybe 15 minutes with her first period class. Now, I can understand that sometimes things come up. But come on. She is late every day, and she leaves early every day. And every day in class she has to go do this, or she has to go do that. Now, I think this must be payback for last year when I smoked, and I took a break during the period we co-taught together last year. I'm not sure. I'm just feeling a bit like she's using me to have an additional prep period.
Ugh
I'm pretty sure I mentioned the craziness over the air conditioner. It was fine when school started, but in the rest of the rooms it didn't work at all. So they hired an independent contractor to come in and fix them. Neat. Except, they broke mine. So for the first three weeks of school it was great in my room. Then the air conditioner broke and it averaged 92 degrees by the end of the day. THEN, they fixed the friggin air conditioner and it broke again. Unfortunately, it broke ON, so we were unable to turn it off. So when I went into my classroom in the morning, it was under 50 degrees. I felt like I was working for the Keystone Cops.
The week that it was arctic in my classroom, I had a major allergy fit. It was horrible. I had a sneeze stuck up in my sinuses for a week. Add that to the sub zero temperatures in my room, and you have a full blown head cold.
So I took a day off this week to get better. Of course, the bulk of the cold hit me over the weekend, so my weekend sucked. I had heard that it was warmer on Monday, so I wasn't afraid of going back to school. Then Tuesday morning I get there and it's under 50 on my thermostat again.
Two days of that and my cold is back.
I'll be staying in bed again tomorrow.
My One Regret
I haven't been teaching that long, and an experienced teacher once told me that if you have learned everything you need to know, then you are facing your maker. So essentially you will die when you know it all. Four years ago I was in my second year of teaching, and I think I might not have know anything.
I had this student named Victor. This child was very intelligent, yet he rarely did any work and he failed all of his classes the year I had him. As a teacher, it was horribly disappointing, yet I had so many other students that I found it hard to focus on him, so I brushed him aside.
After about 7 weeks of school that year, he started coming to school smelling very badly. I used to be able to smell him from across the hall, and I knew how far away he was based on how bad the smell was. His team of teachers referred him to the health team, then forgot about him. He went back and forth from smelling bad to being tolerable. Every now and then we had to ask him about his bathing habits, but otherwise we just disregarded him.
Until his behavior went south. He went from being a student we didn't notice to a student that we wished would stop coming to school. He was downright mean. He was mean to the teachers, the other students, and frequently he was mean to inanimate objects as well. He was unpleasant to interact with, and the smell got worse. He was rude and disrespectful. So we started fighting with him. Daily. It was horrible.
We finally decided that it was time to start talking to mom. Yes, I know. We really did wait far too long to discuss his problems with his parents. I don't even have a good excuse. I used to make excuses, but I stopped. We were wrong that year. We passed the ball over and over with that child to the point where the ball became stagnant.
We set up a conference with his mom. She didn't show up. We set up another conference with his mom, and again she didn't show up. We called home and received a message telling us the phone had been disconnected. The social worker at my school finally scheduled a home visit with for this child and we all tagged along.
We were appalled at the conditions in which this student lived. The home had no running water, so they had all of their "toilet" things in the yard. They also kept dirty dishes in the yard which made the smell of the house unbearable. The home also had no electricity because Victor's mother had not been able to pay the bill. So the day we went in it was very hot in the house.
Victor's mother was morbidly obese. She had been bedridden for almost two years because of her size. Victor had been taking care of his brother and sister for those two years, without stopping to take care of himself. Victor's older sister had decided to move back in with their mother as well, making the total number of persons in the house seven. It was a two bedroom manufactured home, with no electricity and no water. I bet you can imagine the conditions.
We immediately called Child and Family Services to report abuse and neglect with this family. Victor's sister's boyfriend was horribly abusive towards Victor and his brother and younger sister. He refused to allow the smaller children to eat in the home, claiming that the older people needed it more.
CYFD decided tha Victor was fine and there was no need to take this child away from his home.
We threw our hands up and let it go. I can't save them all, so I stopped trying.
Over the course of that year Victor's behavior got worse and worse. He treated everybody so badly that he had no friends and even his teachers didn't like him. The other student's threw his backpack away daily because they claimed it smelled like it belonged in the trash. So everyday Victor dug his backpack out of the trash.
At the end of that year, I had been very fed up with this child, and I had had enough. He had spent a class period being particularly disgusting towards others, and I finally let my temper go. I told him: "If you fell off the face of the earth tomorrow, nobody would miss you."
I never saw that kid again after that. He stopped coming to school, and since there was only about a week of school left, I hadn't expected him back anyway. I felt very guilty over that remark. I have never been able to give up the guilt I felt for saying that. That boy was a child, and he didn't ask for his situation any more than I asked for him to be placed in my class. I had no right to say that, and I should have probably found another profession after that. However, they say you lean from your mistakes, and you better believe that I have learned from that one.
Over the summer I decided to look him up. His mother passed away the summer after I had him in my class, and CYFD finally removed him from that home. He had wonderful foster parents, and he had been going to school regularly. That is good.
We all have that memory of that one teacher that we couldn't stand. That one teacher that ALMOST made you feel like you weren't worth crap. Well, I was that one teacher for Victor. I hate myself for what I said to that kid.
Needless to say, I am far more cautious with my temper at school. I will never let my temper slip out of my mouth again. I will never allow myself to be that one teacher that helps a student learn how to hate school. I want to be the opposite. And there is absolutely no excuse for what I said. I could try to blame it on the new teacher in me, and that I simply didn't know better. OR, I could blame it on what a pain in the rear that kid was. OR, I could blame it on the alignment of the stars. But I can't . I was wrong. I was a horrible teacher that day.
I promise I have done, and will continue to do better.
I survived the week that lasted a year. Unfortunately, I have the back to school crud. I feel like crap. Last year I got the crud about six weeks into the year, and it decided to pay me a visit this year as well. I think it shows up right when I am feeling the most stressed out. My guard is down, and I quit worrying about wiping the classroom down with Lysol wipes after every class period. I am incredibly busy, both with my teacher responsibilities, but also with my family life. So I get kicked in the a** with the crud.
On the plus side, I have time to read when I'm laid up in bed. I ordered my daughter a packet of award winning books from one of her Scholastic book orders. I decided to read them before I handed them over to my 9-year old with blind faith. So far I've gone through two and I liked them both. I don't expect to dislike any of them, but you never know.
I have also had an opportunity to pick up some professional reading. One book I have been reading lately is called
Reading Reminders, by im Burke
http://www.heinemann.com/shared/products/0500.asp I have fallen in love with this book. So I purchased another Jim Burke item called
The Teacher's Daybook. I have been writing daily reflections in my Daybook so that when I come home on the weekends to blog, I can tell you about my week with more accuracy.
I just thought I would share that with you. I'm going back to bed now.
Open House
Ah, the dreaded open house. It's that one night of the year where half of the parents will show up and assume that you want to have a conference with them. I do not keep my grades at the school anymore because of the huge number of grade check requests I get on Open House night. So I always end up with angry parents. They claim the only reason they want to go to open house is to ask the teachers how their student is doing.
Lovely.
Well today is not going to be the day you hear about your child's performance. Call me and set up a conference, or call during my prep time and I will be more than happy to talk with you then. Open house is not the proper time to start asking your child's teacher about your child.
On the other hand, the parents that do show up for open house are almost always the parents of the good kids. Imagine that. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to realize that the more involved you are in your child's education, the more successful your child will be.
Now that I've said that, I guess it's about time I meet my daughter's teacher isn't it?
Last night while I was posting my rampage about the secretary, I forgot to write about a student issue I wanted to put out there and get some feedback on.
There is this little girl in one of my classes who is a total butt kisser, but then she also causes the most amount of trouble. When we passed out the three week progress reports last week, I also gave the students a progress report for my class, so they could show their parents exactly why they are failing. For students with an "F", they needed to get it signed and return it to me.
So my little butt kisser completely avoided giving the progress report to her parents, then tells me she lost it when it was time for her to turn it in. My second step is to write a note home informing the parents of the low grade and attempt to get a signature that way. So I gave the note to this student, then went about my business in that class.
About 20 minutes later, another student approached me with pieces of paper that had been shredded and a larger pieced of notebook paper. The larger notebook paper said "Mrs. ******** is a BIG BITCH," and inside that folded up piece of paper were pieced of the note that I had written to her parents.
I fully realize that I'm being called a bitch. It's part of my job description (at least 25% of your students MUST call you names, it says it in my contract!!!), but I have never actually seen it on paper. It took me by surprise.
So what do I do?
I have been trying to save my week stories for the weekends and give my loyal (and bored) readers a novel. However, I feel like today warrants an entry all its own.
The governing body of my school is called the Instructional Leadership Council. There are quite a few teachers on the council, and the powers that be decided that the ILT needed to have a working retreat today. That meant that at least ten teachers were out for that reatreat. On top of that, we are all experiencing the back to school crud, so many teachers are out sick. We had a total of 22 teachers absent today. It blew my mind.
My day was ruined this morning. I got to the school and checked my box for anything important. Inside my box was a list of things that I needed to take care of within my team during our common prep today. Ok, no problem. My entire team was absent with the "crud" on Monday, which is why it didn't get done earlier. Thankfully, we were all here today, so I was in productive mode.
I decided to step into the office to make sure the principal's secretary had received the email my co teacher sent. My co-teacher was out with the crud and she had sent her lesson plans to the secretary via email.
I had very bad timing.
There was a pile of sub folders on the principal's desk, and a line of clueless subs in front of her desk. She was handwriting each teacher's schedule for each sub. This made me giggle because there isn't a teacher alive that doesn't have their schedule written down in their sub folder. The secretary is irritated with all the work she is doing, which was made me giggle ( you realize I'm giggling internally. NEVER laugh at the secretaries. EVER) even more. Needless to say, I should have just turned around and quietly slithered out of the front office, but I'm an idiot.
No really, I'm an idiot. Trust me.
I go to her desk and ask her if she got an email from Mel, my co teacher. She hadn't even turned on her computer, so no. Then as I was turning away, she had to ask me why Mel sent her an email. So, because I'm stupid, I tell her that Mel has bronchitis, and didn't go to work. Oh dear lord was that the wrong answer.
She tells me that she's going to need my team's help this morning with subs. Ok, no problem. Oh, nevermind, that's a big problem. I have a ton of stuff to get done and my deadline was two days ago. When I tell her that, her answer floored me.
I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. I don't care about what you have to get done, I need you guys to cover classes.
Excuse my language, but oh fuck!! I got my butt chewed out on Monday because my team was all out sick and we have assignments to complete. Then today my team is all there and we are having to sub for other teachers who are out at a meeting!!!???!!! I had no words to describe how I felt. I went back to my classroom and burst into tears. I don't get reduced to tears all that often, and when I do it's usually out of sheer frustration, which was the case today as well. My principal considers me a second rate human, so you can imagine what kind of teacher she thinks I am. I have been trying so friggin hard to convince her of my worth (but what's the use. I am a DAMN good teacher, and I know that already). Then crap like this happens, and even though I have no control over the situation as a whole, I am going to be the one held responsible for the "assignments" that didn't get completed.
On the plus side, I got all of it done, and we called a ton of parents this morning to discuss some behaviors we have been having. It was a productive morning, it just started badly.
Informing the Failures
In the middle of every nine week period, I am required to pass out deficiency notices. These get mailed home to let parents know that their child is in danger of failing my class (and usually many others as well). One little known secret about failing a child is that we are not able to put an "F" on a report card unless we have informed the parents ahead of time that there is a chance the kid could fail. So the deficiency report is our venue.
I send a deficiency notice to all kids that have less than a 75% at the time of the reports. I know, it seems harsh to give a kid with a "C" a note that says they could possibly fail my class, but it has happened more time that I want to remember. It is quite easy to go from a "C" to an "F" and then back again. So I cover my own butt by giving just about all the "C" and below students a failing notice. This usually sends them into fits of panic, but they get over it and we all go about our term with big grins on.
Oh, wait a second, no we don't.
We have to deal with parents. Even my students get embarassed by their parents' reactions to hearing their precious offspring isn't doing well. It makes me angry. They always start with "Why did you give my child an 'F'?" Ok, first off, I don't give your kid anying. He or she has earned that "F" by not turning in his/her assignments. All I do is plug numbers into a program that spits out the average.
For some reason, many of my parents blame me for their child's failing grade. One mother has gone so far as to accuse me of throwing her son's work away so he couldn't pass. I have a ridiculuous system to get past accusations like that. I actually check in work as the students turn it in, then I have the student intial in the grade book that he/she did indeed turn in the assignment. Then when I grade that assignment, I replace the initial with a grade. So if a paper is lost by me, then I know that the kid really did turn it in. It also places more of the responsibility of turning in assignments on the student, and less off of me.
Only once in six years have I lost a student's assignment. My baby was teething. She ate a whole pile of book reports. Haha, I thanked her for getting me out of hours of reading boring book reports. I haven't assigned a book report since then either.
So for the last week, and a few more to come, I am going to be bombarded with upset parents. It's at times like this I remind my older daughter to never argue with her teacher (even though I agree that she can be a bit mean and unreasonable). Your life will be much easier as a student if you learn how to kiss your teacher's butt.
Hahahahahahahaha.
Weekend Work
We have already discussed that a teacher's job never ends when that day ending bell rings. So I thought I would let you know exactly what I did with my weekend. If you don't want to know, skip my blog this time.
Ok, Friday night I had dinner and margaritas with a co-worker. We were at the restaurand for about 2 hours, and I got home at about 6:30pm Friday evening. When I got home, the responsible guy sitting on my shoulder forced me to sit down and work on grading. I decided to stop around midnight when my husband got home from work. So I put in about five and a half hours Monday night.
On Saturday morning I attended my daughter's first class at our new gym. We have had my youngest in gymnastics for almost two years, and she loves it. We were unhappy with the lack of pregression with the first school so we changed gyms. My husband and I had lunch after the class, then we went home. I took a nap (for which I have been feeling incredibly guilty) and started grading papers at around 4:30pm. I worked until midnight again, then stopped when hubby came home from work again.
What, that's 14 hours so far right?
Then Sunday rolls around. My husband and I went to watch my oldest daughter's cheerleading squad get their pictures taken at noon. We also visited Target to clean them out of two-pocket folders with fasteners. We visited the memorial that had been made for two local police officers who recently lost their lives to a "psychotic moron," as my students call the killer. We got home at right about 2:00pm, and after listening to my husband's radio for an hour, he went to work and I sat my butt down on the living room floor again to grade the rest of the papers, average grades for deficiency notices this week, and write lesson plans.
I started working at 3:00 on the nose, and right now it's 11:42. It has taken me about ten minutes to write this far, so I spent another 8 hours on my school work today.
That would be a total of 22 hours I have spend working at home this weekend.
So never believe that a teacher doesn't work enough. I feel like that's all I do.
Oh, I did the dishes, laundry, cleaned the living room and both of the toilets today too.
Time for bed, I'm pretty friggin tired.
I'm Drowning
This post has the potential to be the longest and most boring in my blog's history (which isn't saying much). This week has been the longest short week I have ever endured. EEK!!!
I'm not sure how many other schools go through the whole "20-day count" problem, but this year it is wreaking havoc on my school. I work in a very transient area of my city, and the parents think the way to get around the system is to continuously pull their children out of one school and put them into another. So, when the 20 day count rolls around, it's like a game to try to figure out where all the students are within the district.
Right now, we are down about 30 students, which is one teacher allocation. So we are looking at having to get rid of one of our teachers. THANKFULLY, admin can't simply pick and chose. They are required to get rid of the last hire within the district. So I'm not worried about my own job. What I do worry about, is whether or not whichever teacher we have to say goodbye to is going to cause that much more trouble on our already taxed classloads.
So, if we close the world a little bit more and focus in on myself, we can take a look at my current situation. I have about 125 students total, which isn't a bad classload. Unfortunately, they are all located in 4th period. Really.
Ok, not really. It sure does seem like it though. My school divides each grade level into two teams. Each team has a common prep period. I have been on the same team since I started at this school, despite having to change subjects in order to stay there. For the past four years my team has been the bastard step-child of my school. There are only two of us that remain on the team on a regular basis. The rest of the team has been in and out every year. We are required to do a lot of things throughout the school year, and they expect us to work together with our teams to do it. So changing teams every year can be stressful. We have to figure out how to work with an entirely different group of people. So every year, this colleague of mine, and I, have to introduce a new group of teachers to how we get things done in the 6th grade.
Now that you know how my school is divided. We need to have an understanding of the prep periods. We work on a block schedule. So every day there are four big classes and a reading class for 40 minutes. The kids have eight classes total, so we see our students every other day. Each teacher gets a prep period every day, but every other day they are required to meet with their teams. Does that make sense?
This year, I ended up on the little team. There are only five of us on our team. We have one Language Arts teacher, one Math teacher, one Science teacher, and one Social Studies teacher, along with one Special Education teacher. We have our prep period during 5th period, which is in the morning on "B" days.
The OTHER team has a whole lot more teachers. They have TWO Language Arts teachers, TWO math teachers, one Science teacher, one Social Studies teacher, an ESL teacher, the behavior academy director (also a social studies teacher), and two Special Education teachers. Their prep is during 4th period, which is at the end of the day on "A" days.
So go ahead, guess why my 4th period is so friggin huge! All of us tha have 6th graders during 4th period have these huge classes, and the other team has no big classes at all. My team has kids sitting on the floor during 4th period, but the other team has no classes over 25 students. My team, and the four of us that are on it, has 130 students, while the other team has 90.
Obviously, somebody seriously dropped the ball when it comes to the master schedule for this year.
Now, let us go ahead and combine the crappy master schedule and the 20-day count. We know we are losing a teacher, and the numbers tell us that no matter which teacher we lose, we are going to need to go ahead and take one of the electives teachers and make them teach 8th grade science. Which is fine, because right now there is only one 8th grade science teacher, and that poor man has close to 200 students. BUT (I know bro, never start a sentence with the word "but." I'm sorry), that still leaves us with a HUGE scheduling problem in 6th grade.
The vice principal said I should go ahead and take care of it, because quite honestely, he just doesn't have the time with all the OTHER responsibilities he has. Ok, no problem
I submit a slew of schedule changes, thinking that we are going to be working so much better once they get taken care of.
Then I talk to the other team, who decided that they didn't want any more kids on their team. They are doing just fine with the kids they have.
Back to the friggin drawing board.
Then there are the students themselves. I get so frustrated with the non-teaching side of my job, that I forget sometimes that my job is about teaching.
Every three weeks we send home progress reports. We require the students to get them signed by a parent and then they are to be returned to their reading teachers. I have been doing the progress reports for a very long time, so I expect that the week they go home will turn into a week where I will wish I had an earpiece for the phone in my classroom.
I was completely unprepared for the response I received this year. I actually have parents camped out outside my classroom door at the end of every class period. Parents that are unhappy with the grade their child is receiving. Ok, this isn't entirely bad. I like being able to actually meet parents.
BUT (sorry again bro), they don't believe that it is their child's fault that the grade THEIR CHILD received is a failing grade. OH NO!! It is MY fault. The teacher, who gets paid crap. These parents are under the impression that I am out to get their kids.
Why yes... muhahahahahahahahahahah. That is the reason we all take this job right? RIGHT??
HELL FRIGGIN NO!!!!!
However, parents listen only to their children. They don't listen to the teacher.
I have learned how to overcome that particular obsticle. It's called a student portfolio. The students are all required to keep a portfolio with all of their graded assignments, and a table of contents that lists ALL of the assignments they are supposed to have. So I get out the portfolio, show it to the mommy who thinks I am the devil's spawn, and wait. Only twice have I ever been argued with AFTER the portfolio.
UNTIL TODAY. Not a single parent I spoke with today was able to understand that their child was failing because he/she wasn't doing the assignments. Or, they were doing the assignments but they were not meeting the expectations of that assignment. I rarely assign work for fun. All of my assignments are somehow aligned with our state standards, so they are all important. They prove that this child is indeed meeting the requirements in order to pass my class, or they prove that this child needs to try it again.
So I had parents today who insisted that I was out to get their kid, or that I was unwilling to allow their child to succeed.
Oh please.
Somebody please help me to remember why I do this job. I have horrible pain in my right wrist today from grading papers for the past 5 hours, I have a headache induced my 11-year olds, my house is overrun by, um, materials for my classroom, and I have to NOT go to my daughter's game tomorrow in order to get done what I need to get done for my class next week. I spend so much time on my job, that I don't have any time left for my life.
And, I have no idea what my husband looks like anymore.
The Long Weekend
This is the first extended weekend of the school year. My oldest daughter thinks this is the best day all year, but it's early and we haven't had our Winter Break yet. She still looks at these three day weekends with awe, which I find endearing. She isn't tainted yet. However, this year is going to be a major test to her love of school, because her teacher is probably the meanest lady I have ever met. Lucky her.
Yesterday I spent a good six hours trying to get my papers graded. It is pretty difficult to be dedicated to getting papers graded when it's Sunday afternoon and the weather is beautiful, and you don't have a ton of people breathing down your neck to get stuff accomplished. I got half of the assignments graded. I figured I would have time to do it on Labor Day, seeing as how I wasn't required to be at work.
Unfortunately, I failed to remember that next week is week 4 of my school year, and I have to pass out progress reports. My middle school gives the students 3-week progress reports so that they are always aware of their progress in each class. So not only do all of the assignments need to be graded, but I also need to average the grade for each student. That is much more of a daunting task for me, so now I am going to be spending most of my day off being the teacher. I feel bad for my daughters.
My city has now turned into another refugee camp for those who used to be residents of New Orleans. They came yesterday, and will continue to come until we run out of room. I believe that my city is a little known secret within the United States. It's big enough to be called a city, yet it's small enough that we can't justify a light rail system. We have one of the biggest school districts in the country, yet there are cities in the US that educate three and four times more children than we do within this dristict. We are very culturally diverse, yet most of us get along as if there were no differences among us. The clincher for me, however, is the complete lack of natural disasters.
We do not have water, so there will be no floods. We are not on the coast so there will be no hurricanes. Due to our mountains on either side of our beautiful valley, we don't have tornadoes. We have frequent geological movement, so an earthquake is unlikely. I have always felt very safe here, and even more so after the tradegy that struck the gulf coast this week.
I fear that my city may have a bit of a population boom after this.
However, we look forward to the boom. We like people.
My husband and I have decided that once cities like Biloxi and New Orleans get back on their feet, we shall vacation there. They need our money, more than just about anywhere else does.
I've Surrounded Myself With Children
I realized today that the majority of my life is completely dedicated to children. I spend all day with them at work, then I go home and spend the rest of my life with them at home. I spend my evenings at cheerleading practice (a hazard of having a houseful of little girls), and my weekends are spent rooting for a football team for which my children will only cheer, never play.
I get free time in the shower, and that's about it.
However, due to my incredibly sordid past, my kids are gone this weekend, and I'm all alone.
Haha, and you have no idea what I'm talking about, but that's ok.
Today at school my 3rd period class decided they wanted to have a discussion about the weather, and why this hurricane was so devastating. As a teacher, I need to be able to present the facts, so that's what I did. My wonderful students put the humanity into the story and left me in tears. I can't even begin to explain what happened in my classroom today, but it restored my faith in my job. My students took horrible weather, gave it a heart, poured a soul into it, then painted it a face. It was amazing.
I was sad to watch that class leave today, but leave they did and my regular routing came back (including the hellish 4th period). I survived it, finally got to pee at the end of the day, then got to go home.
At home, and I am going to complain at MSNBC for this later, I sat and watched the horrific visions of New Orleans. Of course I did. Didn't you? MSNBC, because it is such an OUTSTANDING (insert sarcasm here) news organization, interviewed children today.
Oh hell. Seriously. I'm I am in hell.
I sat on the couch and cried for over an hour watching these kids. As a human who is completely surrounded by kids, I have an empathy for children matched by maybe Mother Theresa. When another child hurts, I can feel it. All those kids who lost their parents in the tsunami, cried directly into my heart. I wanted to go bring them all home with me. I can take care of them.
No, I really can't.
I would like to be able to though.
This little boy on MSNBC was giving his very frank point of view, and I wanted to go give him a hug. I wanted to bring him a Big Mac. OH, and I wanted to give him a bath.
I hate it when kids are hurting. They shouldn't have to hurt. It's not fair to them. They haven't lived long enough to accrue Karma. Why do they have to deal with this?
I apoligize for yet another Katrina post. I kept thinking I was going to hold off on posting until this has passed, but that's not really fair either. I am a teacher. It is my job to educate. There are millions of displaced people, and thousands of them need education. That is what I do.
If there is anyone who knows how little old public servant me can give a hand (aside from giving more money. I have to go get my little girl a Bratz dollhouse, she made me so friggin proud when she gave her money *$120* to the red cross. She had been saving for a while.), please let me know. What else can I give?
Air Conditioner? Please?
All of us that work for my school district received a letter stating that all of the schools in our district were starting school with working air conditioners. We were thrilled to death because in the four years I have been in that school I have never had a working air conditioner at the beginning of the school year. This year my a/c worked, but it was pouring out very humid air. It made my posters curl up, and it has destroyed all of the lamination on the documents in my room.
However, I was the only one in the sixth grade hallway with a working air conditioner. So I was pretty closed to getting lynched. I was afraid that the entire sixth grade was going to start bringing their students into my classroom because the heat everywhere else was impossible to handle when there are 30 teenagers in the classroom!
One of the other teachers called one of the news channels. They did a pretty big story on my school and how difficult it is to teach when it's 90 degrees in the classroom.
The principal at my school took that very personally, and hired an independent contractor to come in and fixed the air conditioners at my school. She did get angry with all of us. Apparently we aren't supposed to complain about the heat in our rooms.
Funny thing, the air in the main office has been working fine.
Ok, so these strange people (who smell like cigarettes, and it's driving me crazy!!!) have been in and out of my classroom all week. They keep coming in, staring at the ceiling, and then walking out. Really, it's pretty funny.
Today I had to give a pretest for an SQS project that the science department at my school is doing. It has 100 questions and most of my students are going to freak out just looking at the number of questions. They are all multiple choice, and the questions are general knowledge, which they should know anyway.
Today, however, the stress was greater because there were a bunch of men in there staring at the ceiling. Not only did they stare at the ceiling, but they also decided they needed to vacuum out my ducts ( I hate the word "duct"). It was pretty loud. My poor students. It's 800 degrees in my classroom (ok, not really 800, but it feels like it!!), they are taking a very intimidating test, and some random men are vacuuming (LOUDLY) in the ceiling.
Sigh. What does a public school teacher do?
Deal with it.
Hey, this afternoon when I left, it was nice and cool.
But......the edges of my papers were curling up again.
Wish in one hand, shit in the other.
