Halloween
Halloween is one of those days that we middle school teachers hate. We know the kids love it, but at the same time they wreak havoc all day and it's a totally wasted educational time. They say we are supposed to be teaching them every moment they are in school, yet days like today complete prevent teaching. The first class of the day wasn't bad. I didn't expect much from them, and we didn't get much done, so all was good. Then second period rolled around, and although my agenda for the day was sparse, we were unable to complete it. I had a hard time keeping all 19 kids in that class seated the entire time. It was horrible. We had a "super lunch" where all the students get both lunches and it's a big carnival. They were looking forward to it so much that it prevented them from copying five things from the overhead. It was embarrassing. By the time the bell rang to end that class they were hanging out the door behaving as though I was torturing them. I almost wish I had taken pictures.
The carnival lasted for an hour and a half. Groups of teachers had set up game booths and offered prizes. My group did a bobbing for apples booth, and I was surprised to see the amount of interest. These adolescent girls who spent hours on their hair were gleefully dancing their heads in freezing water in an attempt to catch an apple. It was so much fun to watch. I was sad when we ran out of apples.
Then we had to survive the remainder of the day with a bunch of students who were no longer interested in being at the school, but had no escape. The icing on the cake was when my 3-year old daughter decided to take a nap at the tail end of my prep period, and right before my biggest and most rowdy class. I had been trying to get my daughter to lay down all through my prep and she was totally uninterested, then she up and decided she was tired and she wanted to relax. She set up her blanket and pillow, and promptly crashed out. So I had to threaten painful torture to my students to make sure she got a bit of a nap in. She slept for about 45 minutes, then woke up all chipper and ready for more action. It was great. I thanked my fourth period so much for being so quiet and well behaved. As soon as those words were out of my mouth they turned into a pack of wild animals.
I count my blessings wherever I can find them.
We have had such huge and eventful days, that the UNEVENTFUL days have become significant to me. It's embarassing. I had a day go by the other day with no behaviors that required a student being removed from my classroom, no fire or evacuation drills, no assemblies, no meetings, and all the students completed the task for that day. I got done at the end of the day with my sanity intact and I wanted to cry. All of a suddent a "normal" day freaks me out.
My students are into the evolution unit. Last year I didn't teach evolution. I totally skipped it. I think it just didn't fit right into my year schedule. This year, however, the science department decided that Evolution was a concept that students needed to have, so teach it I am. They are getting it to a certain degree. They understand that at some point in the Earth's history, there were no people. That we, as a species, evolved from an already existing species. Except, they can't tell you that. They get the concept, they just can't figure out how to spit it back out in words that make more sense to them. So we are working on the skill of summarizing. Somewhere along the way, they never learned how to summarize the texts they read. They can summarize stories, no problem. However, when it comes to content area text, they have a lot of trouble. So that's what we have been focusing on.
The days keep going by and I swear I have no idea what day of the week it is or what month it is anymore. They just run into each other to the point where they are all the same. I feel like I'm a robot, just there to accomplish a task.
Oh wait, that's what I do.
We are now into the second quarter. I began my unit on (drum roll please) Evolution. It's a concept the students understand far more than classification. I don't understand why. Students classify everything on a daily basis, yet they can't understand the concept of classification. What was even more frustrating is that we have to apply the information we learned in the classification unit to the evolution unit. So where do I go with that? I have to almost retake classification in order to teach evolution. Thankfully, evolution is interesting to them. They get a kick out of knowing their ancestors were more closely related to monkeys than any other creature. When we talk about that, we always elicit tons of giggles. They then feel like we had sex with monkeys. Ew.
I got rid of a student this week. Her mother has been up my butt about any types of punishments that I dole out to her child. So I gave that kid away. I wasn't allowed to punish her, yet her little &%$# was always doing something wrong. This past week I finally asked the mother what type of punishment should be allowable and she said none, that my rules were "stupid." Oh, well that's just great. That child is well on the path to becoming a member of the local prison system. If only that kid's mother could see the damage she was causing.
Everything else has been quiet. My ceiling is still leaky and every storm creates a new hole. I have a child who had to be removed from the school because the mold was causing severe allergy trouble. How sad. They came and replaced my ceiling tiles, but then it rains and gives me new holes. The insulation that lays on top of the tiles is black with mold, and the tiles themselves get moldy within a week of being put in. It's disgusting, and it saddens me that children in the 21st century living in America can't even have a school that doesn't leak when it rains. Oh, but the front office got brand new furniture and a fresh pain job this week. How nice for them.
We are gearing up for our Halloween party. Halloween is always hectic and a totally wasted educational day for us. But, it's fun. So we have the big party, get dressed up, and pray to the no fight gods that we will have a good day.
The Full Week
This is the first week of the second nine weeks. Unfortunately, this is one of the weeks where I have to be there for 5 full days. Sad isn't it? I'm so used to inservices, and holidays, that this week I have to be there for five years and it's freaking me out. Haha. That's a joke.
So yesterday I had a student who was very out of dress code. We have a very strict dress code at the school where I work. So when this little boy came out of dress code, I immediately called his mom. She got upset that I "interrupted my instructional time" to bother her about her son's clothing. She said she would make a note of the dress code and she wouldn't send him in his out of dress code shirt again. Which sounded great, but unfortunately, we don't allow the students to stay at school if they are out of dress code.
I informed his mother that she either had to come bring him a dress code shirt, or she had to pick him up and take him home. She told me she didn't have the time. Sigh. At that point we have to call family services to come pick up the child, which then puts that family in the system for neglecting to follow the school's regulations. She, of course, thought that was insane and feels like our dress code is a total waste of time and she was tired of it. She would no longer adhere to the dress code.
I'm just a lowly teacher. I have no control over the dress code. So I then tell her that if she is unable to bring a change of clothing for her child, she would be hearing from the principal, and I promptly got off the phone. I called the boss lady and let her know what was coming, then went about my day. Haha, mine turned out to be a bit better than the principal's day.
The mother of this non-dress-code-child showed up at the school. She ripped into the principal tell him how responsible the school is because we are making the dress code a priority over education. She called the principal a (caution, this may offend) "bitch" more than once, then took her child home.
This is the woman who felt that it was more important for her child to stay at school all day in leiu of taking him home or even bringing him a new shirt. Keep in mind she said she didn't have the time to bring him a change of clothes. She had to go to work. However, she had enough time to come in, chew out the principal, and take her child out of the school. Had she simply not allowed her child to come out of dress code in the first place, none of this would have happened. So what do we do now? sigh.
It's raining again. Before I left today, my ceiling was already leaking. I'm frightened for tomorrow.
Ahhhhhh
The end of the first quarter is tomorrow! Woohoo!!! One down, three to go! Haha, how sad is that??? I'm all ready for the end of the school year already and it barely started. Funny, we've been in school for nine weeks and I still have students that are unable to put their names on their papers. I have a TON of failures and the parents are all mad at me, yet their children can't seem to figure out that when they take work home to finish, they kinda need to BRING IT BACK!!! That's become an issue.
So I am going to spend this weekend grading portfolios and trying to figure out how to salvage grades. I can't have over half of my students failing, so I have to figure where I am going wrong. I am going to be required to do a "standards based progress report" this year, and I have no doubts that the parents are going to find it meaningless. I found it meaningless, and it's going to add about an hour extra per student. Gee, that sound like fun seeing as how I have 120 students.
I am starting my unit on evolution next week, and I am not looking forward to it. I had such a hard time with classification that I'm afraid to get into any more difficult material. Evolution is against what most of my students believe in, so I know I am going to hit some resistance. I'm afraid of my evolution unit. SO, if anybody has any advice or helpful hints, I would sincerely appreciate them. I feel like I'm playing on the wrong side of the playground.
With that said, I am going to indulge in my guilty pleasure (The O.C.) and enter grades into the computer (thank the lord for Gradequick!). Have a great night!!
Nearing the end of the 1st quarter
I'm in a state of shock because it went by so quickly. I received the folder that has all the bubble sheets for me to fill out, and I almost fell over. Is it really time to turn in grades for the first nine weeks already? Wow! On top of that, I received a memo stating that I needed to turn in a copy of my first nine weeks final exam, which I didn't know I was required to do. I scrambled to put a final together and get it turned in. Phew. I have everything done. I'm giving my final on Thursday and Friday of this week and turning in my scores to the boss lady on Friday afternoon.
I have had no more rain on the floor of my classroom. When the roofers came in they must have patched the roof well because it has been raining for days here. That is yet another worry that I was happy to get rid of this week. I watched the rain come down all weekend and all I could think about was the amount of damage in my classroom. Woohoo!
I finished a unit on classification of living things last week and gave a unit exam. I had no idea that classification was such a difficult concept, but it sure is for 6th graders. I even allowed my students to use their notes on their tests and I still had a ton of failing grades. I had more students fail than pass, which is embarassing to me. Does that mean that I really didn't teach the material well, or did they just no care enough to go through the information better while they were taking the test? When I analyzed the scores, there wasn't one question that seemed to cause more trouble than others. The one question that they missed the most asked them to decide which kingdom of living things humans belong to. Apparently they are under the impression we are Protists. Frightening.
We're going full steam ahead here, despite some of the unhappy situations we have had to deal with. There is some serious angst among the teachers, and we are received with anger when we discuss it with the principal. It's a personal issue with her, and she gets mad. So we shut our mouths and go away to deal with the little stuff in our classrooms. I have tried to pull myself out of the goings on of the school. It isn't worth it to me to know what is going on. I just want to teach. I'm counting down to Christmas already.
Take a deep breath.....
I have avoided my blog. I know it's only been about a week since I've been here, but I was, and still am, so angry about my classroom that I just didn't know what to say. A week later there have been no improvements. They cleaned up my floor and they took away all the items that had been destroyed, but the ceiling keeps falling apart and the mold patches are getting wider. I can't do any more than I have already done. It's in somebody else's hands.
