Man, I Need a Regular Blog Schedule
Most everyday I have something to Blog about...but then I get home, and I visit with my children, and I visit with my wife, and I visit and feed my goats and the rest of the menagerie, then it's time to eat, then it's time go to bed...then a new day, with new Blog worthy material. So, no more visiting with the children...just kidding
Ok, here's what I remember from this past week...
Most of the time, when you have to write up a discipline referral for a student's misbehavior, it's typically nothing exciting...general class disruption, talking to much, yada yada...but sometimes, you have a gem. A student in my class got written up for "simulating masturbation". Someone asked if he was distracting the class...HE WAS DISTRACTING ME!!! It's very disturbing to look up and see a student pretending that he's going on a field trip with his special little friend. Of course, it wasn't of a sexual nature...it's the same thing that people do when they're signing "jerk off". Course, I had to explain too often what I meant by "simulate". Oddly enough...it happened twice...different students. Apparently, I'm an exciting English teacher.
And yes, drama continues...Big Kahuna will be out most of this coming week for some conference and he put another teacher in charge as his "substitute". Now, she has an administrative degree...but now the theory is she's being groomed to take over. Uhhh...I haven't taught that long, but I know enough to realize it doesn't work that way.
Oh, and the Big Kahuna is tossing write-ups. So the theories go. So I said, "Ask him about it."
"What?"
"Just take the write-up and ask him if it got filed."
See, the students are getting consequences, but the theory is that he's not having them put in the students' files, which is significant since the students can only have a certain amount of write-ups. But Teacher X in question can't ask him because, "I'm getting the brush off."
...
Yeah, because he's busy, he's brushing you off. He's even invited this teacher to see him if there was a problem, but because when this teacher went, he wasn't readily available, he's brushing Teacher X off.
On an unrelated topic, we had to call DSS on behalf of a student. It was a bad situation...no power, no water, the father abusing the animals. Our SRO believed the mom was on meth. The student is living with other relatives, and hopefully will stay there.
Well, those are the highlights...oh, except one I almost forgot...I got things moving in the direction of getting help for a student who is proving to be very low. The student almost never completes work on time, and even when I give the opportunity to finish it at home, the work comes back completed, but clearly showing a lack of understanding for what a question asks. I saw the student's standardized test scores and they were low low. I've never seen them this low...not that I remember. And the student has gotten into 7th grade without someone seeing about a learning disability. And this kind of things happens every year. I get a 6th, 7th, 8th grade student who needs help...and no one has done anything. Unbelievable.
Ok, so those are the highlights. I'll try and get on more regularly...but I always say that...*sigh*
posted by Bodog @ 5:52 PM
2 Comments:
See? Now, I've been listening to my other teacher friends - the ones who have jobs in high schools - telling me nearly endless stories about the B.S. they're putting up with at the (often incompetant) hands of their administrators. Everyone keeps talking about an education crisis? I think that crisis is in the Ed. Admin. departments at our colleges and universities.
Example: the other day, I'm on the phone with Bowyer. You may or may not recall, from an outraged post on teacherseducation at the end of the last school year, that Bowyer was running up against some seriously unethical stuff concerning the failure rate of his students. "Too high," he was told, "figure out a way to bring it down." All the while, he's arguing that he's teaching to the state standards, that his kids are failing NOT because they aren't intelligent enough to do the work, but rather because they're chosing not to do the work - or to not show up at all.
That seems to have settled down a bit - at least for the moment (progress reports don't come out for another two weeks or so - we'll see if the issue gets resurrected). NOW Bowyer's issue is his duty. He's out trolling the parking lots, checking to see that kids don't leave the campus when they're not supposed to. He's busted a TON of bolters - more than a few of them more than once - and the administrator in charge of that offence told him "Okay, you're done. You've reached your quota."
EXCUSE ME?! There is no QUOTA! If a kid is leaving campus (and none of them should be), they need to be called out on it. Bowyer is allowing for the outside possibility that the comment may have been made in jest, but either way he's pissed about it.
Kind of makes me glad I DIDN'T find work in a high school, you know? I'm betting college teaching is slightly less dramatic, though I could be dead wrong about that. We shall see.
Sorry - I've practically written a whole post in your comments. I'll shut up now...
Talk to me about all this school shooting stuff....
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