A Bad Teacher

Did you ever have one of those days when you just felt like you were possibly the worst teacher ever? Your students have no respect for you, they’ve learned nothing and, in fact, everything you are doing is setting them back… possibly to elementary school days. Plus you suck.

I have this never ending conscience battle with my AP seniors. There is a class they are all required to take. In this class, the teacher assigns an extensive research paper. The teacher chooses the topic theme, tells them the due date and never speaks of it again. Until, you know, the due date.  The first year I taught AP seniors, I asked this teacher if I was supposed to do anything about this research paper. I was told “no, you don’t have to do anything, unless you want to”. This year the core senior English teacher spent nearly a month dragging those students through the process of writing the paper. He gave me all of his handouts (thank you!), and I gave my students two weeks to do their research. Apparently, they did enough research to complete the required works cited page and then  nothing else.  Today I had a full scale mutiny on my hands… I didn’t give them time to write anything! I’m making them write papers for my class (during class time, mind you… not as homework), and they all forgot the conversation we had last week about turning in a rough draft on the 15th.

After the arguing, I gave up. I said fine, toss everything I gave you out. We’ll just work on the papers for the rest of the semester. Then I sat down and said basically nothing for the rest of the period. One of my finer moments. And most of the students concluded that it meant they were free to hold conversations about a new student who just moved to the district.

I dunno what to do. I’m feel like I’m failing as a teacher and can’t figure out how to make it better. Maybe this weekend I’ll get some time to figure out something new. Maybe it’s just the winter blues.

PS. I have yet to figure out how the student who wanted to teach junior high is now teaching seniors. I wonder if I can convince someone else in my department to take over the class next year.  Seriously.

Mythbusting

Today, while reading To Kill A Mockingbird, we came upon a reference to “going off on a snipe hunt.” Apparently, snipe hunts aren’t all that popular any more… not one of the students knew what a snipe was or why someone would hunt for one.

In my most serious tone of voice I told them all that snipes are worth a lot of money, being rare and all. To catch one, the person has to wait until a dark night – no moon – and go out into the woods carrying a paper bag and stick. Find the biggest tree, stand underneath and open the bag. Then take the stick and hit the bag several times. The noise should scare the crap out of bird causing it to fall out of the tree and into the bag. Guess how many students asked me if snipes lived in the area?

After making sure they knew I was kidding, I told them the truth about cow tipping. For a rural area, they are pretty gullible.

One of those days…

Just give me the snack and the squeaky toy goes free.

How to End a Really Sucky Day?

After all my angst about who would actually show up for conferences, I only made it to one session before I collapsed into a fever crazed sick person. There was supposed to be a sign up sheet to leave phone numbers, but either few could be bothered or, as one parent claimed, the paper was hidden somewhere that only special parents could find. I do have about 15 to call next week.

In the meantime, I’m still trying to recover from said illness. And get caught up on grading. Usually, I get tons done during conferences since I’m forced to sit in the cafeteria for hours with little entertainment. I had it planned… and, it didn’t work out. Instead, it was a marathon session today.

So what made the day suck? It should have been great. Only one class, tons of time to get stuff done, get qualified for my energy rebate without having to take time off, maybe even grocery shop… well, I did get one class all caught up with grading and will be getting my rebate check.

But! am apparently broke, discovered that out of 45 students, only 15 did the project assignment that was due today… and only two were from the class I actually saw, forcing me to give the annual “if you sit around watching life go by, all your going to get is a view of other people getting a life” speech. (as a side note, I think it’s getting better… there were no rolling eyes this year. Then again, this isn’t a class with much of a backbone).

After school, I was really too wiped out (speechifying is tiring!) to shop, so I didn’t get that done. Or pay the garbage bill or deposit a check, hence the bounced check fee… and the dog bit the two year old. So, I’ll spending the weekend finding her a new home (the dog, not the two year old)… which sucks, but I’ve tried everything and the dog is just not accepting them and yet, freaks if not with me.

I should have bought some calgon.

Relaxing Weekend Upcoming

Calgon*, Take Me Away

Major fundraising activity for the fall is over. We raised a bit of money, but not as much as previous years. It was a combination of poor attendance, a limited number of donations and poor student involvement. I’m not sure how to fix it, other than becoming the stressed out freak who verbally attacks students in the hallway about the status of their donation hunt. And let’s be honest, they just lie to me anyways.

Conferences are coming up next week. I’m wondering if “itchy butt”’s parental unit will appear. Finally succumbed to school-wide tradition of offering extra credit to those whose parent/concerned adult makes an appearance. My personal belief is that it won’t make a big difference. The fact that our core english classes are now mixed ability may have an impact on the numbers I actually see, but those parents would have come anyways.

I’m making Thanksgiving dinner for my brother and the kids. The exciting part is that I get to make the stuffing, which means oyster stuffing. Sure it’s a lot of work to cook, but the cook gets to choose the menu. None of that crappy cornbread stuffing or “it’s not sanitary to cook it in the bird” freakiness. It’s been cooking in the bird since they invented bread, it’s not that big of deal. Those are also the people who think butter substitute tastes just as good as the real thing. Anyhoo… back to my point, I get to cook the food, so I get to decide what to make. It’ll be yummy.

The not-so-exciting point is that I have to cook while caring for two small children who cannot stand to be out of the kitchen if I’m in it. I have a kitchen that opens up to the living room, but they MUST be standing next to me or at least pulling crap out of the drawers next me, while I’m cooking. I have constant nightmares about what could happen. Also, for those thinking of buying the kids presents – get a stack of plastic containers and some socks. Real toys are a total waste of money.

I think I may be out of personal days. I’m kinda stunned by this. It’s only November for pete’s sake. What am I going to do come March?

October with no holidays really sucks. It’s been a long six weeks!

*I’ve never actually used Calgon. I may try it after the kids are in college.

No Rest for the Wicked

While most people had the day off today, I did not. Instead my department gather in the early morning to grade and evaluate essays written by the sophomore students. It was a wide array of levels of writing, mostly caused by how the assignment was present.

• In one of my classes, I simply instructed the students to do their best. In another I instructed them to do their best and explained that “multiple-paragraph means at least 5 paragraphs while using elaboration”
• Another teacher instructed the students to “get out five sheets of paper” and told them to do a pre-write, rough draft and final.
• The third teacher did a pre-write with students the day before and has posted a sample outline on his white board while students wrote.

Tomorrow, I’ll be finishing a spreadsheet to really look at how the students did. I didn’t grade my own students ‘ papers – it makes the grading a more objective and hopefully more like WASL grading. For example, the grader will not know that student B is on an IEP for various things, but according the NCLB is still supposed to be on grade level… perhaps having fresh eyes looking at the student’s writing will help us get him to that point.

In the meantime, we did work on coming up with a plan of attack on class-wide deficits we identified. We will be doing a grade level assessment at the end of the semester to see if it’s working. It’s all very RtI of us.

Little posting, long days

Every time I start this post, it sounds like I’m leaving blogging… which I’m not. I like writing too much and need to have that random shout out to the world, even if no one is actually listening. You know that old question, if a tree falls in the forest, but no is around, does it really make a sound? My answer would be, who cares… the tree still fell and that is all it cared about.

When I first started this blog many, many years ago it was primarily a place for me to put down thoughts. I didn’t really have a focus and there weren’t that many “blogs” out there… actually, when I first started, there weren’t even “blogs”, but those writings are long gone. (yes, if what is write is lame enough, it will get dumped from the internet… it’s only the stuff you don’t want saved that is never erased). Then it became the in thing to be all nichey and I jumped on the bandwagon. I’m teacher, so this should be a teaching blog.

At this point in my life, however, I’m really too tired from teaching to really want to talk about it at the end of the day. And what do I write about? Every one is suffering from budget cuts and at least I have regular access to a copy machine. At times the administration is crazy and stupid, but it could be so much worse… there is no angst. Or at least, how many posts can I write about how far behind I am with grading? I could write about our technology issues, but they main stem from the hiring of technology people who learned from a book and since I did too, who am I to cast stones?

On Saturday I had a marathon class for my professional certification. I really was not into it. After sitting for a couple of hours, my back just couldn’t take it any more (another sign of my impending elderly-ness). I started walking around the building and found myself looking longingly at the empty cubes in various office areas. I really started missing having an office job… one that doesn’t require me to take home hours of work every night or fight for every resource. A job where I’m treated like an adult with a brain, instead of the village idiot draining the public coffers. (Case in point, I’m not allowed to have an access to print out test result reports for our school-wide bench-mark tests because “I might click something wrong and loose information.” For real!) Or child abuser because after a particularly trying day I laid my head on my desk and muttered “I’m going to kill him.” or after a particularly good day, said “way to go” and punched a kid lightly in the arm.

Have I hit the wall?

Long Weekend

It was a busy weekend, as usual… but this coming week will be even busier. Two of our local high schools have a major fundraising competition for the area food banks. It’s a huge deal. Mind blowingly huge. The kind of huge that really should be on the Oprah show. In honor of this fundraiser, I’ll be singing tomorrow night not once, but twice. For the record, I can’t sing. I do, however, love to sing and signing in front of an audience where people will applaud no matter how bad – oh yeah, nothing better.

I’ll be part of team singing Mahnahnahnah and doing red hooded sweatshirt solo.

I am really excited about it. Really. If only I wasn’t so tired… and had so much still on my to do list. Plus, this Wednesday I’m the advisor for another event and even though Wednesday is officially a holiday… I’ll be at work bright eye’d and bushy-tailed at 8 am. Maybe I’m just to tired from today.

Current To-Do List

• Find someone to remove moss from roof
• pay bills
• figure out if this is water bill month or garbage bill month and pay
• pick up mail from post office
• weigh in for biggest looser at work; try not to cry
• finish cleaning the living room
• vacuum
• sweep
• train the dog not to growl at the kids or stay in another room without going crazy
• clean kitchen
• finish the laundry, wash new clothes
• sleep
• hang shelves
• make cookies for Wed. benefit
• find pink hair spray
• wash red hooded sweatshirt?
• get milk

Ok, maybe I need to prioritize a bit, but still it’s all gotta get done.

Decisions

We're all in a state of flux... I think it's the nature of an educational professional to constantly evalutate, adjust and change. Sure, lots of ideas get recycled; tweeked and presented as new, but it is in our nature. Problems arise when things change for reasons that are not thought out or focused so tightly that the change causes more problems in keeping that focus.

This summer our district chose to change it's online presence. The reason for this was because the old system could not be searched for on a search engine. Yes, this change had to be made because no one could "go*gle" us. Sadly, no one in our tech department (that one guy) made the connection in how google ranks it's links... and why "googling" kept bring up numerous links to G*&eatSchools.

Two years ago, the old system was installed because it was very compatible with our electronic gradebooks, making it easy to put grades online. Guess what the new system does not do? And so, six weeks into the year, we will be told tomorrow that all the assignments in the electronic gradebook will have to move to a new electronic gradebook. Because it's more important to be able to be searched. Did I mention that the URL for our school website is townname.com?

I'm going back to paper. If I have time move it within the next six weeks, maybe I will. Otherwise screw it.