Hedgetoad Teaching

Not for summer. Our state legislature has no clear budget plan. Apparently, they are confused by Bill Gates recent epiphany that taxes might have to be raised and that unions aren’t the big stumbling block to financial solvency.  (not shockingly he mentions disappointment in school not embracing technology more… personally, I’m glad our school keeps toilet paper in the stalls, but perhaps Bill has ascended the more banal bodily functions.) Will they cut levy equalization funds? The Arts? Will there be any sports left? Textbooks? So we’re all waiting for April to end and find out if we have a job or not. Hundreds of thousands around the country are doing the same.Will I be able to sell my house if I have to move? How many long term teachers will be walking away from their mortgages as they have search farther afield for work? How many will leave the profession and find something new?

Just to prove that we were actually working on a national holiday - that white spot at the top is the pile of essays we were grading. It is interesting that the normal business world can conduct business meetings on the golf course or at a bar, but teachers can't be trusted to hold a meeting in a coffee shop, because they might actually talk about something off topic if there isn't an administrator breathing down their necks. Yes, we drank non-alcoholic beverages and consumed pasteries. All, while discussing essay rubrics and determining how much crappy handwriting should/may affect the grading procedure. My personal feeling is that we do no favors to our students in accepting papers that look like they were written by a kindergartner, especially since most aspire to jobs that still use hand written job applications. That, however, is a point for another day.

As strange as it is to have a Thursday off, I hope everyone is recharging and coming up with new ideas to inspire and motivate. I will be meeting with my department members to grade HSPE type essays for the grade wide assessment. Given the additional duties we all have, it’s the only time we could come up with to meet to get it done. We are, however, meeting at a local coffee shop rather than the school building… comfy chairs and bagels. Should actually be pretty fun. And now you know how truly geeky English teachers are!

Tomorrow is our first mandatory day back. Starting at 7am for breakfast – I’m sure it will be refrigerator bagels and Folgers coffee. Sadly, even if there were someone in the region who knew how to make an actual bagel, it would be rejected in favor of those lounging in a plastic bag on a grocery shelf with a sell-by date. Despite the cornucopia of fresh foods available, this area is where foodies go to loose a few pounds. But I digress. I somehow found myself volunteering to help present information about RTI to the district. I’m sure my thinking was something along the lines of… I won’t have to listen to endless presentations about things I already know about. Now, however, I’m thinking, Crap! I’ve given up hours of planning and prep I could be doing while pretending to pay attention. Why do these welcome back days have to be so boring? Besides the obvious fact that while teachers are continually lambasted for lecturing to students for more than 15 minutes, teachers will be lect...

In reading across blogland, it seems that spring is truly on it's way. Students are getting restless, the countdown to testing has started and some flowers may have been spotted around the corner. My school mailbox contained the annual "tell us what you're planning on doing next year" form... which means that RIF notices will soon be coming too. Since I'm still (!!!) at the bottom of the seniority list, it's my annual time to stress out about it and seek constant reassurance that "it won't be [you]". Although this year, I may feel a twinge of dissapointment about that one. Weird thing just keep happening, weird-scary things, and everyone is walking on eggshells. Or a little bit closer to running around campus screaming at the top of their lungs. Either one is equally probable. A "friend" told me about a job opening in another district for the coming year. It would be a very different job, but with the possibility of a much lighter wor...

Tomorrow we leave the land of snow to return home and reality. Tuesday should bring an exciting post about the perils of grading sophomore assignments and recreating my poetry unit. Will there be performance poetry? And if I include it, will I actually be able to get students to recite something in front of other people? If you do this, how do you motivate students to participate?

On Friday, the district released the seniority list. For a small district, it’s not much of a document so we all get to see everyone’s information. See Me After Class has a resource post about retention in urban schools. We all know it’s not good. Teachers leave in droves every year, taking what little training they had and all of their enthusiasm with them. And then there is my school. After 6 years of teaching in the same district I am in the exact same place I was four years go. After I completed my provisional contract. As an added bonus, when the newest teacher in my school completes her provisional contract (should she actually do that – there are already rumors of lay-offs. A story for another day.), I will be below her. Seniority sucks sometimes. What is the difference between the schools? Ok, we have relatively easy access to a copy machine and toilet paper/bathroom, but having taught in a NYC middle school there isn’t that much difference. The students are students in genera...

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, disco...

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, si...

Last year was a tough year for me. I had a lot going on in my personal life, working on Take One! and the new RtI stuff (which took me out of the classroom more than I liked). I also had a class with a horrible mix of students. All of these things combined in a way to that made me really not want to be teaching or spend any time outside of school thinking about/working school. We all know that teaching isn't a job that can be done during school hours. I wasn't being a good teacher... at least in my mind. This year, my goal is to change that. I've really reworked several things in my sophomore curriculum and added a lot of preparation work into the early months of the year. I'm not sure how well it will go over, as our class configurations changed. Our school no longer has separate "honors" and "regular" english courses for the sophomores. There will be a much greater mix of skill level in the room. My AP courses will continue on, but the summer assig...