Bluebird's Classroom

Didn't Like You Then, But I Love You Now

2012-02-01T21:12:00.001-06:00

Middle Schoolers are just plain strange.

As part of our school-wide positive behavior support program (I'm not writing that again, so you'll have to deal with SWPBS), we've developed a "check-in/check-out" program with our kids that had the dubious honor of being the 15% that were always in trouble. We started SWPBS last year, tracked a lot of data, and realized that 15% of the kids were getting about 60% of the discipline referrals. Interesting. So, we came up with a 2nd tier of intervention (the first tier being the school store and the money you can earn to go shopping).

This involved matching these kids up with an adult mentor (not always a teacher, but support staff as well) that the kid checked in with in the morning, and checked out with in the afternoon. In the meantime, the kid carries around a slip that they hand to each teacher who scores them on their behavior for the day; they have a certain individual goal of points, and there's a system of rewards in place. The goal is to get them behaving like they should, to have a grown up advocate in the building, and to eventually have them learn to self-monitor their behavior.

Teachers and staff could volunteer to be a mentor and we were given a list of kids and could select ones we thought we could work with. The student then got to look at the list of available mentors and choose whom they wanted to work with.

Well. That was interesting.

I ended up picking Mouthy Girl who was a member of last years' Notorious Seventh Period Class From the Very Depths of Hell Itself, and then Last Word Boy who was also a member of this stellar class of children.

Mouthy Girl gave me absolute fits last year - she was a handful - always into fights, always into drama, never doing work, and just the rudest and most disrespectful little blonde fireball there ever was. (The fact that she has a homelife from hell is part of the reason for her behavior). However. She hadn't been in much trouble so far in eighth grade when we got the list, and she'd even come by several times to talk, was nice, sweet, and pleasant so I thought, "What the heck?" and selected her. Kids change.

Oh boy do they.

Apparently Mouthy Girl was ecstatic that I had selected her as a possible mentee. (Surprised me, truth be told.) Her enthusiasm has not waned and we've been doing this program since Thanksgiving. She is a regular fixture in my room, comes by several times a day (in between classes, on the way to lunch, any chance she can) to get a hug, whine about something she's upset about, to get a pencil, and basically to have someone to mother her since her mother is too busy to do it herself. The good thing is that she'll give me a head's up on a problem, I can email her teachers to let them know, and they'll keep an eye out and keep a lid on things. In the meantime I have a kid whom my entire homeroom thinks is my real daughter as she calls me "momma" and constantly borrowing pencils, paper, etc. (which is fine, that's part of the job.)

It's paid off. She has not had one discipline referral this year. She's walking away from the drama. She's not getting into fights. And she's learned that she can be successful in academics as well (All B's and C's this nine weeks - yes!!)

Wow. What a change.

Now to see if we can work magic with Last Word Boy. He's new to the program. He started before Christmas but made it only one day before he got a write-up and had enough points to earn his way back to alternative school. He's back now, and so far, he's met his goal every day but one. I did insist that he have a schedule change to get him away from a teacher whom he obviously had issues with, and I think that helped. So far, so good. His new teachers seem to like him, which is a plus. He's a smart kid, but can be very argumentative and just hates to be corrected. (He will admit this.) If he can grow up, and get it together, he'll do okay.

Helping them out, one day at a time...

Be Careful How You Land

2012-01-29T19:08:00.002-06:00

It's amazing how life can just up and turn your world upside down.

Take, for example, the case of Mrs. Chicken. One minute she was sitting on her stool in her classroom (most of us use barstools as chairs since our computer teacher stations are so high - I usually stand most of the time). The next minute she had landed on the floor which is tile on concrete. Apparently when she went to stand up, one of her feet got tangled in the rungs towards the bottom of the stool, and she fell.

Right onto her hip, managing to crush her pelvis and break the top of her femur.

Good thing? The kids were NOT in the room but were at their elective classes.

Bad thing? Well duh. It's a pretty serious injury, especially for someone who's old enough to have been teaching for over 30 years.

This happened the first week back in January and we currently have no idea when we'll see her back at The School. The kids aren't happy - they love her. She's a great teacher and one of those teachers that you'll be somewhere with, a restaurant or something, and people will come up and tell her they they had her so many years ago and how she was such a great teacher, and they just loved her class. Everyone in town knows her.

And so now she's home, spending most of her time flat on her back, trying to heal up. We're pitching in to send meals out to her place as cooking isn't really on her list of things to do right now. She can stand or sit for about 45 minutes and that's about all she can do. According to her Doctor, she's in a great deal of pain and it could be over a year and a half before she's back to her old self.

However, The District, was hoping she could come back to do "light duty" this past week.

Really.

She had a doctor's appointment on Wednesday and were expecting her to come back, hence they didn't request a substitute for her class. Because this is considered an on-the-job-injury, The District is watching her progress very closely.

But really? A broken pelvis and leg and they though she could do light duty in less than a month?

We're all trying to figure out what light duty is, anyway. Perhaps they'll retrofit her room so she can teach from a hospital bed?

The Insanity of Tearing Down a Role Model

2012-01-15T17:33:00.001-06:00

I've been a fan of sports nearly all my life. Daddy had one child - me - and even though I was a girl, that didn't stop him from teaching me about sports and learning to enjoy them. We spent a lot of my childhood at the ballpark in Anaheim watching the California Angels. My grandmother was a dedicated and devoted Denver Bronco fan. And my cousin, even at 5' 2" but with amazing skills, played college basketball on a scholarship. I follow hockey, SEC football, baseball, and about the only sport I could care less about is basketball. Even today, a lot of my conversations with Daddy are about sports - he's a Cubs fan - and it's something we enjoy together.

That being said...I haven't followed the NFL for quite a while. I love college football - especially SEC football - but the NFL just didn't have it for me anymore. For one thing, John Elway retired and I tended to work a lot on Sundays helping my husband with his business a number of years ago. Not much of a chance to watch games.

And, let's be honest, I got tired of hearing about the thugs.

Players hanging out - constantly, it seems - in strip clubs. Players getting shot. Players doing the shooting. Players driving drunk, beating their wives, engaged in dog-fighting, gambling, you name it. It turned me completely off to the NFL and I stopped watching. Just didn't care.

And then along came Tim Tebow.

As a Georgia fan, I absolutely HATE THE GATORS, but I still enjoyed watching Tim Tebow play. Granted, he wasn't the best quarterback, technically, but that kid had that something that inspired people to rise about their limitations and do their very best. He could rise above his own limitations and do amazing things. SEC football fans saw it time and again as he motivated his team to win after win. And the fact that he's a good kid, a Christian, someone who sees football as a platform to do greater things and help people, well, that just made it better.

So, he got drafted by my beloved Denver Broncos (Grandma would be thrilled) and I decided to watch the NFL again to see Tebow play. I wondered if he could bring that same magic he had during his college days.

And he did. And believe me, my family in Denver went nuts over him. He made this team believe in themselves again, which is something we haven't seen in a while.

So we finally get a good role model - a football player who isn't all about himself. One who takes a city and helps it believe in greatness again, even if it's in an arena such as sports. One who helps others. One who sees the big picture and it isn't all about himself. And what does the media do? They tear him apart.

All because he bends down on his knee and prays.

Honestly folks. We whine and moan and cry and complain - "Where are the role models?" - and we finally get one that is a good and true role model and what happens? They rip him up. They deride him. They make fun of him. And it's absolutely ridiculous that it's happening.

So, for all those media snots who are having fun ripping up Tebow, let me tell you one thing. I wouldn't be watching the NFL if it wasn't for Tebow. Granted, that's one person...but I suspect there are a few others out there who may have given up on the sport, perhaps for some of the same reasons I have, who are now a bit more interested. Who've come back to the fold, and who are actually following the NFL now.

And it's because a truly good, inspirational player is out there, trying to create magic with his team. Give me that any day.

Because, truly, character does count for a lot. And Tebow, he has character.

A Little Unbalanced, I'd Say.

2012-01-14T13:05:00.001-06:00

In the past week, eight new 7th graders have enrolled in The School. I got five of them. Mrs. Eagle got one and Mrs. Angora got two. This is not to be unexpected, because we usually get a lot of kids moving in and out over the holidays. The Guidance Diva also noticed that many of these kids had the address belonging to the cheap but gang-infested brick apartment buildings down the road, so apparently some units have opened up. Two of my kids are sort of homeless - Mom has an RV and parks it wherever someone will let her. Another one is living in a church with his family.

Sad.

In any case, our numbers are going up because, for what seems like the first time in forever, we didn't have any kids move off the team. No one left. So now I have 28 in my homeroom and most of my classes are in the high twenties. Mrs. Eagle and all the other seventh grade teachers are in the same boat.

So on Tuesday of last week, Mrs. Eagle and I are walking down to the science lab to grab some graduated cylinders, droppers, and beakers to use in a lab on Wednesday. The science lab is at the very end of the eighth grade hallway so we had a chance to walk by the eighth grade classrooms who were in session.

As we're walking along, Mrs. Eagle says, "Hey, take a moment to check out those class sizes as we walk by."

We walk, and glance in through the doors and glass frames (which give you a pretty good view of the rooms) and realize that these rooms are practically empty! They have class sizes in their teens! One of the last rooms we go by belongs to Mrs. Hummingbird's science class. (Mrs. Hummingbird taught with us a few years ago and we miss her and love her). She sees us, comes to the door to wave and say hi and we realize that she has 16 kids in her room! SIXTEEN KIDS!

OH. MY. GOSH.

My first thought was, man, are they going to be in for a surprise next year when we dump the huge group of seventh graders we have on them. My second thought was that they better find a way to get another seventh grade team next year because the sixth grade currently has about 50 more kids than we do!

Wow. I wouldn't even know how to deal with a class of 16....

Snow, well, Ice Day, #1

2012-01-13T10:17:00.004-06:00

For those of you who use your precious time to actually read this (including my mother!), you may recall that for the last two years The District had pretty much used up all of our THREE snow days for the year and we were going over our limit by this time in the season. This was NOT fun because it meant that we had to use up holidays as well as add an additional 30 minutes to the school day to make up for the time missed. That 30 minutes may not seem like a lot, but if you do after school activities it meant that you didn't get home until after dark, and it seemed that all you had time to do was fix supper, clean up, and go to bed to just get up and do it over again.

So this year has seemed a bit odd because it's been so mild. We haven't had a lot of really cold, below 32 degree days, and for precipitation we've had quite a bit of rain. Last year it seemed like day after day after day it was below freezing and snowing or trying to snow.

So yesterday we went from a high of 46 in the morning when I left for school, to about 42 degrees at lunch to 29 degrees by the time we left for the day. They were calling for snow showers but not a lot of accumulation.

These are the days where I wish there wasn't a single window in the building.

It started to snow in between 5th and 6th periods. I know this because every single kid was walking in the halls and coming into the room screaming, "IT'S SNOWING!" as if they'd never seen snow before in their entire lives. IT'S SNOWING! IT'S SNOWING! IT'S SNOWING!

Yes. We know. Now try to settle down and let's get on with some learning.

Then of course they wanted to know if they'd go home early. "Probably not because it's not sticking and we only have an hour and a half of school left," I told them, but to no avail. Because, after all, IT'S SNOWING!

Sigh.

Then came the announcement that all after school activities, including the much-anticipated basketball game, were cancelled. Chaos. IT'S SNOWING! IT'S SNOWING! IT'S SNOWING!

The only thing that got them calmed down and interested in science was the fact that I was bouncing eggs around on my document reader.

The kids went home, and we were asked to have the building cleared by 5:00 which was no problem. Then the announcement came over the loud speaker that we might want to go out to our vehicles and make sure we could open them as many of them had doors frozen shut. All the rain that we had earlier in the day had frozen. So, many of us spent some time in the parking lot prying open vehicles, then letting them warm up to get all the ice off the windshield. (I was getting a brake job on my car so had hitched a ride with Mrs. Eagle. $800 in two weeks between my vehicle and hubby's. I need another job to pay for the vehicles.)

I picked up my car, and got home with no problem, although I did notice a lack of salt trucks on the roads. The snow was starting to stick, but you could still see grass and it wasn't very heavy. Mr. Bluebird got home from his meeting, and was surprised at how good the roads were.

However. The temperature kept dropping, and dropping, and dropping. About two hours after we'd been home, and Mr. Math had come over to help Mr. Bluebird with a computer problem, our driveway was a sheet of ice. Mr. Math, who lives a half mile away, reported after he got home that it was one slick, nasty trip home. School Districts around us started cancelling based on the ice, not the snow.

We cancelled around 4:30 this morning, not because of snow, but because of the ice underneath the snow. All that rain we've been receiving, when it was in the 50's and 40's, turned to ice when the temps rocketed downward.

So, we have our first ~~snow day~~, ice day, of the year, and it conveniently happened on the Friday before a Monday holiday. Yeah!

Still, I'm a bit concerned. My celery-food-coloring-salt-water osmosis demonstration will be a bit, well, ugly come Tuesday. And as for the bouncy eggs? Well, I don't want to even think about those.

P.S. Because I know ya'll want to know what a bouncy egg is...you soak raw eggs in vinegar for a few days to remove the shell. What you get is the inner membrane holding the egg together and it will, truly, bounce (try it, it's fun). What we're doing with these eggs is putting them in a cup of syrup to predict what will happen to them in 24 hours. (We're studying osmosis and diffusion and there's your clue). I have no idea what will happen after 5 days. We will see.

Now Let's Enjoy the Rest of the Year

2012-01-11T19:32:00.000-06:00

In My State, teachers on a professional license get observed four times a year. One of the disadvantages of being at the beginning of the alphabet is that I was one of the first, if not the very first, person observed at the beginning of the year. This was the second week of school and I hadn't even learned all my kids' names yet - mainly because we were still fixing schedules, assigning books, and all that fun beginning of the year stuff. And, truth be told, it takes a bit of time to learn 130 names.

And now that we're into our second semester, the cycle begins again and I am supposed to have my two unannounced observations some time this week.

Ugh.

For those of you not in the teaching profession, I'm not going to bore you with all that goes into lesson plans, and observations, and teaching to reach multiple learning styles, and being sure to assess at least three times during the course of the lesson, and of course, keeping the kids in check and hoping that they actually learn anything, and of course, making it relevant, sticking to standards, and oh, all that fun stuff.

You can thank me.

For those of you in the profession - you know what I'm talking about.

In any case, I got lucky and The Enforcer did my two observations on Monday and now I am FREAKING DONE with my observations for this year.

So I guess...one of the advantages of being at the beginning of the alphabet is that I get done with these nasty observations before the others and can actually enjoy teaching for the rest of the year without these things hanging over my head.

Until next year. When it starts all over again.

Slacker

2011-12-17T12:51:00.001-06:00

Yes, I know I've been slacking on this.

Honestly, I've been sick with either a cold or bronchitis or something since the middle of November. Not sick enough to miss school, but just sick enough to not want to do anything except sleep once I got home.

Feeling better and nearly normal now and so totally looking forward to our Christmas break.

Just a few random observations...

We had three days of Government Mandated Really Big Deal Testing for our seventh graders. Three days of constructed response writing tests. So, for the first three periods of the day, the kids were testing and writing. Except they finished in 20-30 minutes and then had nearly two hours to just sit there and BE SILENT. I'm convinced that whomever comes up with these ideas for these tests has never been in a seventh grade classroom (at least not recently) and has no clue about 12 and 13-year-olds. A big block of time, doing the same thing, for these kids is maybe twenty minutes. Thirty max. No standardized test should last longer than a typical classroom period.

So, the result of making these seventh graders be ABSOLUTELY SILENT AND STILL for nearly three class periods is that they lost their minds. We had a dance that Friday and had not one, not two, not three, but FOUR fights break out. It's rare we even get one, let alone four. All of a sudden kids who were normally well behaved were acting like fools and teachers were writing referrals and sending kids to the office left and right. Kids were starting fights in PE, in lunch, in the halls, you name it. It's nuts.

We all need a break from each other.

Another result, I believe of the testing exhaustion and the upcoming holidays, is that my kids stopped working. They just up and quit. Homework turn in dropped to below 50% and kids who had never missed an assignment had zeroes. In-class work - not turned in. Project - not turned in. All these things we're doing in class, and they aren't turning them in. They woke up a bit this week and managed to turn in a bunch of late assignments (when some of them realized that they were pretty close to failing or dropping a few letter grades), but it was almost bizarre how the entire grade just up and stopped doing school. Mrs. Eagle's and Mrs. Angora's kids weren't any better.

On the positive side, my homeroom still rocks. It's bigger now - we got some new kids and I now have 27 in there so I'm nearly out of seats, but still most of them are pretty good kids and they get along with each other. We're having a canned food drive for our Angel Tree program and they've been wanting to win the pizza party - but even more than that, they Want to Beat the Sixth Grade. Every year a sixth grade class wins and we're trying to change that trend. My kids claim that one particular sixth grade teach bribes her kids as well as brings in a lot on her own, but I told them we were playing fair and not going down that road. We ended up with over 350 cans, which is huge, but I'm not sure it's enough to beat the Dreaded Sixth Grade. We'll find out on Monday.

We have a day and a half left and then some time off. Plans? Sleeping, reading, knitting, spending time with hubby. Perfect.

Thanksgiving Break?

2011-11-26T19:54:00.001-06:00

At The District, we get three days off for Thanksgiving break (Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday). This makes for a nice break before we wind up the end of the first semester.

On Monday of this past week, one of my students, Spacey Girl, who is really a sweet kid, but, well, a bit "out there", asked me how come we didn't get a full week off for Thanksgiving like some other nearby districts do.

"Well," I said, "it may be because we get a week off for fall break."

"We do?" she said. "When?"

"It was about four weeks ago," I replied, "Around the first week of October."

"Really?" she said, genuinely surprised. "I don't remember that at all."

And I'm supposed to hope that she can remember the rock cycle by the time The Very Big Deal Government Mandated Tests arrive in April.

Seriously.

Thankfully, They Do Outgrow It

2011-11-20T13:08:00.001-06:00

We had our Fall Festival this past Friday. The Knitting Club was selling cookies and knitted necklaces and bracelets so Mrs. Eagle and I spent most of the time just supervising. We actually had more helpers than we needed so that was nice.

What was nicer is that the High School sends over a bunch of the JROTC kids to help run a lot of the carnival-type booths like the ring toss. We always enjoy this because we get to see how some of our kids have grown up.

What's amazing is HOW MUCH they grow up.

I had a young man come up to me in his JROTC t-shirt and give me a big hug.

"Do you remember me?" he asked.

Oh. How. Could. I. Forget. This kid was a TERROR. He was non-academically promoted because he did nothing. He also was a constant disruption in class and I think he made our Mrs. Reading at the time cry at least once a week. His best friend and him were the Terror Twins and just about made us all crazy. He was so awful that I ended up suspending him for something stupid the last week of the year when I was doing "filling in for the principal" duty. And the worst bit was that he was smart as a whip. You knew if he could behave and do his work that he'd be fine.

"Of course I do," I told him. "You were awful!"

He laughed and his friend, another former student (but not the terror he ran with in 7th grade) laughed as well.

"Yeah, I had a 150 discipline points when you had me. I was awful."

"You were a jerk," his friend said.

"So, what's life like now?" I asked them both.

"Well," said the Former Terror. "I haven't had a discipline point since I got to High School, I'm in JROTC, and I have a 3.7 gpa."

Oh. My. Goodness.

"Are you serious?" I asked him. "You failed 7th grade!"

"Yeah, but I got over it. Dumped the other Terror Twin when he got involved in drugs, and got into JROTC. But man, I owe all of you an apology. I was awful."

"JROTC saved us both," said his friend. "We're both doing really well in school. And we were both awful, so I'm sorry."

There is hope. I just need to keep reminding myself of that.

Game Club 101

2011-11-15T17:03:00.001-06:00

So a reader (I know! Isn't that cool! I have more than one!) asked a question in the comments about running a game club. This brave soul has ventured out to sponsor a club for 12 and 13 year olds. (Let's all give her a standing ovation for this brave feat.) She asked for suggestions...and, well, wouldn't you know it, I have a few.

Mrs. Eagle and I have been sponsoring our school's chess and board game club for something like seven years now. (Note to people who think teachers are lazy bottom feeders who are in it just for a paycheck - we don't get paid for this. We do it because our kids need clubs to go to. It's the right thing for the kids.) Over the years we've learned a few things.

One, deal with the noise. If you can't handle noise, get earplugs. This age group can make Monopoly sound like a combat sport. I am not kidding. We consider game club an hour and half of screaming mayhem and other teachers will walk in, shake their heads, and ask, "How do you do it?" and we just smile and nod. Mainly because we really couldn't hear them anyway. (It's so loud we tell the front office that if they have to call us, to just run on down, as we won't hear the phone anyway.) You get 60 kids in there playing games, it's loud.

Rules for games. Sigh. A lot of the games the kids have never played before. That's fine. Just sit down, find about 3 or so kids (most games play well with 4) and play with them. Even if it means you're figuring out the rules. For some reason they get a huge kick out of playing a game with teacher. Especially when they win. (I let them.) Once you have a few kids who know the rules, have them teach others. They'll pick up on it. Then again, there are a lot of games they may remember from when they were "little."

Kids hate to pick up after themselves. Too bad, if they're playing games, they're picking up. After every meeting we do a "pieces crawl", where the kids get down on their hands and knees and find the pieces they dropped. Because they WILL drop pieces. It's also good to train your janitor to drop off the pieces he finds when he cleans up the room. It's not unusual for me to come in on Tuesday mornings and find a battleship, a Scabble square, and a couple of cards on my desk.

These kids are ready to eat the furniture after school so a great way to raise money is to sell snacks. We took about $60 a few years ago and bought Capri Sun drinks, and bags of Teddy Grahams, Cheeze-it's, and the like and we sell them for fifty cents a piece. We do this all year long, the kids get a snack, we resupply as needed, and usually by the end of the year have enough money for a pizza party and a few new games. We also do a hat day once a year (kids pay a dollar to wear a hat at school) and we usually clear about $200. We really don't need much money to run this club, as long as you have funds to replace games that wear out, or buy new ones.

Games our kids like, and this may vary depending on where you live, are chess, Risk, Monopoly (we bought the electronic version a few weeks ago), Operation, Apples to Apples, Stratego, Battleship, and Phase 10. This does change a bit from year to year. Right now we have a lot more Risk fanatics than chess, so that's a really popular game with our crowd.

And lastly, have fun with it. You'll meet kids in a different environment from the classroom and actually get to know them alot better. Mrs. Eagle and I tend to scope out the sixth graders and see which ones we each want on our team - it's fun the first day of school when the kids already know you and you already know them.

Cheers! Have fun!

How To Make Friends - By Walking a Kid to the Nurse

2011-11-14T17:32:00.001-06:00

Early last week I walked out of the teacher lunchroom during lunch and discovered Mrs. Reading trying to console one of our girls who was sobbing up a storm. Apparently Brooding Girl got smacked right in the nose, accidentally, by another one of our girls who apparently can't watch where she's going and carry her lunch at the same time. My lunch was already heating up in the microwave and Mrs. Reading hadn't had a chance to buy hers so I said I'd walk Brooding Girl down to the nurse.

Brooding Girl is quiet, and usually prefers to stay to herself. She had a bit of a yappy phase there for a while, but one phone call to mom took care of that. She is in our remediation class because she can be a bit slow on getting work in and doesn't necessarily study and do well on tests. However, one of the few comments I ever got out of her was that she wants to keep her grades up so she can be in the fashion show club. So, at least she has a goal and as long as she can stay away from the drama, she should be okay. That being said, I really didn't know much about her because she's the quiet type that would rather just hide than engage a teacher in conversation.

In any case, she was crying so hard I knew she couldn't even see where we were going, so I put my arm around her and walked her to the nurse. I kept up a running chatter with her the whole way there about when I had my nose broken in high school (well, actually it was deviated septum surgery, but I wasn't going there), and how I realized it hurt, and blah, blah, blah. At one point she managed to choke out that she didn't want to look ugly with her makeup all over her face (she's a pretty girl) and so we talked about make-up for a bit. Whatever it takes to get her to the nurse. I dropped her off, and back to lunch I went.

Brooding Girl is in my Seventh Period Class From the Very Depths of Hell Itself, so I saw her later that day and noticed, thankfully, no bruising and it didn't look like her nose had swelled up much. I asked her how she was and she had a pretty bad headache and it hurt. Yeah, it probably was going to hurt quite a bit, I told her, but a bit of aspirin and some sleep and she'd feel better.

A few days later, during remediation class which Mrs. Reading was teaching that day, Brooding Girl came in to see if she owed me any assignments. As luck would have it, she did, so I gave her copies of the missing work, and explained some of it.

And then, the most amazing thing happened.

She stood there in front of my desk and just chattered away like I'd never heard her chatter.

Truly. This from a kid who's maybe said two words to me all year. She stood there and told me how she'd cleaned the house for her mom the night before, because her mom was kind of depressed when her boyfriend wasn't around, and he was really nice, he was Italian, and he was teaching Brooding Girl to make espresso, and she cleaned all the rooms, and even her room, and helped her sister clean as well, and she thought she'd made mom happy, and then she made up all her missing work, except for science, and she was going to do that tonight, and gee thanks for giving me the work, and my nose doesn't hurt anymore.

Wow!

Could it be, that all it took was a five minute walk to the nurse??

Thank You

2011-11-11T09:19:00.001-06:00

Because I couldn't improve on perfection..and say it any better than he did.

Hat tip to Chandler at Buckhorn Road

Thank You to Our Veterans!

2011-11-10T20:51:00.001-06:00

One thing I've always loved about The School is that we do one heckava AWESOME Veteran's Day program every year. Over the years, various teachers have organized the event and every year it's just wonderful. For many of us, it's one of the highlights of the year.

This fall The Principal put out the call that she needed someone to step up to the plate and volunteer to do the Veteran's Day program since the last person who had been in charge - and she did a fantastic job - had gotten married and moved to Atlanta.

And no one responded. Which is typical because, as Mrs. Eagle often says, it's always the same people who do everything.

After the second email, however, Mrs. Eagle and I were discussing at our Friday breakfast at Waffle House that we'd really hate to see our ceremony fade away because no one wanted to do it. As a 20 year Army Veteran, the ceremony had a special place for Mrs. Eagle. So, we volunteered but ONLY it no one person was in charge and we did it as a committee. We added in a few other folks to round out the committee, Wonder Aide (who helped on it the year before but no one ever knew), Mrs. Bulldog, a young adorable Army spouse and awesome SPED teacher, and Mrs. Parakeet who we added a few weeks later when we discovered, quite by accident, that she did the music at the beginning of the program. The Principal was delighted and deposited with us a Really Big Box and a binder of Veteran's Day Stuff.

Oh. Boy.

We had a few meetings, did a lot of communicating via email, assigned tasks, and amazingly, it came together fairly well. I must add that Wonder Aide had some really GREAT ideas, like having the sixth grade wear red, the seventh wear white and the eighth wear blue, and it looked amazing! We had a few panics, and a few hitches (the lapel pins the student council bought for us to give to our 25 veteran faculty and staff arrived TWO HOURS after the program ended), but over all...it more or less went together.

And today was the day.

And it was amazing.

My friend, a local city councilman and veteran, did the talk and told me, truly, that he was more nervous talking to these kids than he'd ever been doing a political stump speech! (Middle Schoolers could be a tough crowd.) He did great. As a military dependent himself when he was a kid, he asked the kids in the audience to raise their hands if they had a mom or dad who was a veteran or active duty. He told me when he saw that sea of hands (and it was nearly the whole school), that it was like a kick in the gut and he almost had trouble continuing his talk. The kids, however, loved him.

What we loved was that the kids BEHAVED. They were just awesome, even though are rapidly outgrowing the gym and had trouble seating everyone. The sixth grade now takes up nearly one whole side of the gym.

We had wanted to make this a more kid-driven ceremony than in the past and it worked out. We had different kids doing the welcome, The Pledge of Allegiance (our Life Skills Classes did this), a song, and more. It went great.

And I'm so glad it's over, but so glad we did it.

Just wait. It will be even better next year.

Reality Check

2011-11-09T20:05:00.000-06:00

Mrs. Eagle, Mrs. Reading, Mrs. Language, Mr. Social Studies, and a few eighth grade teachers and I spent this evening doing something that none of us ever want to have to do.

We were at the viewing for the father of three of our students at The School.

Like Clever Boy's mother this past April, Father of Four was killed in Afghanistan.

This has hit our building hard. Father of Four had a child in each of our grades, so there's very few teachers who don't know at least one of these kids. The youngest boy, Honor Roll Boy, is in my homeroom and is just one of those kids you can't help but love because he's so awesome. He's pleasant, polite, cute as heck (half my girls have crushes on him), and he's smart as a whip. It's just awful that he has to lose his father at this age and in this way.

The kids in class are all aware of why Honor Roll Boy hasn't been in school much (he did come for one day last week), but they're being really quiet about it. None of the teachers have said anything, but these kids text and email and Facebook and who knows what else so there's not a whole lot they don't know about. And considering how many of them are probably thinking, "there but for the grace of God goes my mom or dad", they've been very supportive of Honor Roll Boy when he's been here. The military kids are good at closing ranks and taking care of each other. It's one of the things I love about them.

As hard as it was, I'm glad I went. I'm also glad I always have packets of tissues in my purse because it was necessary. But let me tell you, it was truly dignified, truly special. The honor guard standing watch by the casket was impressive. All the military members that were there were impressive. And the brief, private ceremony where the family were given gold star pins and his medals was impressive, and very touching.

We took a moment to talk to Mrs. Father of Four and told her that we'd take care of her kids for her and not to worry because That's What We Do at The School. We love them as best we can. She seemed very touched, and perhaps a bit surprised, to see us all there. It was the least we could do for a family that has given so much.

God Bless you Father of Four. We'll take care of your kids as best we can.

Lunch Date

2011-11-08T20:40:00.000-06:00

80's Girl, my little goth darling with the black lipstick, has been bugging me for several weeks about eating lunch with her.

Really.

I find this a bit funny because the only time I've ever had a kid request something like this was a few years ago when we did lunch detention and kids stopped doing their homework on purpose so they could eat lunch in our classrooms so they could get caught up on their homework. The draw wasn't the teacher, or the classroom, or the food, or getting caught up. No, they were there because they liked the quiet. Seriously. Our cafeteria is mind-numbing loud. 320 kids in there and it's nuts.

Well anyway I decided I better bow to her demands, and told her to pick two other friends to eat with us and I'd join them in one of the booths. A few years ago we had a fast food restaurant nearby remodel and they donated a bunch of booths for us to put in the cafeteria. These are great for when parents come and for when kids use their reward money to have lunch with their friends in the booth. It's not quiet, but it's still better than sitting at long tables with the rest of the kids.

Part of me is not looking forward to this because I really need my 30 minutes of peace in the middle of the day to regroup and get ready for the Seventh Period Class From The Very Depths of Hell Itself. But then again, the other part of me is finding this to be a bit entertaining as I'll get to know these three girls quite a bit better. It will be interesting about what they'll talk about.

At least I won't have to eat the cafeteria food.

P.S. - a day later. I actually had a lot of fun at the lunch date. Did get some weird looks from other kids, but my three girls were a joy. They were envious of my chicken soup and orange (really?) but apparently it's much better fare than cafeteria food. (I have never, in nine years at The School, eaten cafeteria food). I learned a lot about these kids and that's something neat.

There's These Things Called Parent Conferences...

2011-11-07T19:07:00.000-06:00

This morning, at around 7:20, which is pretty chaotic as it's homeroom time, and kids are arriving at school, going to breakfast, going to the school store and so forth, my phone rings. My homeroom kids are a pretty good bunch and I've given a bunch of them jobs, including answering the phone so I can do things like help kids with work and watch the hall.

So, the kid that answers the phone comes to me and says, holding out the phone (I have a 25' cord on it) and says, "She wants to talk to you." "She" being one of our secretaries up front (the Ditzy One).

"Hi there, I have Lazy Boy's mom up here and she wants to know if she can schedule a team meeting this week at 9:00 am," she says.

I've been having a lot of email conversation with Lazy Boy's mom and she is, to put it bluntly, fed up with him. The last I talked with her, he'd been grounded until sometime in 2012, she was changing his meds, and she was at her wit's end. I guessed that the reason she was asking for a meeting was that she got his progress report and Was Not Happy.

"Well, the only problem with that is we have to be in our rooms by 9:04 as that's when 2nd period gets out and the kids start showing up." The Ditzy Secretary should know this as it's plastered across the front of our team calendar which should be right in front of her as she's scheduling a meeting.

"Okay, but she drives a school bus and she can't get here until 9:00 am," says the Ditzy Secretary.

Sigh. "I understand that, however, we Have Kids Coming to Our Room so We Can Teach Them at that time. The only way we can have a meeting at 9:00 am is if Administration can find someone to cover our classes."

"Oh, I understand," she says. "So what should I tell her?"

Oh. Good. Gracious.

"Tell her that we can't meet at 9:00 am unless someone from administration okays someone to cover our classes."

"Oh, okay," she says and she rings off.

A few minutes later, after the kids have gone on to their first period and I'm running around getting a lab together, I run into Mrs. Sparrow, one of the administrators who happened to have been approached by Ditzy Secretary about the situation.

"Where in the hell was this parent when we had two days of parent conferences for the past two weeks?" she hissed. "Did she ever schedule an appointment with any of you?"

"Not that I know of," I answered, "and we had room in the schedule even before the no-shows."

"Please! She has two days of conferences which she could have utilized, but instead she wants us to get subs to cover your classes so we can have a meeting! That's ridiculous!"

I had to agree with her on that one. Mr. Enforcer later told Ditzy Secretary to go ahead and call Lazy Boy's mom and tell her we could meet with her at 8:50 and that we'd have to be done by 9:00 and if that wasn't enough time, then she might have to get a sub for her bus and come on in when we could meet with her.

We'll see if she shows.

The Smile Like Sunshine

2011-11-04T17:58:00.001-05:00

Our Life Skills Class (and for those of you who aren't familiar with that term, it's the kids with mild to severe disabilities) does a lot of fund-raising throughout the year to pay for their Special Olympics team. They do teacher luncheons, make and sell cookies, and sell flavored coffees.

I'm a coffee drinker myself, but I usually don't drink any once I get to school. However, a few weeks ago I got the email from the Life Skills teacher and she mentioned that the flavor that day was Almond Joy (one of my favorite candy bars). It costs a dollar for a HUGE cup of coffee, and it's delivered to your room by a Life Skills student (or students) and one of the kids that volunteer to help in that classroom. I figured I'd give the coffee a try (it was awesome) because it sounded good and the kids could use the money for their fund.

It's kind of fun - you call the Life Skills room, and order your coffee. About ten minutes later a hot, steaming cup of coffee is delivered to your room. The first time I did it, one of my homeroom kids was the helper, and my "delivery boy" was a sweet little kid in a wheel chair. I gave them both reward money and thanked them for the coffee. Sunshine Boy in the wheel chair lit up like I'd just given him a million dollars and waved that reward buck around with abandon.

That made my day.

Today, another email about Almond Joy arrived, and I ordered another cup of coffee. Another one of my kids was the helper and he came with Sunshine Boy and another kid who helped pushed Sunshine Boy's wheelchair. I paid my real dollar for my coffee and gave all three of them a reward buck. Again, Sunshine Boy just lit up like a Christmas tree, giggled and waved that reward buck like nobody's business.

That smile and that unadulterated joy was just awesome!

So now, I think I'm going to be ordering flavored coffee pretty much every day they offer it. It's worth it to see that smile from Sunshine Boy. He truly makes my day!

It must be one of those weeks

2011-11-02T21:12:00.001-05:00

I'm not sure if it's the transition from warm weather to cool, the fact that we have a second night of parent conferences, or if there's something in the water, but it's been one of those weeks. And I'm not just talking about myself here.

You know it's a bad week when...

The kids are still wacked out on sugar.

One of your kids, who wasn't feeling well during sixth period (but the nurse sent him back and said to encourage drinking more water) throws up all over the parking lot in front of the entire 7th and most of the 8th grade during a fire drill at the beginning of seventh period. Really, the phrase "it sucks to be him" comes to mind. I didn't think he looked all that perky sixth period when he got sent back, and obviously he wasn't feeling all that great. Hopefully the kids will forget the whole episode, but honestly, I'm worried he may be "the kid that barfed during the fire drill in 7th grade." He's a good kid.

The kids are still wacked out on sugar.

I go to my 4:15 appointment with my allergist and I don't see him until 5:30. Good thing I only see him once a year. And good thing I brought my knitting.

The kids are still wacked out on sugar.

Two of my kids who started off the year pretty good, are now diving head first into disaster and misbehavior. I had to toss them out with workbooks in hand (I sent them to Mr. Rooster which they HATE), as they wouldn't behave during a lab. And I was so miffed that I got on the phone and called their parents right then and their while the kids did their lab (and I could observe - they were making pulleys with paper clips and thread.) Nice conversations with one step dad who took care of business last night. Very contrite little boy in class today. They both behaved.

The kids are still wacked out on sugar.

And tomorrow...another round of parent conferences.

By that time I'll need to be wacked out on sugar.

So Much for Good Intentions

2011-10-26T17:50:00.000-05:00

I really honestly was going to try to post ever single day this school year but obviously that isn't going to happen. As my grandmother used to say, "I have too many irons in the fire."

Oh well. Least I tried.

In any case, amazingly enough, when I returned to school on Monday, after leaving my kids with a sub, the stack of crap on my desk wasn't too horribly bad. Even better, she didn't run out of the building screaming so that's a plus. One of the reasons why I asked this particular sub to fill in for me is because I know she can be tough, but she also knows all the kids as she student taught for us last year. She's fair and she's organized. And she leaves wonderfully detailed notes about who was naughty and who was nice.

Seventh period, of course was hideous. So hideous in fact that Mr. Math came over to tell me how hideous they were. Sigh. I knew that was going to be the case. I did have to write up two other kids in other classes for their behavior, but that was almost to be expected.

Let's just say that seventh period wasn't very happy on Monday.

On another note, all the report cards went home along with a parent conference letter. Our parent conferences are this Thursday and next Thursday. Basically we ask parents to send the form back with the date, the times they'd prefer and the teachers they'd want to see. Then we have to sit there and slot of the parents into our individual conference schedules.

This is a mess when you have a bunch of kids who have teachers who aren't on the same team - like a lot of the seventh graders who have an 8th grade teacher who's teaching a couple of sections of seventh. It's not been too horribly bad, however, because, sadly, we haven't received many conference requests. I only have 11 parents signed up for tomorrow (most of them are parents I really don't need to see), and another 5 for next week.

But, on the up side, I did get a parent in here today for a meeting to meet with her, a principal, and her daughter to come up with an education plan since her daughter failed my class this nine weeks. Mainly it's not turning in work and not studying. We ironed out a plan out and, if they both do their end of the bargain, she should pass the rest of the year. Big if. But hey, I'm trying. And I think Mom may be on board as well.

And today? Weirdly enough, the first night in weeks I don't have school work to do. Feels odd.

Digging Out...on Monday

2011-10-23T18:31:00.001-05:00

Mrs. Eagle and I took a personal day on Friday so we could attend a two day conference in another part of the state.

This means we left our kids alone with a sub.

At this point I always feel sorry for the sub, but this year in particular I really feel sorry for the sub. Our kids have been just awful for the subs. No, I take that back. They've been beyond awful.

I'm not sure if it's because we've had a lot of subs or what. Mr. Math has to go to some meetings downtown for the math department, Mrs. Grammar has little ones that either get sick or need to go for a checkup, and Mrs. Language has had to deal with sick parents and sick kids as well. We've been out a bit more than we usually are, and truth be told, than we'd like to be. About the only people who seem to be here day in and day out are me and Mr. Rooster.

Granted, for some reason kids think that having a sub means they can act like absolute monsters. I never could figure that out (and I subbed for two years). They just lose their minds. Then again, they lose their minds with just about any change in routine, like a fire drill for example. And it doesn't help that our pool of good, quality subs has shrunk a lot since most of the good ones either got hired permanent or they are on long-term assignments.

In any case, it takes forever to get ready for a sub and forever to deal with the aftermath. I am, however, hopeful this time. I got a sub who student taught in P.E. last year so she knows most of the kids. And, amazingly, they like her. She has strong management skills and she's young and pretty so that helps. She's one of those good subs that gets snatched up fast so I snagged her way back in August for this day.

So I'm hoping it went okay. I do know, however, it may take me most of the week to go through the tests to be graded, homework to be checked and so forth. And we have to deal with parent conferences this week, which is usually a bit of a scheduling balancing act.

Oh boy. Here comes Monday.

Busting Out the Seams and Tech Hell

2011-10-17T18:05:00.001-05:00

Back to school today after a week off for fall break. As much as I was dreading today, because, let's face it, it's nice to sit home with my felines, and my hubby and knit and read and make jelly and work in my yard and all that fun stuff, today, well, it wasn't too bad.

Except for Tech Hell, but we'll get to that in a bit.

What was weird, and surprising, is that we got an email today from Guidance informing us that they had enrolled 14 kids today. FOURTEEN! In one day. Now, we're used to getting a boatload of kids after the Christmas holidays, but after fall break? Nearly unheard off. But fourteen enrolled today - and of course half of them were seventh graders - so now we're expecting 3-4 new kids for each team. Yay!

And all this, after The District, with all their number crunchers, predicted our enrollment going down (it's gone up by about 100) and we're rezoning next year and expecting another 100-200 kids from that. So, will we be going back to three seventh grade teams? The Principal told me she's almost certain we will, but it remains to be seen. I'm not so sure these guys know how to forecast that well.

And for the Tech Hell. (Isn't there always Tech Hell?). We got an email over break from The Principal which was a forward from a Tech Genius, that basically said they had come in over break, did some work on the network, and while they were there, went into classrooms and fixed stuff (that we probably didn't know was broken) and that we'd have a tech guy here in the morning on Monday in case some printers didn't work, etc.

Which is weird because a few weeks ago a Tech Genius spent all day coming into each and every classroom (never during planning, ALWAYS when you didn't want them) changing all the IP addresses on our printers.

So, today, I'm all happy camper because my printer is working. Until third period. When it stops.

So Mr. Math comes over (and he's even more annoyed than most of us because he's way smarter than the Tech Geniuses) and he fixes my IP address on my printer. Yea! Printer works.

Until I come back from lunch and it's apparent that someone came in during lunch and restarted my computer. So now my printer doesn't work. (I was lucky. Only my computer was restarted - Mr. Math had all his equipment turned off which means 10 minutes of class time trying to get everything back up and running.) Keep in mind, we have to turn in grade verifications at the end of the day so I kind of like need my printer to work.

We get an email from one of the secretaries up front informing us that the Tech Genius told us that all our problems would be solved if we restarted our computers. WRONG. In inform her that my computer was working fine until SOMEONE restarted it and now it didn't work. She said that they'd add my room to the list.

Finally, Guidance Goober comes in and fixes it himself after I basically went over and asked them how on earth I was suppose to submit my grades if I couldn't even print them?

When did Tech Genius show up? After bus riders were dismissed. I told him thanks, but I had it taken care of. He looked relieved.

So, my question still is...what was the point of all this? I think the IP address on my printer has been changed five times in the past month and for what reason? None that anyone can truly tell me. My guess is that this is a way for the tech department to justify their continued existence even though, from what I've been told, they cause more problems than they solve.

Just ask the Guidance Department. They were still there at 4:30 when I left today because they couldn't get the new schedules to print for tomorrow...what a mess.

Nine Weeks Down

2011-10-07T17:12:00.001-05:00

And only three more nine weeks to go.

But now, it's Fall Break!

Whoo-hoooo!

Looking' Good for Picture Day

2011-10-05T18:18:00.001-05:00

Ah picture day.

Talk about a school ritual. It's always a fun day to do hall duty because the kids are, in the words of a former student and courtesy of Mrs. Cardinal, "all P-Diddied Out". There are always a few kids you aren't quite sure you recognize, even though they've sat in front of you for nine weeks, because they finally have their hair out of their faces and their clothes are actually clean, pressed, and they don't look like they rolled out of bed and onto the bus.

Of course there are still a few, including Happy Boy, who are sadly in need of a comb, but for the most part, it's an improvement.

This is also the time of year where The Principal, kindly "encourages" all the staff to make sure we get our picture taken - or else. Many of us dread this ritual (I do) but one advantage of first period planning is you can get the stupid thing over with.

And 80's Girl was happy today. Not only did she get a new tube of black lipstick ("And not even a Halloween brand but one I can buy all year long!") but she wore a new dress. It was of a fabric that shifted purple and green depending on how you looked at it. It definitely wasn't silk on this kid's budget, but it was definitely different. It had fashion code no-no spaghetti straps which she covered with a ratty red zippered sweatshirt, which I am sure was removed for the picture. It was tight across the bodice, and down to just about the knees, where it flared out into a whole bunch of gathers of fabric.

And she made the whole thing the night before.

I'd asked if she'd followed a pattern and she admitted she "sorta did", but that she'd modified it somewhat.

I'm telling you, this kid may be odd, but she's got style.

When CoverGirl Just Won't Do

2011-10-04T21:26:00.000-05:00

I have a student this year that reminds me of a much younger and goofier (and less responsible me). We're talking MUCH younger. She's missed her era. This child should have been in college with me (the first time) in the '80's.

First off, after growing up in Los Angeles, and spending quite a few years helping hubby with a business in the music industry, there's not a lot that I find to be all that weird. Which may be why some of the stranger kids sort of gravitate towards me. In any case, 80's Girl manages to pull off looking weird and turns it into a fashion statement that - for whatever reason - usually works. (Let's be honest, most middle schoolers tend to look a little dorky through no fault of their own since biology is against them at this point in life.) I know some of the teachers are put off by the abundance of black in her wardrobe, the fishnet gloves, the pink and bright blue extensions in her dark dyed hair, but she cracks me up. She's smart as hell and a sweet kid.

And the fact that she wears a Rocky Horror Picture Show t-shirt - and knows what the Rocky Horror Picture Show is - has totally endeared herself to me. We had a discussion about the movie and I asked her if she'd seen it live (no, that's one of her dreams) and when I told her I had (1979, Cove Theater, Hermosa Beach, California, thankyouverymuch), I became The Coolest Teacher Ever.

Cracks me up.

In any case, the past few weeks she's taken to wearing black lipstick which, well, actually kind of works with her. You know how most of these Gothy, Punky kids always dress in black and pout and sulk? Well, not this one. She's got her black lipstick on and she's all smiles. In fact, she's all smiles most of the time. (Even though, truth be told, the lipstick tends to get a bit, well, smeary, and it's often on her teeth giving her a bit of a pirate look, but hey, she carries it off.)

In any case, on the way back from lunch she sidles up to me and says, "I'm sad."

I look at her and she's looking a bit frazzled. For one thing, it's obvious she's had lunch because most of the black lipstick is gone except for a dark ring around her lips. (This look she does not carry off.)

"Why, what happened?" I asked her.

"I've lost my black lipstick," she says, her eyes downcast.

"Oh," I say, "you did? Did you check your pockets? Your purse?"

"I've looked everywhere," she says. "And I can't afford any right now. Not until mom and dad get paid and I get my allowance."

"Well, hopefully that will be soon," I say. I meant it. She looked odd without the black lipstick. I kind of got used to it.

"I do too!" she said. "Picture day is Wednesday!"

And of course, plain red lipstick just won't do. Although some of my 1940's colors would totally work on this girl. Perhaps I'll give her some tips on red.

Just a Tad of Pepperoni Please

2011-09-28T20:25:00.001-05:00

It seems like I spend most of the weekend grading work, uploading grades, and preparing lessons. (Because our planning has been sucked away by meetings.)

In any case, this past weekend I was grading tests and eating a low-cal pizza (you can do a lot with those little 100 calorie sandwich things and some turkey pepperoni and low-fat cheese with some sauce and seasoning.)

At the same time.

Which was probably a stupid thing to do because, of course, I dropped a glob of sauce onto one of tests. Crap! I wiped it up real fast, and hoped that the student wouldn't notice. Heck most of them don't look at anything other than the grade, if that.

I totally forgot about this until today. I'd handed the tests back towards the end of class, and as luck would have it, the Pizza test happened to belong to Shadow Boy. Shadow Boy is a kid who, for some reason I have yet to figure out, would rather sit right next to my work station than at a lab group with other kids. I get these kids once in a while, ones who prefer adults to their own age group. Shadow Boy is smart, and with his trendy hair, cool clothes, and earring, is extremely popular and cool, but he still wants to sit up by me. Go figure. I think he likes having a grown-up to talk to. And truth be told, he's pretty entertaining.

In any case, he holds up his test and points to the pizza stain. "What's this?" he asks.

I was busted. Darn it! "I was grading papers and eating lunch at the same time and the pizza dripped on your paper. I'm sorry. I really tried to clean it up."

"Really?" he asks, intrigued that we actually do normal things like eat pizza. He then puts the paper up to his nose, sniffs, and cocks his head to the side for a minute. Finally he says, "Papa Johns?"

"Uh, no, kind of homemade lo-cal," I respond.

"Cool," he says. "Although it does smell like Papa Johns."

When the First Sound You Hear Is a Crash

2011-09-27T17:10:00.002-05:00

You know it's not going to be a good day.

Today, The District had scheduled an online math test for all the seventh graders at all the middle schools. The idea, I've been told, is to track how they are doing in math and try to target deficits, at risk kids, etc. (It's something called Learning Links if you're familiar with that.)

This involved some coordination as all the other grade level teams had to roll their computer labs down to the seventh grade homeroom teachers in order to make sure that we had a computer for all 306 7th graders. We all the instructions on how the kids were to sign in, and what their passwords were, and all that sort of fun stuff. The idea was that it would probably take about two class periods and they'd take the test during their related arts classes so it wouldn't interrupt instructional time (but it did take away our entire planning - again.)

It was suggested that we get the computers all opened, turned on, and logged into the network before homeroom ended so they'd be ready to go as soon as the bell rang and they could take their tests. So, since my kids have used the labs before, as they walked in, I gave them their instruction sheet, with their computer number on it, and told them to get their computer, turn it on, and get logged in. No problem.

Until I heard one of them go crashing to the floor.

Oh great. It had been sitting on a table, someone bumped it, and crash. After that, the screen was busted, so we were short one computer (we each had enough to cover our homerooms.) At this point I was hoping someone would be absent (someone was).

That was just the start of the trip to hell and back.

My kids had no trouble, for the most part, logging into the network. After all, we did that last week and for those who couldn't remember, I had their information. It was getting to the testing site that was a bear. It took some kids at least 45 minutes to get logged in as the site just hung there and kept asking them to refresh until they finally got something. I had, at various times, the testing coordinator, the academic coach, The Principal, Guidance Goober (who's a tech head), and just about every other person who wasn't actually teaching a class in there.

And my class wasn't having near the problems the others were.

Mrs. Eagle's labs did not, for some reason, have the website bookmarked and set up so they could go right to it, so that was a real pain, especially because most 7th graders can't type in a URL correctly the first five times. And then they just hung there (like mine did).

Mr. Math, Mrs. Reading, and Mrs. Language had the network crash so they lost all connection for a while.

We were supposed to be done by the end of 2nd. We finished, for the most part, ten minutes short of 4th period (so no teaching today for 3rd). Some kids were still working by that time and guidance came and got them and they finished by the end of 4th.

At least the Guidance Goober sent out an email asking for suggestions on how to make the process better for next time (later this spring) when we administer it again. Perhaps not having every seventh grader in the county log in at one time?

Just a thought.

Fall break can't come soon enough.

Planning? What Planning?

2011-09-26T20:43:00.001-05:00

We are supposed to get two periods (47 minutes each) of planning so we have a chance to collaborate with our grade level counterparts as well as meet with parents, and meet with the team. (I try to limit team meetings because we're all so busy).

But truth be told, this year, the planning has taken a back seat. There's science department meetings, language arts/reading meetings, math meetings, 504 meetings, IEP meetings, and so forth, and so on. We also give up at least one planning per week to teach a remediation class for our at-risk kids. So, the time we actually have to accomplish anything (like, oh planning for the upcoming week) is gradually dwindling.

This week is a case in point.

Today, we had a s-team refresher meeting during our first planning period and a parent meeting during the second.

Tomorrow we give up all our planning to administer a baseline math skills test to all seventh graders.

Wednesday Mrs. Eagle, Mrs. Angora and I have 47 minutes together to plan for the next week. Following that, a follow up meeting with a parent.

Thursday, an open planning (so far) and another parent meeting.

Friday, remediation class (for me) and...you guessed it, another meeting.

Any wonder that we're still at The School at 5:30 running copies, and getting labs together, and getting ISS work together? It's because we can't get anything done during our planning.

The Rooster Next Door

2011-09-24T18:23:00.002-05:00

I have a new neighbor, Mr. Bantam Rooster.

It all started because instead of the predicted 300 or so sixth graders in the school, we have a whopping 356. Which meant that the sixth grade class sizes were just massive. So massive, in fact, that The District actually saw this as a problem and decided we could hire another teacher. However, at this time in the school year we don't get to actually hire the teacher we want. Rather, The District takes a "qualified" teacher from a building that has lower numbers than expected and transfers him or her to the building where another teacher is needed.

So we got a social studies teacher from a high school across town who has a masters degree in history. But has a license that states that he's only qualified to teach 7th through 12th grade (and has never taught middle school from what I've heard). And probably, would rather die than teach middle school if he's like most folks.

This for a sixth grade social studies position.

So The Principal had to juggle around a whole bunch of teachers in order to get this new teacher to fit into the system where he's qualified to teach. So instead of just disrupting the sixth graders, who are getting a new social studies teacher, we have to disrupt the seventh graders and the eighth graders as well. Mr. Bantam Rooster has been teaching seventh and eighth grade social studies, so he came to my seventh grade team. My social studies teacher, Mrs. Social Studies (who has never taught sixth grade) is now the new sixth grade social studies teacher. And Mr. Came From High School is now the seventh and eighth grade social studies teacher.

Mrs. Social Studies and I are not happy. My whole team is not happy. We've been a good, successful unit for three years now, and Mrs. Social Studies and I made a good pair with our classroom doors right next to each other. But now she's in sixth grade (and she's also teaching a unit of sixth grade health which we find hysterical as she's a smoker) and she's miserable. We have, however, indicated that if the seventh grade goes back up to three teams next year (and if these 356 sixth graders stay, we'll have to), We Want Her Back. Fortunately, The Principal agrees with me. She'd rather not have moved everyone around like she had to, but Mr. Bantam Rooster, who has taught sixth grade, is more trouble down there than he's worth.

And he's going to make my entire team crazy. (Apparently there's a bet in guidance about which one of us will snap first. I thought for sure I'd be the one in the lead, but apparently not.)

I think he's a good teacher. He is retired military and a nice guy, but he's just....a pest. He needs constant reassurance about what he's doing. All the time. He's constantly in my room all the time asking questions (usually the same one over and over.) And I'm starting to feel like the biggest bossypants witch in the world because I'm having to tell him "this is how we do it here." We sign our homeroom agendas (because it's the right thing to do). We let the kids go to their lockers between seventh period and afternoon homeroom (he didn't let them go until after bus riders were dismissed which caused some to nearly miss the buss.) He's having fits because he's not used to kids not turning in homework (eighth graders turn in more homework than seventh graders because they've grown up a bit), and he's calling something like 50 parents a night. And I'm telling him, "seventh graders are different, it's been a while since you've been around them."

And I had to close the door and ban him from my room when Mrs. Eagle, and Mrs. Angora and I had planning because we only have 1st period on Wednesday's to get together what with all the parent meetings we're having. That time is GOLD.

And the kids are completely freaked out and terrified of him. He has, well, a reputation as a screamer. And a mean, tough teacher. But then there are high school kids who love him.

The Principal told me not to worry about being bossy. And to do what I have to to get him to toe the line with our policies and procedures. Which is fine, but just one more damn thing to deal with.

When Technology Can Rear its Ugly Head...

2011-09-22T18:19:00.001-05:00

The District Technology Department had guys running around the building the other day changing IP addresses on printers (during classes of course). The idea being that we're dividing our network into two - one side for the kids to use and one side for the teachers to use.

The good news is that this means we won't be blocked by the filters any time we want to play a YouTube video about photosynthesis. So no more monkeying around trying to download and save a video so I can use it in class - yeah! There's some other good news involved, but honestly, I was so tickled about the YouTube thing that I really didn't care.

I'm not sure what the printers had to do with this, but the idea was that as soon as the kids opened up the labtops in the mobile labs and signed on, it would automatically direct to the printer and the new IP address.

Except it didn't work.

During the day we're finishing up a writing prompt.

Which means no one could print their paper.

Which meant they had to save it to their desktop and then either email it to me via epals (which most of them don't know how to use) or send it to me via Edmodo (which we all practiced on Monday.)

Except most of them didn't bother to write down what their Edmodo usernames and passwords were.

Which made for a very chaotic day.

Maybe I should just have them write the darn things out in pencil.

Ever Have One of Those Days...

2011-09-20T17:14:00.001-05:00

where you are so tired you can't hardly keep your head up off your desk?

Yeah, me too.

Of Sticks and String

2011-09-18T16:29:00.001-05:00

Last spring I got the wild idea that Mrs. Eagle and I would sponsor a knitting club at The School.

I've been knitting ever since my grandmother and mom taught me when I was young. (That's what the women in my family do - we knit. I have knitting aunts, knitting cousins and now even a younger generation of smaller cousins.) Mrs. Eagle doesn't knit - yet - although I gave her a book, needles and a bunch of yarn to keep her busy when Mr. Eagle had his accident and spent 39 days in the hospital a few years ago. We have a fairly active knitting community here in town, with a great local yarn shop, and many of us are involved with the online knitting community, Ravlery. In any case, it's gaining popularity with a lot of younger people and I thought, "why not?" and so we got permission from The Principal and the Knitting Club was born.

The drawback was that we knew most of the members wouldn't know how to knit, but since I taught a handful of kids at summer camp, and had a really nice document reader that can video my hands so the kids can see what I'm doing on a Big Freaking Screen, I figured it was doable.

I also figured about, oh, a dozen kids would sign up. In fact, when word got out that we were doing a knitting club the comments were sort of along the lines of "Really? Knitting?" with that look of disbelief on the speakers face.

We have 31 members.

And that's when I decided to remove the club applications from the ledge outside of guidance so no more would join. Six is easy, twelve, doable, but 31?

Oh good gracious.

The first meeting we had 28 show up, including four boys. We taught them to finger knit because one thing I've learned is that although these kids can do amazing things with their thumbs (texting and video games help), they really don't have complete fine motor skills. By the end of the meeting, they were all making long chains of knitted yarn which they turned into headbands, belts, and whatnot. When we told them that we couldn't meet next week because of an early dismissal, they asked if we could meet on Thursday instead of our regular Friday.

Seriously. We had 26 show up on Thursday. Including the four boys.

I taught them to cast on and they did so well that I went ahead and taught the knit stitch to them. Granted, some are frustrated and need some more work, but for the most part they are getting it. In fact, they're getting it much faster than I expected.

What's amazing both Mrs. Eagle and myself, is that they are all being so well-mannered and patient and quiet when we're giving them instructions. (Mrs. Eagle is learning along with them and they find that particularly amusing.) They are just a dream group of kids. They raise their hands, they are patient when I have to work my way around the room to get to them, they are just wonderful. It's an interesting mix of kids, truth be told.

They are now swinging by with their knitting problems and questions after school, or during homeroom to ask for help. I love that.

What I also love is that the local yarn shop and its customers have donated FOUR HUGE BAGS of yarn and GOBS OF NEEDLES to the club. We're talking a lot of stuff here. All donated. All for my kids. We are overwhelmed.

This week we're going to work on the knit stitch some more and get some practice. But soon, I can see us tackling a scarf project. We're thinking scarves in school colors. Won't that look awesome in the yearbook picture?

Making the Minimum Effort

2011-09-13T19:51:00.000-05:00

We had a test today. (Which means this will be short as I need to get grading.)

A nice little mix of multiple choice, labeling, and constructed response which is pretty much a word for what we called an "essay question" back in the dark ages when I was in middle school.

To prepare my darlings for this, we spent part of the period reviewing how to write a good answer to a science question, how to restate the question, how to have a good topic sentence, how to use vocabulary words correctly, blah, blah, blah. They are expected to write a paragraph, and were given a choice of two out of three questions to answer.

Which makes me wonder...when did one sentence become a paragraph?

But you have to give them credit..instead of LISTENING and READING THE DIRECTIONS where it said they only had to answer TWO out of the THREE questions...they answered all three. With one sentence for each questions.

So unacceptable. And they'll be so unhappy when I make them redo it.

The Voice of Doom

2011-09-12T19:41:00.001-05:00

I was busy doing a Brainpop with my seventh period today when The Enforcer's voice comes across the speaker system.

"Excuse the interruption. Will the following seventh graders please bring their agenda and come to the theater immediately. The list is long, so please be patient."

And then he started reading names.

And more names.

And even more names.

I had paused the Brainpop when he first came over the speaker, and by the time he'd finished, half my class was gone. I could hear kids leaving Mrs. Social Studies' class, and kids in the hallway asking, "Do you know what this is about?" and "Are we in trouble?"

I decided to take a quick peek at my email to see if anything was there, and lo and behold I found an email from The Principal. Apparently nearly half (HALF! HALF!) of our seventh graders did not have an updated immunization record indicating that they had the required booster shots. The State passed a law last year that basically said that seventh graders had to prove that they had their updated shots or they would be suspended from school until the records have been forwarded to the school.

Now, this isn't news. All sixth graders got a letter from The Principal about this with their report cards last spring. All new enrolling seventh graders get a letter about this requirement as well. It's been on the news. The Principal has done EdConnect calls. It's been on the school marquee. Every pediatrician and health department in the state knows about this law and has the forms to provide their patients with the necessary paperwork.

And still, nearly half of the seventh grade hasn't provided the paperwork.

They have until Thursday. It should be interesting to see how many manage to provide the paperwork. And how many don't.

But what's kind of sad, really, is that many of our kids probably haven't had their booster shots, for whatever reason.

Hitting It Out of the Park

2011-09-08T19:38:00.000-05:00

One of the advantages of going to conferences like the ones put on by NSTA, is that you find (or find again) some great ideas for lessons and activities. Years ago, when I was doing a lot of my student teaching, I was familiar with AIMS activities, which I thought were pretty awesome. At the last conference Mrs. Eagle and I went to, the AIMS folks had a booth and I feel in love with their activities and lessons all over again. I particularly like their downloadable E-activities which are awesome.

In any case, Mrs. Eagle, Mrs. Angora and I decided that we really need to do a lot more activities (and we're being encouraged to do so anyway because of STEM which is heading our way next year), so when I found a great activity on their website called Finding Faults With Food, I immediately downloaded it. We'd been looking for a good activity that would help our kids understand tectonic plates and this one looked perfect.

You can't go wrong with cookies, frosting and graham crackers. Truly.

It took a bit of time to buy all the materials, bag everything up and get it ready, but it was worth every minute of it. The kids LOVED it. Absolutely freaking loved it. They were drawing, labeling, working with the cookies (tectonic plates) and the frosting (asthenosphere)...and of course, I wouldn't let them actually eat anything until I'd approved their work and they were completely done - all pictures labeled, with arrows, and their reflections. (Amazing how the reward of chocolate frosting will encourage kids to work.)

It's not often that kids will actually come up to you on the way out of the classroom and tell you what an awesome lab it was, how much they love your science class, and what a cool teacher you are. (Apparently the secret to being a cool teacher is chocolate frosting and cookies.)

Of course, they haven't had one of my tests...yet.

But still, today was awesome. Even for the Seventh Grade Class From the Very Depths of Hell, which wasn't going to do the lab today because of their DREADFUL behavior yesterday (and truth be told, all month long). I tortured them a bit by doing the lab myself up on the document reader and making them drawing the pictures based on what I did. Nothing like a big blog of chocolate frosting up on the huge screen to get the point across that they weren't having any fun. The fact that every kid in the team told them what fun it was helped a lot. They were silent. They were also mad at their classmates, and at least 3 asked if they could change schedules to go into a different class. I gradually gave out supplies to the lab groups, starting with the quietest ones until eventually they all had the chance to do the lab. And they were quiet. And they worked. And they did a fantastic job.

Which goes to show that THEY CAN DO IT...if they chose to.

Hello Little Birdie!

2011-09-07T20:00:00.001-05:00

We had a parent meeting today with a parent and her son, who is not only failing, but failing miserably because he turns in absolutely no work whatsoever. None. Nada. Even classwork. I called Stubborn Boy's mom about two weeks ago because it was really apparent that he was on a fast track to nowhere. She said she was going to set up a meeting and about a week later she did.

But of course, she never showed up.

We called her up and she said she'd forgot about the meeting she scheduled, but we managed to get her to come in today and have our little meeting. She said that Stubborn Boy makes his own choices and his choice is to do nothing as he'll just get passed on like he always has been. This kid went to something like eight different elementary schools, and is on his second middle school. We also found, when his records finally showed up, that his sixth grade teachers last year were planning on retaining him in 6th grade, but our admin decision was to move him to seventh and see how he did. So we brought in Stubborn Boy to the meeting and he blamed - surprise! surprise! - all his problems on another student (who, truth be told, is annoying beyond belief). His claim was that this other student was picking on him, and making him mad, and keeping him from doing his work.

Really? Even in the classes they didn't have together?

Apparently so. At least according to Stubborn Boy. So, we put together a plan where mom wrote down what she's going to do (holding my breath here), we wrote down what we were going to do to help him, and Stubborn Boy wrote down what he was going to do (make up his 24 missing assignments to start.) We also made note to separate Stubborn Boy from his tormentor and keep them apart as much as possible.

Which I did. Stubborn Boy is on one side of the room, with his back to Pest Boy, and Pest Boy is on the other side of the room. They are as far apart as two kids can be.

Which is why I was a bit surprised when Stubborn Boy decided to turn around, right in the middle of class, and flip Pest Boy "the bird", right in front of me and everybody.

What the ????

Both boys earned a trip out to the hallway with me where we had a bit of a discussion about what had transpired. Stubborn Boy said Pest Boy was picking on him, and Pest Boy claimed, typically, "that I was just teasing, I was being funny."

"Really?" I asked him. "Did you see Stubborn Boy laughing any? Did he find that funny?"

Long, long pause while Pest Boy processed this. "Uh....no?"

"No kidding. He didn't find it funny." Jeez!

So both boys earned my first discipline forms for the year. What a shock. They're in the Seventh Period Class From the Very Depths of Hell Itself. Although Stubborn Boy is moving. After today, I don't even want them in the same classroom.

Could It Truly Be....Fall?

2011-09-05T14:17:00.002-05:00

We start school in early August, so it's not unusual to have several really hot days or weeks before things start to cool down.

This doesn't mean we like it any, however.

By August, I'm tired of the heat and humidity. This year was particularly bad as we had an unusually warm June, so it seems like we've been hot and humid for eons. What with football season starting, and kids and teachers getting into the routine of school, it's about time we have some cooler weather. Football when it's 95 out is just wrong on so many levels.

In fact, last week we get an email from The District that informs us that "due to the expected heat index of over 100 degrees, all outside school activities will be cancelled." No problem for me since I wasn't doing an outside activity, but it does give you an idea as to how hot it was last week. (And, I might add, this is the first time I recall getting an email like this - in nine years at The School.)

Today, however, is a new day. And it's 65 degrees. And breezy. And overcast. And my rain gauge at 2.4" of rain in it so my yard now is trending towards green, not brown. The AC is off, the windows are open, the cats are happy.

And the forecast? 70's and 80's...we're trending towards Fall!

Working, working, working

2011-09-05T11:34:00.001-05:00

I actually took Saturday and Sunday off for a quick trip with Hubby to Atlanta to photograph some Civil War battlefield sites for a presentation he does. Which means that all the papers and projects I need to grade are sitting here...waiting to be graded.

So, aside from laundry, I'm spending today grading work.

My mom asks me how come I have so much grading this year. It's not that we're giving out more work, because we aren't. It has to do, yet again, with more kids. That, combined with the fact that nearly every planning period lately has been taken up with either a evaluation meeting, a 504 meeting, a parent meeting, or whatnot. There's barely enough time to get labs and activities set up, let alone any grading.

So, I bring the grading home. At least that means I can multi-task. Laundry - grade - play with cats - laundry - grade - play with cats...and if I'm lucky, I'll get it all done and have some time to knit or read, too things, I'm way behind in.

You Mean We Had to Do the Work?

2011-09-03T17:17:00.001-05:00

On Tuesday I taught the kids how to do a guided outline, which is a good tool for kids to use to help with their content area reading. I modeled how to do it, we did part of it as a class, and then they worked with their groups. No problem.

Then I said the words that apparently were spoken in a language foreign to twelve-year-olds: "We will go over this and grade it on Friday so if you haven't finished, it's homework."

On Wednesday and Thursday I had written on the board that homework was to finish their guided outline as it was due on Friday.

I also said multiple times that the guided outline was homework and due on Friday. Any guess what I heard from some of my kids when I asked them to get out their guided outlines on Friday?

"You mean we had to finish it?'

Sigh.

This is Not a Drill...we think.

2011-09-01T20:43:00.003-05:00

Right towards the very end of sixth period (yes, one of the classes from hell), The Principal got on the intercom and announced we were going into lockdown. So, we locked our doors, covered the windows, got the kids away from the doors, got them quiet and sat down to see what was going on. I wasn't sure if this is a drill or not because we usually (but not always) get a head's up for drills, and because it was so close to a class change. And then again, The School is across the street from a bank and it seems like there's a bank robbery about once a week or so these days. It could be real...

My kids at first were, typically, acting like they didn't have a clue how to be quiet and listen until I mentioned that THIS MAY BE REAL and then some of them bought a clue and got quiet. All in all they didn't do too bad, and my two really severe ping pong ADHD kids even managed not to lose it for the time we had to stay quiet.

That being said, I was way luckier than Mr. Math. Mr. Math had Happy Boy in the room.

Happy Boy did not deal with the lockdown well. If you recall, Happy Boy has one volume - LOUD - and the fact that it was a lockdown didn't help any.

"IS IT FOR REAL MR. MATH? IS IT FOR REAL? IS IT FOR REAL?" he kept asking Mr. Math. Like me, he suspected it might be real and was desperate to quiet Happy Boy down. Happy Boy wasn't having any of it.

"IS IT FOR REAL MR. MATH? IS IT? IS IT?" he kept yelling.

Mr. Math at this point is trying, desperately to get him quiet. "It might be, I don't know. But you HAVE TO BE QUIET because we don't want anyone to even think there is anyone in this room."

"BUT IS IT REAL? IS IT REAL?" Happy Boy wanted to know.

At this point I think Happy Boy's classmates were wondering about how much trouble they'd get into if they'd just opened the door and shoved him out in the hall (to be picked up by marauding bands of bank robbers, hostage takers and even some skitters.) Mr. Math was beginning to wonder about how much trouble he'd get into if he'd just clamped his hand over his mouth and got him to quiet down that way.

Finally one of the other kids put a stop to it, "Will you just shut the hell up and listen to Mr. Math?!" he yelled. The fact that this was a Normally Very Quiet Kid, shocked not only Mr. Math and the other kids, but actually managed to get Happy Boy's attention. Mr. Math was so shocked he didn't even write him up for using profanity. (He probably wanted to give him a medal.) Finally Happy Boy got the message and got quiet and was silent for the rest of the drill.

Which was what it really was, we finally found out.

But just you watch. We'll have another bank robbery in town next week and knowing my luck, Happy Boy will be in my room.

What Is It About 6th and 7th Period?

2011-08-31T20:20:00.000-05:00

It's not unusual to have a class, or classes, From the Very Depths of Hell Itself. In years past, my third has won that title, plus a seventh, and then a few others in between. And usually, when you have a class From the Very Depths of Hell Itself, that same group of kids, due to all the weird scheduling things we have going on, tend to travel together so all the other teachers on your team have other class periods From The Very Depths of Hell Itself. Mine might be third, Mrs. Social Studies may have hers fourth, Mrs. Reading has hers fifth and so on.

But something really weird is happening this year. Nearly every teacher you talk to, and it doesn't matter the grade level, has the same two horrible classes every single day - sixth and seventh period.

They are, truly, classes From the Very Depths of Hell Itself. Mine are Horrid. What makes them even more horrid is that my fifth period is AMAZINGLY AWESOME. They are the perfect class. They are the class that makes it fun to be in the classroom. And then...then...sixth period walks in and it all goes to hell. And seventh period is even worse.

Which makes one wonder...what in the world are they putting in their lunch?

I mean, these kids are awful in terms of behavior (and of course, it reflects in their grades). They just can't be quiet, pay attention, follow directions, you name it. (And then my third, fourth, and fifth, all do these things and do them well for the most part.) But after lunch? Good gracious.

Mrs. Eagle has it so bad that her seventh period is about ready to make her throw in the towel when it comes to labs and just make them do workbooks.

Well, actually it's worse than that. We were sitting around at lunch the other day talking about the show Falling Skies. And in that show, the Second Massachusetts is based in a high school. We got us to talking about how long we could hold out against the skitters and the mechs at our school with what we have in our science lab, and so forth. (Okay, we have weird conversations at lunch. You spend all day with 12-year-olds and you'd have weird conversations as well.) Mrs. Eagle said it wouldn't be a problem. Why?

"I'd just give them my entire seventh period to harness and then they'd just leave us the hell alone."

They are that bad.

But sad to say, the aliens would probably give that group back.

Now, That's Some Thinkin'

2011-08-30T19:56:00.000-05:00

I met Bus Boy last Spring during my stint working as an admin when the discipline referrals were starting to overwhelm the office, threatening to bury the Guidance Diva under mounds of paper. It's also known as the season When the Kids Went Freaking Insane After the Very Big Deal Government Mandated Tests.

Anyway. I recognized Bus Boy's last name - it's a bit unusual - because I had his brother. We only had a few weeks of school left so we had a little heart to heart about behaving on the bus and helping him to realize he had just a Few More Days to deal with the bus, and he Could Do It! So, it was a bit funny when I looked at my rosters and I realized that Bus Boy was going to be in my home room this year. I actually liked the kid.

And truth be told, I still like him. He's personable and funny (a lot more animated than his older, very serious, brother), and a pretty good student. However, on his student information sheet, he answered the question "What do you like the least about school," with "My bus driver and riding the bus!"

So, he still hates the bus. Go figure.

In any case, most of our after school clubs are starting to meet this week, and yesterday he stayed after they dismissed bus riders so he could attend game club. He also handed me an application for knitting club which will be meeting on Fridays. (He is the sixth boy in knitting club so far.)

"Bus Boy," I asked him, "just curious. Why'd you join the knitting club?"

"Oh, my friend is in it," he said, "And I already know how to crochet, so I figured I'd give knitting a try."

I'll be honest, this just about cracked me up, and I chalked it up as one of the more entertaining comments I'd heard this past week. And, truth be told, it is a pretty fair reason why a kid would want to stay for knitting club (especially since he's a boy.)

But then today I noticed he was staying late again.

"So Bus Boy," I asked him "what club are you staying after for today?"

"Oh, newspaper club," he said. "I think that sounds like fun and I have a digital camera to take pictures."

And then it dawned on me that this kid has really gotten it figured out. He hates the bus. He hates the bus driver. Solution? Join clubs that meet every single day of the week so he never has to ride the bus home and his brother or parents have to come pick him up.

Genius.

I can't wait to see what club he's going to be attending tomorrow.

A Roll of the Dice

2011-08-29T19:27:00.000-05:00

Today was the first day of The School's Chess and Board Game Club.

Mrs. Eagle and I have been sponsoring this club for, I think, something like seven years now and we usually get around 20-25 kids every year. Sometimes when the fashion show club gets rolling (student council puts on an amazing fashion show every year for a fundraiser) we lose kids who are models, or doing the lighting, or something. Or soccer or baseball season or something starts up. But in any case, we can usually count on about 20 kids.

We had 45 today.

45!!

So many that we had to split them up into two rooms - I kept half, and Mrs. Eagle took the other half (fortunately we both have tables in our rooms rather than desks.) So from 2:30 to 4:00 we had screaming, yelling, laughing chaos in not one room, but two.

Amazing!

Oh, and by the way, (and this is for all those folks who think teachers roll out of school at 2:30), we don't get paid for this. We just do it because it's a cool thing to do for the kids, many of whom have no one to play games with them at home.

Knitting club starts after labor day. So far I have 20 kids signed up (was thinking we'd get lucky to get 12). Including 5 boys.

Seriously.

Our kids are digging the clubs this year.

Something of Value

2011-08-26T22:21:00.001-05:00

Every once in a while I am reminded that you really don't need to watch soap operas if you spend most of your time in a middle school.

Thursday my fifth period kids are coming in to the room to put their things down and get ready for our walk down to lunch. I'm getting ready to put up my agenda PowerPoint (a scrolling PowerPoint that gives the kids instructions and lets them know what we're doing) and I do a quick check of my email and see one from Mr. Math. It reads, "If anyone finds a rather large stack of SWPBS money, beware! I just had a bunch stolen from my desk and they didn't have my name on them yet."

Oh great. However, I look up from the email and my eye falls on one of my kids in the back of the room who is standing there counting out his HUGE MASSIVE WAD of reward money. The stack is so huge he has a massive binder clip on it that he's using as a money clip. Amazing. Especially since this isn't the type of kid that's such an angel he's going to be earning that much money in the three weeks school has been in session.

We drop the kids off at lunch and then the team along with Mrs. Eagle are having our lunch and I mention that Sneaky Boy was in the back of the room counting out his cash and he may be the one we're looking for. Mr. Math mentions that he had a number of sixth grade teachers email Sneaky Boy's name as well since he apparently did the same thing last year. At this point Mrs. Language adds that she saw Sneaky Boy counting out a HUGE MASSIVE WAD of cash in her class as well, and in fact, he used five dollars of it to buy a chance to sit in her teacher chair for the period.

(Okay, some explanation - we're trying to have things for the kids to buy that don't cost us things in addition to the real items in our store. So, kids can buy an opportunity to read the morning announcements, a ticket to sit in the teacher's chair, lunch in the library, and so on.)

Mrs. Reading then adds that Sneaky Boy was also seen in her class counting out a HUGE MASSIVE WAD of cash in her room and he also paid to sit in her chair for the period. She suggests going back to her room to see what was on the back of the money he used to pay for this privilege, so she went back, and went to Mrs. Language's room as well, and brought back the ten dollars that Sneaky Boy spent with them that morning.

By this time Mr. Math has called The Enforcer and filled him in on our suspicions because we do take this pretty seriously at the school - this is the currency our kids use for a lot of rewards and shopping and it really does have value with them. (Which, The Principal reminds us, is a good thing.)

I turns out that Sneaky Boy had forged all ten of the dollars he'd used to buy his chair-sitting that day. He'd written most of our names on several of them (he spelled Mr. Math's name wrong!) and the reasons he gave for receiving the money was pretty funny. On one where he'd forged my name he wrote it was for "saying yes mame" and another one from Mrs. Social Studies was for "telling the truth". You can imagine how much fun we had with that.

By this time Mrs. Reading has the rather frightening thought that perhaps, while he was sitting in the teacher's chair in her class, he may have gotten in her desk and taken her supply of money as well. So back she went to her room only to discover - you know where this is going, right? - that her reward money was all stolen out of her desk.

Mr. Enforcer comes down to the lunch room, snaps up Sneaky Boy, gets a hold of his wad of cash and asks us to sort it all out. Most of it didn't have a teacher name or signature on it and the rest were mostly forged teacher names. We have a policy that a reward buck has to have either a teacher's initials or name written in ink, or a stamp (I use a signature stamp) on them to be valid. So, when you see one that's entirely filled out by a kid (and that's pretty apparent, especially when they can't spell our names correctly), then it's safe to say we may have a problem.

Well, truthfully, Sneaky Boy had the problem. And he earned himself five days in ISS.

What's funny is that all this transpired in the span of about 15 minutes at lunch. And it probably wouldn't have transpired if Sneak Boy wasn't so blatant in the counting of his cash. I hope he enjoys all the workbook packets he's getting instead of labs!

Please, Let it NOT be so.

2011-08-24T20:06:00.000-05:00

I feel like I'm coming down with a cold.

There's something just WRONG about a cold when it's 96 degrees outside. Colds are for when it's nasty out and you want to curl up under a warm blanket with a cat and a book or too.

And having one the first month of school sucks some more.

Off to bed.

Better Late Than Never, I Suppose

2011-08-22T17:41:00.000-05:00

We have a policy at The District to keep track of kids who are no-shows. These are kids who were enrolled last year, didn't indicate that they were moving, but who don't show up for school. If, after ten days, they haven't shown up, we drop them off the rolls and figure they've moved on.

So, since the ten day period was up on Friday, I spent the weekend putting together my nice, new gradebook with all the nice new names of all my nice new kids.

In ink, of course. Colored ink.

So, this morning one of our kids walks this girl over to me and says she's new and she needs a locker. No problem, I have a few lockers left to hand out. I ask her name and it occurs to me that she's one of the kids we just dropped off the rolls on Friday.

"Hum, you're not new here, are you?" I asked her.

"Oh no, I went here last year," she said.

"I'm asking because we dropped you off the roll as we thought you weren't coming," I told her. (I found out later from Guidance Diva that they had to go through the whole enrollment process with her in PowerSchool.)

"Oh, yeah, we were on vacation," she said.

Really.

I guess we know where the priorities are in this family.

It's a Numbers Game

2011-08-20T17:48:00.000-05:00

When I first started at The School nine years ago (Wow, has it really been nine years?), the average size of each grade level class was around 300-320. Maybe. My first year we had two full seventh grade teams, and then a mini-team, to accommodate all the seventh graders. As our numbers have gone up and down, we've morphed to three full teams, down to our current incarnation of two teams with a whole bunch of kids (144 on my team at last count) but with some eighth grade teachers picking up the extras and teaching a couple of classes of seventh graders.

They have Very Smart People at The District who spend a lot of time staring at maps and real estate projections and all sorts of things to figure out just where, exactly, all these new kids we get every year (about 600-800 a year the past ten years) are going to go to school, and where we need to build new schools. And then this year they announced a new zoning plan to take affect next year to even out the buildings so we don't have one school with empty classrooms and another crowded with portables.

A few years ago when they eliminated the third seventh grade team and started having the eighth grade teachers help out with the seventh graders, Mrs. Eagle and I sort of shrugged and said, "whatever", but thought that it wouldn't last too long because all of our feeder schools have portables all over the place. They were FULL. We sort of figured this would be one of those little population dips in the road, and eventually the numbers would be back up again.

And from what the Guidance Diva tells me, this could be the year that the bubble has moved to middle school. As of Friday, after we dropped all the no-shows off our rolls and added in all the new kids who registered the past two weeks, the sixth grade has a total of 356 students. That's the biggest class she has ever seen and she's been at The School way longer than I have. The sixth grade teachers, who are used to slightly smaller class sizes than seventh and eighth, are besides themselves. They are putting out requests for student desks as they have rapidly run out of room and furniture.

And they just keep on coming.

Very few seventh or eighth graders have registered this fall, but there have been hordes of sixth graders. And if they stick around a few years, that means they'll be a whole bunch of seventh graders next year. And that's not factoring in the 100 or so new kids we'll get with the new zoning.

So. What does that mean for us next year? Three full seventh grade teams? Huge class sizes? More eighth grade teachers teaching seventh grade?

Who knows? I do know we won't find out - most likely - until May. If we're lucky.

Longest Day Ever

2011-08-18T20:33:00.000-05:00

Open House tonight!

I still find it weird that we hold Open House barely two weeks into the year when I'm still trying to learn all my kids' names. But hey, at least I can recognize them!

Had a good turn out, everyone seemed happy (and a number already got my first parent email last week so it's good to know it's working).

The best part? Seeing my former kids come back and visit. There is one family that I've taught all three of their kids - a daughter who's a senior (and who I totally adore), a son who is a sophomore, and a daughter in eighth grade. This family doesn't have much financially, but they are good, solid people. They all showed up to visit and say hello. I got very close to the oldest when mom asked for my help with her when she was going through a rough patch in middle school. It's nice to know that parents realize you can love their kids to and trust us to help them when they need it. Glad to say that so far, the kids are doing fine. I'm hoping that they'll be able to earn some scholarship money for college as they are all quite bright. I love that this family cared enough to stop by and visit.

Some of these kids and families never leave your memory or your heart.

Two Down, Two to Go

2011-08-17T16:13:00.000-05:00

Whoo-hoo!!! My first two observations of the year are done and off my plate! My next two aren't until January so I have some time to actually catch my breath.

The lab we did today went well, the kids were great, and even later in the day (when I wasn't being observed) my two classes that make me insane (sixth and seventh) managed to behave. In other words, I didn't have to kick anyone out and give them an alternate assignment (the dreaded workbook packet) for acting like an idiot during a lab. Maybe they'll get the picture.

The lab was a "mining for minerals" lab that we picked up at the NSTA conference last year. It involved birdseed, tiny seed beads (gold, silver, blue for copper and white for reclamation). The kids have to sift through (in other words mine) the birdseed to collect their minerals (the black sunflower seeds are iron along with the glass beads). Then some math to determine how much money they made (or lost due to reclamation costs). Had a blast and the kids were QUIET. They were so busy digging through the seeds, especially in my fifth period, that you could have heard a pin drop. They didn't want to stop!

Love it when a plan comes together.

Glue + Scissors + Seventh Graders = Chaos

2011-08-16T19:29:00.000-05:00

I think I'm losing my mind.

Last year, Mrs. Eagle and I piloted science notebooks in a few of our classes to see how they went. Well, they went great so we're going full speed ahead with our science notebooks for all our classes this year.

The problem is, apparently cutting and gluing (correctly) is a bit beyond some of my kids this year.

I have never - never - seen such a disaster in the making. These kids, despite me modeling it over and over and over on the document reader, can't seem to cut and glue things into their notebook without making a disaster out of it. I had foldable flaps glued in upside down, inside pockets glued all the way shut rather than on two sides only, notebook tabs cut in half and glued upside down, you name it. It's been, shall we say, a challenge.

And then when you get my seventh period (which, I'm starting to think is the class that all the rather "interesting" and quite low kids got stuck into), you get an absolute nightmare. When Happy Boy is the star student in the class, you've got issues.

Obviously, the million times I say, "look at the screen and watch what I do!" is going in one ear and out the other.

And then of course you get the goober who decides to see what happens when you pour glue in the palm of your hand.

(What happens is Mrs. Bluebird pulls you into the hall and explains to you that we do not act like four-year-olds in seventh grade, and that we use the glue for our notebooks, not for decorating our hands, and if you ever do anything like that again, I'm calling your mother. THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING. )

Oh good gracious.

We're Just in the Dark Here

2011-08-15T20:48:00.000-05:00

I'm trying to remember back to a first few weeks of school where we didn't have something dramatic happen. Trouble is, I can't seem to find a memory that fits that criteria.

Today was no exception.

This morning, probably about 15 minutes after the kids left homeroom and went to first period, all the power went out in The School. I was actually in the hallway on my way to the front office when it all went dark. (Fortunately, since we have first and second period planning, we didn't have any kids.) The power went off, the emergency lights went on and gave off enough light to somewhat figure out where you were going, and all was quiet.

Seriously quiet.

What was weird, is that in the nine years I've been at The School, this is the first time we've had the power go out and I DIDN'T hear a large yell from the student population. Usually when the power goes out you can hear the kids yell. You'd think they'd be used to power going out considering the number of severe storms we get here, but no, every time the power went out, there was an uproar.

Except for today. There wasn't a peep - even out of the sixth grade. You'd walk by classrooms and you'd hear teachers teaching (sans all our technology) and the kids listening, and just everyone carrying on as normal.

Wow. Amazing.

Just a Leeetle Bit Different

2011-08-12T22:10:00.000-05:00

You ever have a kid who just is annoying as hell, drives you (and the rest of the kids) up a beam but who you really, really, really like?

We have one this year.

A few years ago, we didn't have enough kids that qualified for placement in our ED unit (emotionally disturbed) so they relocated that unit at another middle school. This year, however, the numbers were up, so we had the unit moved back to The School. We needed to find a teacher for the unit and NO ONE wanted it (even out of state teachers applying to the district didn't want it - face it, dealing with emotionally disturbed kids is not everyone's cup of tea.) So, the Principal talked to Mr. Baseball, one of our special ed teachers, and he agreed to do it. Now I, for one, think this is a brilliant idea because he has a great way with kids (especially boys) because he's also a coach.

In any case, Happy Boy is one of his students.

When we first found out that we were going to have one of his students we were a bit concerned - after all these are usually High Maintenance kids and there are times they do not do well in a normal classroom. Over they years I've had quite a few of them, some did well, others didn't do well at all, and it all comes down to the kid, what their particular disability is, and how it all plays out. However, Happy Boy is on consult which means he's able to spend pretty much the entire day in the regular ed classroom, so he's not as severe as some of Mr. Baseball's other kids.

Our IEP's aren't ready to be signed yet (hopefully on Monday) so I don't really have a clear picture yest of Happy Boy's disability outside of the fact that he's major ADHD, he has some form of Autism, and he has absolutely no filter and says whatever pops in his mind. His social skills are very weak, but he's probably one of the most social kids I've ever seen. He is DELIGHTED to be in school. It's one great big adventure for him, and he comes in just ready to go every morning. He's got longish hair that's often quite unkempt (he honestly looks like a mad scientist!) and he often looks like he just rolled out of bed, but he's always on time, happy to there, and ready to let everyone know.

He's driven both Mrs. Reading and Mrs. Social Studies to distraction the first few days, and he's freaked out a few of the kids. Apparently he wanted to impress all the kids in Mrs. Social Studies class by saying the "F" word as often as he could. (It worked, they freaked.) A quick email to Mr. Baseball, a quick talk in the hall, and that one was nipped in the bud. He's in my seventh period class which has a pretty high level of pretty low kids (why does that always happen?), and he had one kid decide she couldn't take the fidgeting anymore and she moved to sit by herself. The other two left at his table don't seem to mind him much, and are often pretty helpful when he leaves early (he leaves my class ten minutes early to catch the special ed bus home.) All that being said, this kid is SMART and can actually find things like his homework and his science lab contract (signed!) and turn it in - that's more than my regular ed kids chose to do at times.

So today he was in rare form. He comes racing up to me before class to inform me that he hadn't taken his medication and he needed someone to walk him to the nurse because he didn't remember how to get there "because I really need to take my medication now and I really hope it's okay because I forgot so I need to get to the nurse but I don't know how to get there."

Okey dokey. One of my other kids volunteered to take him, and off they go, Happy Boy just chattering away.

They come back before class, Happy Boy is all bubbles, and we begin work on our notebooks. This was the first day we did our student notebooks and Happy Boy actually had his composition book (bless him) and was having a grant time cutting and gluing and just doing fine.

"I'm having fun, Mrs. Bluebird!" he yelled across the class a few times. (When's the last time a seventh grader told me that?) The other kids didn't seem to know how to react to this one.

Ten minutes before the end of class he yells, "Mrs. Bluebird is it time for me to go now?!" and when I said it was, he needed to pack up, his tablemates took his notebook and said they'd finish up for him. "Oh thank you! You guys are the best! Thanks so much!" and off he goes...only to poke his head into the room, "Mrs. Bluebird can you open my locker?!" So I go out to the locker, open it for him. "Oh, Mrs. Bluebird, you are the nicest teacher ever!," he yells (I think that's the only volume he has.) "Thank you so much! You have a great weekend! Bye!" and off he goes.

Later this afternoon I'm talking with Mrs. Reading and Mrs. Social Studies and the topic of Happy Boy comes up. Mrs. Social Studies nods her head, "You know, he can be annoying as hell, but I really, really like the kid."

And we all agreed. He's pretty awesome.

If I Won the Lottery...

2011-08-11T20:20:00.000-05:00

...the first thing I would do would be to buy new lockers for The School.

I am so not kidding here. And I am not alone. Mrs. Eagle and I both discussed this on our road trip before school started, and we decided one of the things we absolutely hate the most is Dealing With the Locker Drama.

Our building is 45 years old. The lockers in my part of the building are, as far as anyone can tell, the original lockers that were put in at some point after The School opened. And the kicker? They weren't new at the time. They were removed from another school and put in our school when the other school got new lockers. (Got that? Yeah, confusing. What I'm wondering is why we never get our lockers upgraded).

What this means is that these lockers are a royal pain to open. Many of them are broken and beyond repair. Many of the locks are hard to turn, with numbers that are difficult to see. They're dinged, dented, they stick, the handles break off, they are a nightmare.

And, due to the number of kids on our team this year (even more than last year), we are running out of workable lockers to assign. So today, the second day the kids had their lockers, we were dealing with kids having all sorts of fits trying to get their lockers opened and getting their things out so they could get to class (I'm not even worried about tardies at this point.)

I have one student, Wimpy Girl who is absolutely devastated that she might have to carry more than one book at a time. (They are, she says, heavy. She is, to be nice, not tiny.) That's the beginning of the drama. She went through three lockers today before we finally found one she could open. Each time she had a problem she burst into tears and just about lost it there in the hallway. Mrs. Social Studies and I spent most of our hall duty showing kids (including Wimpy Girl) how you turn to the right, stop, turn to the left and pass the first number (they have trouble with this) and stop at the second number, and then turn to the right to the third number. I had Wimpy Girl spend most of afternoon homeroom practicing on her third locker until she could open it without trouble - or tears.

And she wasn't the only one.

I can't help but thing how much easier life would be if we had lockers that worked - my kids are dreaming of lockers with fingerprint sensors so all they had to do was touch their hand on the locker and it would magically spring open - not a bad idea, truth be told.

But I have a feeling, I'll be retired before we ever see new lockers.

First Full Day

2011-08-09T15:34:00.000-05:00

We had our first full day today with kids changing classes, breakfast, lunch, and all that fun stuff.

The good:

The kids, for the most part, seemed pretty good. They seemed nice. The were a tiny bit chatty but got the message when to be quiet. Of course, we could still be in the honeymoon phase. However, it seems I have a lot less girls with attitude and gang-banger wannabes than last year. Thank the Lord.

Not a lot of absences. There have been years past when I'd have 5-10 absent in every class - kids who've moved over the summer and weren't coming back (but didn't bother to tell us yet). I may have 2-3 absent, if any absent at all. And most of these kids know the routine around here, so that's nice.

My homeroom kids, especially the ones who are walkers and hang around for a bit while the buses are loading, are some of the nicest kids ever. I already enjoy them.

The Bad:

Apparently the nutrition department installed new software in the cafeteria. But didn't bother to tell or train anybody - they found out this morning when they went to serve breakfast and it took forever. Breakfast and lunch were a challenge, but we worked it out.

PowerSchool is being difficult. Enough said.

We have a number of eighth grade teachers teaching a number of sections of seventh grade which is confusing for the kids who are used to having all their teachers in one little area. They'll figure it out tomorrow. In the mean time I'm giving directions like, "go to the eighth grade hallway, turn left, and first room on the right," and I'm not sure they're getting there.

I'm tired.

Oh, and for those of you who commented regarding the four observations...That's what happens when you win Race to the Top. New state law...professional licensed teachers get 4 observations a year, apprentice get six. I feel sorry for our princpals who have to do all these. I honestly don't mind, but I wish it wasn't the 2nd week of school. I'll be lucky to know all their names by then.

Whirl, whirl, whirl.

2011-08-08T20:57:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow is the first full day of school with all our students. The schedule is a bit weird as we're spending two hours in the morning with our homeroom going over and training the kids in the School Wide Positive Behavior Support (hereby known as SWPBS) system (for the next three days). Fortunately all of my kids were here last year so it will be more of a refresher for them, although we did tweak it a bit. What this also means is that I'll only have 30 minutes for each of my class periods.

Which isn't much...barely enough time to hand out all the paperwork for science class and get attendance done.

And I also discovered, yet again, one of the huge disadvantages of being at the beginning of the alphabet. My first two observations will be next week. (We have a new state-wide observation system where ALL teachers get observed at least four times a year.) I'll barely know my kids' names by then.

Sigh.

I feel like I'm on a hamster wheel already.

And a one, and a two, and a three, and a four...

2011-08-06T19:19:00.000-05:00

I have finished going through my rosters (fully realizing that they'll probably change a bit in the next three weeks) and have made file folder labels for each of my kids.

I have two Elijahs in my home room. Fortunately one wants to go by Eli and the other Elijah.

But the topper is that I have four Peytons.

Two of them are in my homeroom, one male and one female.

The other two, both male, are in my fourth period class.

What's weird? I've never had a Peyton before. Could it be a lot of my parents are University of Tennessee, Peyton Manning fans? Perhaps.

The New Cell Phone Policy

2011-08-06T19:10:00.000-05:00

Our school board, without much fanfare - which either means the local media was sleeping yet again, or the school board really didn't want to make an issue of it, or both - has made a slight change in wording in our district-wide cell phone policy. That slight change of wording, however, may have some pretty serious consequences.

Previous policy stated that cell phones must be off and stored in a student's locker until the end of school. No big deal. Kids usually hang their backpacks in their locker, and at the same time, they turned off their phones and put them away as well. When a kid lost his or her locker (we take them away if they chronically don't come to class prepared), we'd simply have the kid turn in his or her phone to us and we'd lock them up in our file cabinet and then give them back at the end of the day. No problem. For the most part it worked well except for the chronic offenders (and I had none last year) who absolutely could not live without texting all day long.

Now the policy states that they have to be turned off and put away. Put away means in a pocket, in a purse, or even in a locker. But the crux of the matter is that they can have their phones with them as long as they are off.

Now some teachers are upset that kids could sneakily whip the phones out and take pictures of their tests and email them to their students. (I, for one, am not too concerned about this because even when I let my kids use their notes on their tests, they didn't do any better.) There is some concern on the part of Administration that they'll have a stampede of pissed off parents in the front office after someone wrote up their little darling for some infraction and the little darling went to the bathroom, whipped out a phone and called to complain to the parents. That's not to include those of us who are just not wanting to have to deal with phones going off in class.

However, the folks that are really concerned, and truth be told, they have a right to be, are the PE teachers. They probably see, more than any of us, the bullying and teasing that goes on with large groups of kids and they are foreseeing a lot of trouble with cell phones (specifically cell phone cameras) in the locker rooms. Let's face it, kids this age aren't exactly good at making decisions and they can be horribly mean to each other. It's simply a matter of time before one of these knuckleheads takes a video or photo of someone in the locker room (in a state of undress) and then we'll find it texted to all their friends and posted on YouTube within minutes. I can see how a very shy seventh grade girl (Crying Girl comes to mind) would have a complete melt-down if something like this happened to her. It's vicious, it's mean, and it's so middle school.

I'm sure the school board thought that they'd be making their lives easier by eliminating the parents who were complaining that kids got write ups for cell phones that dropped out of pockets and fell out of purses. However, I'm not sure they'll be prepared for the wrath of a parent of a kid who is cyberbullied as the result of cell phones in the school. We have enough trouble with cyber-bulling as it is.

Honeymoon

2011-08-05T19:54:00.000-05:00

I don't know if I've finally figured out what I'm doing, or if the stars were just aligned right, or if someone up there just loves us, but this was the smoothest, and best, first day of school we've ever had at The School. And this, despite the fact that PowerSchool has been very cranky as of late and was going up and down all morning long. Our phones worked, the kids all had schedules, and everyone pretty much showed up where they were supposed to.

Now the schedule thing may not seem like a big thing to some folks, but being able to give a kid a schedule, listing classes and teacher names, is like gold. For one thing, the parents want to see it. And for another, it makes a kid feel important. One of our aides had a son starting middle school across town and his schedule had his name on it, and nothing else - no one could figure out where he was supposed to go. And from what he said about the lines in the guidance department, he was not alone. (And he was NOT happy, either.) Our guidance department seemed almost empty, especially compared to what a busy place it can be some days.

The two Criers that my team was bequeathed did quite well. Both of these kids, Crying Boy and Crying Girl are painfully shy and very attached to their Mom's and Do Not Want to Be at School. I had guidance put them both in Mrs. Reading-Mom's class because she's the warm, cuddly type (and is back from maternity leave, we missed her!) and she'd do well with them. The good news is that neither cried today, and Crying Girl actually got up and participated in a "getting to know you" activity. A huge accomplishment considering both these kids spent a lot of time in guidance just sobbing their eyes out. (I actually know Crying Girl because she's in our Board Game Club - and she'd sit there and cry for whatever reason - she can never really give you one - but she'd come every week and once she got over the tears, she played games and made a few friends.)

My home room of 26 kids ended up with 24 showing up...which is pretty good. They all seemed bright and happy to be there - none of the eye-rolling 'tude I got from my kids last year. In fact, Mrs. Eagle and I both commented that these kids seemed more like kids, not like the twelve-year-olds going on 32 we had last year. They were quite a bit of fun. Chatty, but they got the message pretty quick over when to talk and when to shut up. I actually had fun with them today, and believe me, there are years when it's almost torture to get through this first half day.

But then again, it's the honeymoon. We'll see how they are by the end of next week.

But we can always hope, can't we?

Down to the Wire

2011-08-04T19:31:00.001-05:00

So tomorrow is the First Day of School With the Kids (keep in mind, many of us have already been in and around the building since mid-July). It's a half day and we only get our homeroom kids, and that in itself is a challenge.

Having a bunch of kids for three and a half hours is a bit, well, boring. For me, as well as for them. Keep in mind, we're used to 45 minute class periods. So, in between all the mandatory blah, blah, blah, I've got some fun activities planned that hopefully will get the little darlings out of their seats and moving around and getting to know each other. (It still kills me that kids actually can sit next to each other for a freaking year and still not know each other's names.) Hopefully all the talk about code of conduct, and cell phone policy (changing this year and no one is happy about it), and clubs, and rules, and where the bathrooms are and all that very important but dreadfully dull stuff (especially if you are 12) won't drive us all around the bend.

Me? All I hope is that the air conditioning continues to work as well as it has done all this week and that PowerSchool actually works. It kept crashing today so it wasn't until about one o'clock before I actually was able to see my rosters and get them printed out.

The good news is that I don't have 37 in my homeroom this year. I have a more manageable 24. But then again, 20 kids can enroll tomorrow and who knows what chaos will ensue?

Wish us all luck!

Melting

2011-08-03T17:48:00.000-05:00

When I left school today it was 105 degrees.

With the heat index, the weather service reported it at 115 degrees.

I'm trying to remember what all those stupid snow days felt like.

Thank goodness my room is heavily air conditioned, but honestly, I'd rather give up fall break and now show up until after Labor Day when it's a tad cooler. Seems weird to be starting school during the hottest week of summer. And it seems to do this every year.

Whap, whap, whap, whap...

2011-08-02T18:47:00.000-05:00

Teachers report to school tomorrow for two days of meetings and rosters and human resources song and dance and fellowship and who knows what else.

Oh, yeah, copying. Because goodness knows we have to give the kids STACKS of paper to get home and get signed and hopefully get back. And that's not counting the huge stacks that came from The District Office and are now laid out in neat piles on tables with signs that say "Teachers Do Not Take Yet!"

So Mrs. Eagle and I, hating lines and being a bit, well, obsessive about Being Prepared, met at school this morning and spent about two hours getting our copies made - before all the other staff members showed up and needed to make their copies. We copied off the new (four page) Science safety Contract (lovely light green color), the Seventh Grade Supply List (bright orange), Student Information Forms (white, how boring), Course Syllabus (cheerful yellow!), Study Guide for our first unit (lavender and the unit is rocks and minerals), and a few more I can't even remember right now. We punched holes, stapled, stacked and now...we are ready.

I think.

Tomorrow it begins!

Counting Down

2011-08-01T12:58:00.000-05:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah....I know, haven't been posting much but truly...how many of you want to hear about how my knitting is going and what I've been up to? Let's be honest, there's always a lot more material for this blog when school is in session.

Which it will be on Friday!

Gosh almighty, it's almost scary to realize how FAST summer slid away from me. Granted, we put in quite a few extra days to make up for all the snow days we had last year. And in reality, we don't get that much of a summer, and especially not the legendary "three months off every summer", that people think we have. Which makes me wonder..does anyone get three months off? Anyone? We get about eight weeks and it appears that for most of that I was taking in-service courses.

Believe it or not...I was already in my room and got it all set up by July 19th. I suppose you can say I like to have everything prepared. Mrs. Eagle and I spent quite a few hours - already - getting things ready for this year, including co-teaching an in-service on science notebooks (which had more non-science teachers there than science teachers - go figure). We also did a quick 5 day trip up north to visit some friends, do some touristy things, and visit family. But just in case you think we got off easy...we actually worked on this trip. She drove, I read and took notes, and we planned a number of changes in our way of doing things. We'll see how this all works out this year.

First day for teachers to report is Wednesday, but I'll probably be in the building tomorrow with Mrs. Eagle getting copies made of the mounds of paperwork that we send home. I pity the parents.

A look back at summer...I didn't get nearly everything accomplished that I wanted to. Never got started on the "knitted dogs" project (never even ordered the yarn) as I got sidetracked by another baby blanket and a lace scarf. My garden is still a work in progress - a very dry work in progress at this point. I didn't lose weight, but didn't gain any, and I've been walking about an hour a day. I'll miss that.

I'll also miss naps.

Yeah, well, I'm back...for a bit

2011-07-17T16:43:00.000-05:00

So I haven't posted in a while because I've been out of town...and then coming back I realize that being out of town means not a lot got done around the house while I was gone. (At least the cats were fed, but we won't talk about the litter boxes.) To say I've been a tad busy pretty much sums it up.

And tomorrow I go in to school to set up my classroom - hopefully - it all depends on if the janitors are done with the floors.

To say that summer goes by pretty fast is an understatement. It goes by horribly fast. June is pretty much The Month of In Service, then there's Independence Day, then I was able to squeeze in a quick visit to see my mom in San Diego for a week - then back home, and then...school. It goes by awfully fast.

And of course, after a week of glorious weather while out in California, I come home to humidity and heat.

Blech.

Pass Alongs

2011-06-30T15:48:00.000-05:00

There is a tradition down here in My Beloved South that I love. It's called Passing Along Plants. (I'll be honest here and say that perhaps other regions of the country do it, but I never experienced it or even heard about it until I moved here. And if Southern Living says it's a tradition, it's a tradition.)

Basically people here think nothing of giving you a plant to put in your yard. For many people, gardening is a serious past time and hobby so passing on their love of plants is a natural. I've had people give me irises, hostas, stonecrop, lamb's ear, and more. In fact, a lot of the plants in my yard were pass alongs.

And when Mrs. Social Studies mentioned that her garden was a bit too much for her to upkeep and she was going to get rid of some plants, I volunteered to take care of them for her. I arrived with buckets, shovel and gardening gloves and scored some hostas and a peony. I have a very shady corner that grows very little and I'm hoping the hostas can survive there. Plus I wanted a peony. Always have, and I had a good location for one.

And surprisingly, for someone who's still trying to figure out what grows best where, I've actually passed on a few plants myself. It's fun. And it's a neat way of filling up your garden.

The Fortunate One

2011-06-29T21:27:00.000-05:00

Happiness is coming back from lunch in the middle of an in-service (one of those delightful 6 hour ones) and not only finding a parking place (yeah!) but one in the shade! (double yeah!)

A Little Tweaking Here and There

2011-06-27T15:51:00.000-05:00

Mrs. Eagle, Mrs. Angora and I were at another in-service today.

Mr. Bluebird, when I got home today, asked me if this was finally the last in-service of the summer (alas, no.) "It seems like that's all your doing," he commented, and in a way, he's right. It does seem like it's all I've been doing, and if he thinks it's bad this year, wait until next year when STEM rolls down to 7th grade and I have to spend even more time taking in-services than I do this summer.

When I actually sit down and look at the time that Mrs. Eagle, Mrs. Angora, and I have put into our curriculum for the upcoming year - together and on our own - it's quite a bit of time. And I suppose the thing that surprises most people is that we don't just recycle our lessons or procedures from year to year. Granted, we do look at our old lessons to see what we did (and how long it took, and the notes we have on them about changes we'd make in the future), but we certainly change things a bit.

And this year it looks like we're changing quite a bit.

We're implementing science notebooks in all our classes this year. (We tried them in two classes last year for the last semester to work out the kinks.)

We're going to be revamping all our tests. We used to give vocabulary tests along with a unit test, but we're eliminating the vocabulary tests. For one thing, the vocabulary tests were basic recall, a pretty low level of learning. Now we're going to redo our tests (and that includes looking at and possibly rewriting all the questions as we took a lot of assessment writing in-services this summer) and include several constructed response questions on the tests as well. The new tests should have better multiple choice questions on them as well as the constructed response where the kids can explain their learning.

We're going to do more center activities, and more inquiry activities. In short, more labs. Going to the NSTA conference this last year was a gold mine in terms of finding new things to utilize. This may pose some challenges in the classroom management and discipline areas, but we've got a plan in place for that. (Want to goof off during a lab? Grab your workbook, go next door, and do an alternate assignment. They'll hate that.)

That's our start. So, despite the fact that most everyone seems to think that teachers are sitting around drinking margaritas on their back deck or at a far-off beach all summer long, I'm sitting here at my computer working up rubrics, and assignments, and all sorts of things so we can hit the ground running on August 3rd, when school starts up again.

Come to think of it, I could use a margarita after all this work.

Curiosities

2011-06-25T11:25:00.000-05:00

Why is it the things I want to grow the least, grows the best in my garden? If weeds were a cash-crop, I'd be wealthy.

Omen

2011-06-24T15:35:00.002-05:00

You know it's going to be a good day when you drop the bagel on the floor and it lands with the peanut butter side up.

Well, I've Caught Up on My Sleep - Finally

2011-06-22T17:00:00.000-05:00

My blog tends to be quite boring when I'm not in school because, well, I'm not in school. School gives me a lot to observe, especially the everyday rituals of that creature known as a seventh grader, and being at home doesn't give me that opportunity.

Not that I haven't been busy.

Let's see...so far, three in services and another one on Friday and another one on Monday. Got together with Mrs. Eagle, and Mrs. Angora (who will be teaching both 7th and 8th science next year) to sort of map out our nine weeks of lessons along with our new scope and sequence. Fortunately the powers that be saw the wisdom of moving a few things around so we'll be doing biology at the end of the year and all the physical science stuff at the beginning. It flows better that way. And, of course, we looked at what did and didn't work last year and are making a few changes to how we do things. I'm actually kind of looking forward to some of it.

I've been doing lots of yard work (we grow weeds like nobody's business down here) and have enjoyed my first beets from the garden. We've had a lot of heat, and a lot of rain, so things are doing pretty well. Only problem is it's too wet to mow so I may have to borrow some of Mrs. Angora's goats to eat my lawn.

And I've been watching a lot of sports (and knitting) on television - the end of hockey season with the Stanley Cup (thank goodness Boston won, I can't stand the Canucks), and of course the College World Series which is another favorite. And I've been walking at least an hour a day. Usually pretty early in the morning before it's so blasted hot, but not always. But I'm still doing it, even today, when I have a cold.

Yeah, believe it or not. I'm home for the summer, away from infected kids, and I get a cold. Lucky me.

But so far, I'm doing some research, I'm getting stuff done, and catching up on my sleep. So much so that while I was at a Civil War Round Table meeting this past week, I looked over at Mrs. Eagle and said "this is the first time in months that I haven't felt exhausted after 6:00 pm at night."

I wish there was a way to store up sleep.

Another Use for a Dissecting Tray

2011-06-06T08:46:00.000-05:00

So although our last day of school (for teachers) was on Tuesday, the day after Memorial Day, Mrs. Eagle, Mrs. Angora and I, along with our assistant principal and former science Teacher, Mrs. Sparrow, showed up on the first of June to go through and organize (and clean out) our science lab. This was all brought about because of the huge focus we're seeing in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). It was also brought about because that lab, in the five years we've had it, is a mess. People don't clean up after themselves, people have dumped things they don't want in there, and there is a lot of stuff in there that we've had for years and years that no longer applies to any curriculum, that we really don't need. (Like a box, a big box, of science fair certificates - and we haven't had a science fair in six years. That went to an elementary school.)

So we went through every drawer and every cabinet, labeled and cleaned what we needed to keep, and had piles of stuff to go to the high school, and the elementary schools, and then a huge pile of just plain trash.

And they had some aluminum dissecting trays. Which got me to thinking...

I'm having trouble with a crow.

For some reason this year Mr. Bluebird decided he wanted me to plant some sweet corn in the garden. I'm not sure where this came from. It's been years since I've planted sweet corn mainly because it takes up a lot of space and I can get it a lot cheaper and easier from the local farmer's market or the Amish farmer I buy from every Saturday. But, whatever, I said okay, we'll plant sweet corn.

So after the huge rains we had - again - in May, I went and planted a square of sweetcorn. And about a week later, while looking out the bathroom window at my garden early one morning, I saw a big black crow poking holes in the ground where the sweet corn was planted.

Upon further inspectionI discovered that the darn bird had dug up each and every seed I'd planted. He'd left tell-tale little holes he'd dug. This was not good.

So, since I had more seeds, I'd planted another batch of corn.

And a few days later, he'd dug them up again.

This was getting ridiculous. In the meantime, Daddy Bird and I were at Lowe's (we always seem to spend a lot of time there) and saw that they had sweet corn seedlings in among all the tomato and pepper seedlings. His idea was to plant the seedlings and then pull a joke on Hubby by making him think that the crow didn't really get the corn and it had come up anyway. I'm all for a little joke here and there so we bought the seedlings and I planted them and we were all ready for our joke which we were going to do while hubby was cooking steaks on the grill.

Except I went out to the yard about an hour before we planned to start cooking and that stupid crow had already gotten into my garden and pulled each and every seedling up and thrown it on the ground! ARGH! I quickly replanted the seedlings, we had the joke on hubby (he figured it out because neither one of us can keep a straight face) and in the meantime I found some gardening fabric I had in the shed to put over the corn seedlings to hopefully keep the evil crow away.

But then I saw those aluminum dissecting trays...which, cut up into eighths, and strung on a string across the garden box, might just keep that stupid bird away from my corn.

So far, so good.

Memorial Day

2011-05-30T12:23:00.000-05:00

For me, it's not about the cookout, or the day off, or hanging by the lake.

It's about remembering.

I live in a military town so the War on Terror is a daily reality for us. We've lost a lot of soldiers in our community this year, and those loses have reached out and touched all of us. And this year, it's even more poignant for me as the person I am remembering the most is one I never met - but I had her son in my fourth period class.

It's tough having a student who loses a parent under your watch. It's even harder when it's in the line of duty.

I've worried about Clever Boy a lot today. He doesn't have school to distract him and keep him busy and he lives in a really rural part of our community so it's not like he can just walk next door and find someone to hang out with. I hope he's finding something to keep him busy (he does love to read) and that he and his Dad can, finally, hopefully, find some common ground and do some Dad and Son things. But I still worry.

God Bless Clever Boy and his Mom. Rest in Peace Sgt.

Packing Up to Pack it In

2011-05-29T19:57:00.000-05:00

So the last day of school for the kids was on Tuesday the 24th.

The last day for teachers, due to the fact that the kids were forgiven the ungodly number of snow days we had this year but the teachers were not, is Tuesday the 31st.

Which means we have had a lot of time to kill. Our days usually consisted of about 3 hours of in-services, meetings, workshops or whatever. Then lunch on our own. Then the rest of the afternoon was spent packing up our rooms, working with other teachers, and trying to keep from becoming completely bored before we could leave at 2:30. The 8th grade teachers - every one of which had to change rooms - really needed the time.

Just in case some of you were wondering, the 8th grade teachers had to change rooms for a variety of reasons. One, since our district is pushing a big huge STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) initiative into the 8th grade this next year, they finally saw the light and realized that science teachers probably need to be in the rooms with running water and sinks, since the social studies teachers who were in those rooms weren't using the running water and sinks. (No, I still do not have running water and a sink and it will be a cold day in hell before any of us in the old part of the building ever get those, even if we are teaching science.) The other reason is that we will again have a number of 8th grade teachers who will be picking up two7th grade classes next year, and it makes sense to have these teachers on the end of the 8th grade hallway that's closest to the7th graders. Last year we had 7th graders running all over the building (and consequently being late all over the time) because their teacher was way down on the end of the 8th grade hallway. So, truly, it all works out. Or it should.

Maybe because the admins solicited topics for the in-services, they actually were, for the most part, pretty interesting. We did a review of our first year of SWPBS (school wide positive behavior support) implementation which was interesting. Our discipline referrals are way, way, way down this year, but of course the grade with the most problems is 7th. Let's face it, they just lose their minds that year, regardless of all the positive reinforcement you give them. As Mr. Enforcer said, it's amazing the amount of stupid boy stuff that he sees out of the seventh graders. (Sort of like the kid who smuggled his friend onto the school bus in a duffle bag since he didn't have a permission slip from the principal to ride another bus. Gotta wonder about that one.)

We also had a great in service on what kind of information you can find in a cumulative file. The Principal is planning on giving us two days of in-service credit at the beginning of the year to work on the files of our 20% of kids who are considered most at risk so we can come up with some interventions - great idea, if you ask me. As luck would have it, my whole team knew exactly what file the Principal was using as soon as it went up on the document reader - even though the names had been blacked out - because it's one we worked with most of the year. Truly, this poor kid has one of the worst life stories I've ever heard and you could have heard a pin drop as The Principal went through his file and highlighted things that popped out at her that we needed to look at. Mother had him at 17, father deceased, did okay on state tests until the 5th grade, removed from the home twice, mother has a drug problem and was charged with abuse and neglect, not to mention the fact that she'd lock her kids in their bedrooms while she turned tricks for drug money, she'd lock them in the car, live-in boyfriend was on the lam for some sort of felony conviction, and it went on and on. (Is there any surprise here that this kid does not do well in school?)

And of course Mrs. Eagle and I spent a lot of time going through our files (and dumping a lot of stuff), going through our unit binders (and dumping and adding stuff) and generally coming up with some ideas for next year. Although STEM is going to be hit hard and heavy in 8th grade, we're being "encouraged" to attempt more of it on our own next year as well (no big deal as we did a lot of that this year anyway).

So, it's been productive, and unrushed, but we're all about at the end of finding things to keep us busy. So one more day, which includes our end of the year lunch, and then we're free.

Except I have a science lab in-service on June 1st. Maybe I can sleep in on the 2nd...

So Long, Farewell!

2011-05-24T21:51:00.000-05:00

Today was the last half day of school!

It's fair to say that the seventh grade teachers were probably more excited than the kids. I'm not sure why we even have a half day as the day, truly, serves no purpose. We managed to get the report cards printed and issued yesterday (in the hopes that the little darlings would stay home), but they came anyway. Pretty much the day is spent showing a movie, letting them run around in the gym for a while (the weather has been awful), and hoping they don't annoy the daylights out of us on this last day.

Fortunately for me, all the kids in my home room (with one glaring exception) that gave me hives were gone today - either in alternative school, suspended (for fighting the day before), in school suspension or they didn't come. That made for a pleasant day - one of the most pleasant we've ever had. I put on a movie, but most of the kids chose to go through the game club games and spent the morning playing Apples to Apples and Monopoly. Nicely. Without causing a fuss.

It was actually quite pleasant. Which goes to show that when they want to be, they can be well mannered and a lot of fun.

So, we sent them on their way, most to 8th grade, others to other states (we have quite a few of our military kids moving out of the area now that their military parent is back from Afghanistan), and some to who knows where. But we waved the buses goodbye (my favorite tradition), and wished them all a wonderful summer.

The bittersweet moment for Mrs. Social Studies and I was saying goodbye to two of our boys from last year. These two young men are kids that I would not hesitate to give a home to should they need one. They are polite, well-mannered, and just delightful. (They also happen to be best friends practically joined at the hip.) Neither one was a star student in 7th grade (one is a sped kid) but they flourished in 8th grade. And they never let a day go by that they didn't stop and give each of us a hug. I kid you not - they'd be walking down the hall with all their basketball buddies and they'd stop, come visit us (making their friends wait) and off they'd go. Their friends quickly figured out that this was something they were going to do regardless of how much they teased them, and the teasing ceased and pretty soon these kids were coming by to say hi even though we never had them as students.

I love these two. And I know they'll be okay. We had a talk with them a bit today about high school, and what they hoped to accomplish - they have managed to stay clear of the gangs and drugs that so many of our kids fall prey to, and that's a blessing. (They ascribe this to good role models and the fact that "it's not something Jesus would approve of or do.") They know they'll be fine because they have people that love and support them, both at home and in school.

I'm looking forward to their graduation in four years.

So to T and T, I love you both, God bless, and I'll miss my daily hug from the two of you. I'd be glad to call either one of you my son.

Girl Drama - A Theory Behind the Madness?

2011-05-22T19:31:00.000-05:00

As you know doubt have read over my past few posts, we've just had an amazing amount of girl drama this year. We are not alone. The eighth grade as well as the sixth grade report mass amounts of girl drama as well. It's almost as if a damn has broke and we're just flooded with girls gossiping, arguing, threatening, fighting and just generally acting like a bunch of horrid little brats.

It really takes the fun out of everything, truth be told. But there's always hope. We did have one nice day this week when our main instigator was absent and all the girls were, surprisingly, well mannered and actually kind of nice. But she came back the next day to stir the pot and life was hell again.

So, I'm on the telephone the other night talking to my cousin who lives in Colorado. We call about every other week or so and chat and catch up on what's going on and all that sort of thing. Like me, she doesn't have any kids of her own, but she's the favorite aunt for her sister's three children so she does have some kid experience. I began to tell her about all the girl drama we were having and she commiserated. And then she said something that had never, ever occurred to me.

"Did you ever wonder if all this increase in girl drama is a result of too much reality TV? I mean after all, that's all it is, a bunch of grown women running around fighting with each other and acting horrible."

Oh. My. Gosh. I think she may be on to something here. I have NEVER watched a reality television show. EVER. (They hold absolutely not interest for me. None at all. I teach middle school, why would I want to subject myself to the same bad behavior but this time in adults?) Although I've never seen one of these shows, I've seen enough advertisements for them to realize that they seem to have a bunch of grown ups acting like children. Badly behaved children.

It's often been said that kids model what they see. Well, if all our kids are doing is watching sitcoms where people are rude to each other and reality television where they fight and argue with each other all the time, is it any wonder they act like this themselves?

Counting the days...one and a half to go.

The Cursed Class...Part Two

2011-05-17T17:20:00.000-05:00

The 8th graders finally - FINALLY - got in their field day.

Granted, it rained most of yesterday so it was (of course) canceled. Today it was dry, but cold (at least for this time of year). I don't think the temperature ever reached above 55 and it was cloudy and windy. But by golly, they got field day in.

So that was the good news.

The bad news is that on field days for the other two grades, we're more or less trapped with our kids all day with no planning or breaks. So, during first and second period when they usually go to their elective classes such as PE, art, band, and the like, they stay with their homerooms (because the PE, art, and band teachers are all out running field day). Usually what we end up doing is giving them some fun time - a movie or something easy like that because, after all, these are their fun elective periods.

Today, however, guidance wanted us to give them an on-line career inventory survey to help them do career planning with them as they get into 8th grade and high school. The good part was that it was all done on line.

The bad part was that it was all done on line.

The Guidance Goober saw to it that we all had the computer labs delivered to our rooms, as well as an individualized instruction sheet for each kid that gave them all the user name, password, and other information (including birthdays as some didn't know their own birthdays last year!) that they needed.

All they had to do was follow the directions and everything would be fine.

Let me say that again. All. They. Had. To. Do. Was. Follow. The. Directions.

You know where this is going, don't you? Just last week we did a Periodic Table of Elements project that involved FOLLOWING DIRECTIONS and many of them were amazed that I'd hand it back to them and tell them to "read number six again and follow the directions." They assured me they had followed all the directions, but it one glance I could tell if they had or hadn't. They just want to jump in, and not do anything so borrrrrring as reading directions.

So. Today they had to go to a website, set up a user account, and answer 60 easy questions about what they liked and did not like to do. Easy, right?

I had three - three! - kids who took over 45 minutes to set up their user account because they couldn't (wouldn't?) follow the directions on their sheet which told them EXACTLY how to set up their user account and what their user account was called.

I am not kidding here. Between the account issues with my kids, and then having to listen to them whine about pages loading slowly - "good gracious, there are 300 seventh graders logging in all at once, give it time!"- it was a solid two periods of aggravation. I think Mrs. Social Studies next door was ready to toss at least one kid and computer outside and slam the door behind him.

It was definitely a day that called for chocolate.

Counting the minutes.

The Cursed Class

2011-05-15T19:10:00.000-05:00

Last year's seventh graders got a raw deal towards the end of last school year.

For those keeping track, last May was The Flood. Something like 13" of rain fell in one weekend and most of middle Tennessee looked like a lake. We ended up missing a week of school due to flooding, and we still have businesses that are just now reopening after last year's disaster.

As a result of The Flood, we ended up canceling a lot of events. We canceled the school play. We canceled a band concert. We even canceled our weekend camping trip to the local recreation area. (Now that, I might add, wasn't solely because of The Flood. A lot of it had to do with the fact that The Flood caused every snake in the entire region to hike on up to dry land to places they've never been before. The camping area was overrun with them. The thought of seventh graders + camping + snakes = chaos didn't appeal to any of us.)

And of course, this was the group of kids who never got in field day due to tornadoes.

So can you guess what's happening to them this year? Anyone?

Yup, you got it.

Friday was supposed to be field day for the 8th grade. It rained. It was cancelled.

It has rained all weekend.

Tomorrow it's going to be in the 50's (cold for this time of year) and raining.

We may run out of school before we run out of bad weather.

Girl Drama

2011-05-14T09:32:00.000-05:00

I hate middle school girl drama.

I realize that as a female I was once myself a middle school girl, and although my memories of that era are long ago and quite foggy (probably by choice, middle school is a miserable time), I'm sure I had my share of drama as well. That doesn't mean I have to like it. Especially when it's causing so many issues in our classrooms this week.

Remember how good they were for field day? Well it was a one-time thing, I'm afraid. Since then we've had fights pop up all over the place, good kids doing the most outrageously stupid things (shooting straightened staples out of click pencils comes to mind), and just general mayhem.

And of course we've had the girl drama.

You gotta like boys. They get annoyed at someone, they'll duke it out, then shake hands and be best buds afterwards. It's forgotten. They move on. Girls on the other hand will stir the pot over and over and over and over, making threats, telling tales, dragging in other girls and pretty soon you have a team in an uproar. And Mrs. Eagle's team in an uproar because we're getting "cross-team pollination" between our girls. Apparently the trash talking starts in their elective classes, where the teams are merged together, then spills over.

It's enough to make me want to pull my hair out.

It got particularly bad on Friday. Mrs. Social Studies and I had a number of girls request to talk to a guidance counselor about "issues" they were having with other girls. Unfortunately, guidance was buried in end of the year crap, we were one counselor short, and they had to deal with fall out of actual fights. As far as guidance and the admins were concerned (they'd been mediating all sorts of girl drama that day among other things), if they couldn't get along, and caused trouble, it was a big time write up and it wouldn't be pretty. So, the girls didn't get called in, and Mrs. Social Studies and I decided to take things in our own hands. We actually ended up moving kids between our classrooms to separate some of the girls, but felt we needed to take more action.

We yanked a few out in the hallway for some candid discussion, took names, got different sides of the stories, and realized that we had Had It Up To Here with the disruption and the drama. This is your typical girl drama story:

"Well Girl A is mad at me because she said I stole her boyfriend, but I didn't, he's just a creep, and she told Girl B and Girl B told Girl C and now Girl C and Girl D along with Girl A and Girl B are threatening to jump me and I can't go in your class because Girl A and Girl D are there."

That's just the tip of the iceberg. Seriously.

By the way, Mrs. Social Studies and I have rooms that are next to each other and have doors that are separated by a mere 14". When we take kids out in the hall for a chat, and close the doors, it's amazing how well behaved the kids in the rooms are (we can see them through the glass). Why? They're desperately trying to hear the conversation. Cracks me up every time.

So, we called Mr. Math, who has an inclusion teacher during sixth period, and asked if he'd watch our rooms while we went around to the other team classrooms and basically laid it on the line. We have six days of school left and by golly, they weren't going to make it a living hell for the teachers and other students. Two of our team classes had subs (who were probably a bit surprised to see the two of us at the door, asking for a minute with the kids), but they seemed really happy to turn the room over to us for a few minutes. The girls were warned (and so were the boys, we told them the same deal held for them although they've been a lot better behaved than the girls - however, Monday is another day) and as far as everyone is concerned, that was a final warning.

Let's hope it works. But I'm not placing any bets on it.

Field Day? Without a Hitch? Really?

2011-05-10T20:15:00.000-05:00

All the seventh grade teachers had been dreading Field Day this year. After all, our kids have been absolutely wild since we finished The Very Big Deal Government Mandated Testing. We had a really nice day during testing week, took them outside to blow off steam, and ended up breaking up fights left and right. (The upside to that was some of our biggest pains in the rear ended up getting suspended for about ten days which was a nice break for everyone.)

So, to say that we were NOT looking forward to Field Day was an understatement.

And now that it's all said and done (on a lovely day in the low 70's with NO TORNADOES), it turned out to be one of the Best. Field. Days. Ever.

Strange.

These kids, who prior to field day were doing everything in their power to cause drama and stir up fights were actually well behaved. We had Mrs. Reading's substitute (Mrs. Reading had a baby a few weeks ago) stay inside in a "holding room" where trouble-makers got sent and they could spend the rest of the day reading or doing piles of worksheets. She had only four customers and these were kids who got sent to her by The Enforcer after doing something stupid at breakfast.

Seriously. We didn't have to send a single kid in for getting into trouble. Not. One. The Enforcer told me he kept checking the holding room to see how many kids were stacked in there and he was astounded to see that the only kids in there were the ones he'd put in.

What's kind of funny is that after we practically had to threaten kids to sign up for events, we ended up having kids begging to participate (once they saw how fun it was). We had some new events this year and they were a lot of fun, for both the kids participating and those watching (and some of them were a lot harder than we expected).

So it went off without a hitch. Which is almost scary considering this group. We kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and it never did.

But never fear...we may have had a wonderful field day on Friday, but on Monday they were back to their old tricks and they celebrated by having a knock down drag out fight between a couple of our boys in between 2nd and 3rd period.

Counting the days...just counting the days.

Field Day Fiasco

2011-05-04T20:59:00.000-05:00

Field Day for the Seventh grade is this Friday.

As long as it doesn't flood, hail, storm, snow, whatever. Heavens, last year we spent most of field day in a hallway while tornado warning after tornado warning was issued. Such fun. So we shall see if the weather holds and we do indeed have field day. (We have a frost warning tonight, of all things. In May.)

In any case, many of the Seventh Grade teachers have said all along this year that this bunch of kids really, really don't like each other and really, really don't have any team or school spirit. They are a cantankerous group. I've often said that individually, most of the kids are pretty good kids, but put them in groups (or classrooms) and you fell like you're on mile 1,999 of a 2,000 mile car trip with six kids who can't stand each other and who've fought the whole way.

It's been that kind of year.

So on Monday I had The Team talk to their homerooms and get kids signed up for Field Day events. The idea was that I'd take all the names, do a spread sheet in Excel and then make sure that each kid got to do at least one of the events they wanted to do. (It actually works out pretty well this way.) Our kids responded pretty well and we ended up fielding pretty full teams for all the events, including some of the new ones the kids were unfamiliar with. (For the record, everyone wants volleyball, kickball and tug-of-war).

Mrs. Eagle's team, however, had a different response. They pulled all the kids together during seventh period on Tuesday and they couldn't get kids to sign up for anything, even the three most popular events. They were rude, the didn't want to participate, they wouldn't listen, they didn't care. According to Mrs. Eagle, all they want to do on field day is run around and talk with their friends. Participating in the actual events wasn't on their agenda.

So, she went and talked with Coach Cool, who pretty much organizes the whole thing, and told him that we might have a problem. (The fact that we only have two seventh grade teams this year is making it even more difficult, especially since so many of our kids are cross-teamed. There's not a lot of team identity or spirit like their used to be.) Mrs. Eagle pretty much said that unless something dramatic happened, they'd probably end up forfeiting all the events because she couldn't get kids to sign up.

So, The Principal, who we also talked to, suggested that on Field Day, Mrs. Eagle's team dismisses the few kids that did sign up to go to the gym and begin the volleyball tournament, whole the teachers keep the rest of the kids back in class and put them to work on something. She figured that after about an hour of seat work they may actually want to sign up for kickball.

Coach Cool decided to announce that little gem to the PE classes and lo and behold, we had kids crawling out of the woodwork wanting to sign up for events. I needed only a few kids to fill a few empty spots, and managed to get those filled without any effort. Mrs. Eagle said kids were practically running to her room to volunteer to sign up.

So I guess, when the alternative is sitting in a classroom doing worksheets all day, or getting out in the sun and maybe actually participating in a little game of tug-of-war, being outside wins.

The Longest Month

2011-05-02T19:41:00.000-05:00

I don't know if it's because we lost all our ~~mental health days~~ holidays (due to going over our snow day limit), or if the kids are just more annoying this year, or what, but this is turning out to be the longest 16 1/2 days of my life.

I am not alone.

There probably isn't a staff member on board who isn't just dragging into the building every morning, hoping to make it through the day. Of course, the nearly constant thunderstorms and tornado sirens aren't doing us any good when it comes to getting a good night's sleep. But still, we're just dragging.

And even coffee isn't helping.

Southern Spring

2011-04-27T20:18:00.001-05:00

I am sick of bad weather.

We are coming up on the anniversary of our 1,000 year (or 500 year) flood (it depends on who's talking what year it is), and the city is asking for volunteers to fill sandbags because - SURPRISE! - we're experiencing flooding again.

Within the past week, we've had numerous tornado warnings, storm damage, awful amounts of rain, hail, you name it. Everyone is cranky and irritated (kids and staff included) because we're spending nights in basements, closets and anywhere deemed safe while the tornadoes are popping around, dealing without power, and having to hang out with insurance adjusters as they assess damage.

Let's see...last week we sent kids home early due to power problems throughout the county.

Monday night we had rotten storms again - more power outages - and even more damage than we had last week. School was cancelled. (Smart call). We only lost power at home for 8 hours and I consider myself lucky. Some people still don't have power. One neighbor lost a tree, another lost most of his expensive, not even a year old, vinyl fence. Trees everywhere and power lines down.

Last night more tornadoes, more time in the basement (did not lose power - yeah!) and we delayed school for an hour, and let out today an our early due to flooding. Some teachers didn't make it in (trees in roads, trees through house, flooding, etc.) and a lot of kids stayed home because they were predicting more tornadoes today.

Can we just have some sunshine?

But truly, I'm thanking the Good Lord that it wasn't worse. We're alive, and unharmed, and although tired, and cranky and a bit soggy, we really got lucky. Other folks didn't get so lucky (just look at Alabama for example). My heart goes out to them.

Dodging the Raindrops

2011-04-24T15:02:00.001-05:00

Spring in the South can be a bit tricky.

The redbuds are out, the irises are blooming, the trees are leafing out, the grass is greening, and we're all trying to get our vegetable gardens in so we can have some great big huge ripe tomatoes come Independence Day.

However, one of the drawbacks to Spring in the South is Gawd-Awful rotten weather.

We just happen to live in the part of the country where cold fronts and warm fronts tend to bump into each other which means we get a lot - A LOT - of thunderstorms and rain and the occasional tornado. When I went house-hunting when we first moved here, Hubby wanted one thing - a full, finished basement. The primary reason was he had somewhere to put his office and our massive book collection but the other reason was "they have too many tornadoes and we'll need some place to go." The fact that a tornado siren is down at the end of my street was just a bonus.

Tuesday night they were predicting some really bad weather to come our way and I was hoping it would come through before it got too late. I can't sleep during severe weather and really didn't want to spend most of the night in the basement. As luck would have it, I was sound asleep when the tornado siren just about knocked me out of bed at 12:50 in the morning. Great. Hubby and I got the feline children in their kennels and got everyone downstairs pronto (we're getting really good at this and so are the cats). We had just turned on the television to see what was going on when the power went out. Fortunately we have plenty of flashlights and we pretty much sat in the dark, listening to my old Y2K wind up radio until the all clear sounded. At that point we tried to go back to sleep but still didn't have any power. Our power came on around 4:15, so I was one of the lucky ones.

By the time I headed to school around 6:15, it was barely light enough to see that there were a lot of trees down, street signs and stop signs laying flat on the ground, and debris all over the roads. The traffic lights were out as well, which made it a bit dicey getting to school as some people don't seem to get a clue that when there's no traffic light, every intersection is considered a four way stop. Surprisingly, when I got to The School, we actually had power.

We were one of the lucky ones. Apparently power was out all over the county, including at a great many of our schools. The high school down the road from us was dark, and there probably were only a handful of functioning traffic lights throughout the entire county. Most of the kids rolled off the buses bleary eyed. Half the staff didn't have power. (There were some unusual color combinations and outfits spotted among staff and students, the result of getting dressed in the dark.) By the time school started I was thanking my lucky stars that I actually had power since it appeared I was one of the fortunate few

As luck would have it, with so many schools without power (and with not good time frame from when they'd get power), the District decided to call it a day and pick everyone up and send everyone home. Thankfully we won't have to make this day up (we're still making up time from our snow days this winter). The seventh grade teachers - for once - got the best of this deal as our planning is 1st and 2nd period and they sent the kids home before 3rd.

The forecast for the upcoming week pretty much indicates thunderstorms for the next five days. It's Easter Sunday today and it's already rained 1.7" in my yard and still coming down. I'm starting to worry a bit as we're coming up on the anniversary of The Flood we had last year that many people are still recovering from.

But they say a flood like that comes along every 500 years....right.

Priorities

2011-04-19T19:01:00.000-05:00

I opened up my email program at school at 6:20 Monday morning to find this:

"Clever Boy's father called to let us know that his mother was killed in Afghanistan last week. He won't be at school for a few days and would like you to collect work for him."

This sucks on so many levels.

One of the hazards of working in a building that serves a lot of military kids is that the odds will eventually catch up with you and you'll get a message like this. That doesn't make it any easier. And the fact that it isn't the first makes it suck even more.

So, we got together work for Clever Boy but I really don't care if he turns it in or not. He has other things to deal with that are lot more important than a writing prompt and a set of workbook pages on states of matter. Mr. Math actually talked with Clever Boy's Dad (who is divorced from Clever Boy's mom) and it was obvious that this has hit the family hard (despite the divorce) and that they need to deal with this before we need to worry about school.

So, the week after we finished The Very Bid Deal Government Mandated Test, I'm struck with the realization that although the government makes a big deal over the damn test, and everyone is so obsessed with the damn test, that when you really get down to it, IT ISN'T WHAT REALLY MATTERS. (Although 50% of my evaluation of a teacher is now based on this damn test.)

What really matters is that we take care of our kids.

What really matters is that we are here when a kid loses his mom.

What really matters is that when a kid needs a shoulder to cry on, we're here.

What really matters is that when a dad is choked up about losing his ex-wife in the line of duty, we're here.

What really matters is that we are here, taking care of many of the kids that society doesn't really care about because they're poor, or have disabilities, or their parents have issues, or no one really cares about them at home. We are here for them.

What really matters is that we try to do whatever we can to get these kids to grow up to be decent human beings with the skills to take care of themselves and have a happy life.

We just don't teach these kids about science, or social studies, or math, or reading, or whatever.

We're teaching them to be good people. And it's a damn hard job. And no freaking test is ever going to measure that.

The Very Big Deal Government Mandated Testing is Over!

2011-04-15T19:35:00.000-05:00

Well.

I am almost at a loss for words.

We are finally - finally! - finished with the Very Big Deal Government Mandated Testing. That is the good news.

The bad news is that we have witnessed the worst - the absolute freaking worst- behavior that any of us have seen in all our years of giving TVBDGMT. It has been an adventure. (Or as one of my teammates said, "I feel like I'm on the roller coaster to Hell.")

We used to have a more flexible testing schedule where each building could more or less decide how they wanted to scheduled TVBDGMT within a certain time frame. Those days are apparently long gone as now we have to give the tests on specific days. Four specific days to be, well, specific. Which means that we have for the past four days spent the mornings giving tests to a bunch of kids who don't really care (they have no stake in them this year although next year it will count towards a spring semester grade), and who, quite honestly, aren't used to being well-behaved and quiet for three hours straight.

I'll give them credit. They were good during the test. Although some of mine, truth be told, were just fed up with practicing good test taking skills. Instead of highlighting, underlining, crossing out, checking their work, and all that, they simply bubbled in answers and put their heads down. The were D.O.N.E.

What this means is that as soon as the tests were done and they were released to first period, all hell broke lose.

It started right after first period when one of my girls (who is suddenly boy crazy beyond belief) got dared by two boys to pull a fire alarm. Which she did. She swears her t-shirt sleeve got caught on the alarm but the cameras said otherwise. I doubt I'll see her again.

Then we tried to take them outside for an hour or so to run off steam which worked for some kids but for the others it was a complete disaster. They spent that hour arguing, getting into each other's businesses, running their mouths and generally gearing up for some fights. The only thing that kept them quiet in my room was because I ran a Brainpop so the room was dark, and cool (they were all whining about being hot after being outside) and they calmed down.

But not enough to stop the fights that broke on the way home.

And today wasn't much better. It was raining and thundering all morning (I had visions of a tornado warning right in the middle of the test) so taking them outside wasn't an option. Mrs. Eagle and I were going to do a really fun mini-lab on states of matter but quickly tossed that idea out the window as the first hallway fights began. Three of my girls got into a tussle and all three have now been suspended for ten days and one has a heck of a shiner for her trouble. Again, if they weren't running their mouths and into drama, I doubt any of this would have happened.

And that was just the seventh grade. I heard that the sixth and eighth weren't much better.

So today, instead of having a fun lab, I had them open their workbooks, work on a section we didn't use this year, put on some lovely classical music and told them they were all going to be quiet, to mind their own business, and CALM DOWN. I think they were read the riot act by just about every teacher (as well as The Principal over the loud speaker this morning after testing was finished), and we pretty much said if they didn't get it together the last five weeks weren't going to be much fun.

For any of us.

But as annoyed as I am at the kids and their horrid behavior, I'm more annoyed at the People Who Make Decisions But Who Have No Idea What Goes On In A Classroom. You spend all week with a bunch of middle schoolers, with hormones raging, and put a high-stress, high-stakes test on them and force them to be QUIET, and then watch what happens.

Morons.

The Very Big Deal Government Mandated Test

2011-04-13T20:09:00.000-05:00

It's Testing Season.

Oh yippee.

And yes, I'm still trying to figure out why we hold tests six weeks before the end of school. As far as the kids are concerned, they are DONE, DONE, DONE, after the VBDGMT, but goodness, we still have six weeks to keep them calm, working on something, and hopefully passing on to the next grade. It's like herding cats. Except cats behave better (at least mine do).

Anyway.

We've done the massive, long, and relentless Reading and Language Arts on Tuesday. Not bad. No one fell asleep (in my group at least). One of my girls thought she was going to throw up so I put her by the door (and trashcan) and told her if she thought she was going to lose it to "run like the wind" to the bathroom. She survived. Math was today. Some kids didn't finish and just ended up guessing, but that's par for the course. Tomorrow is science, and then Friday is social studies.

The kids are, doing great during the test, behavior-wise. We did have two kids who we were worried about being disruptive in a regular classroom, and we were able to get them in a small group testing situation which works out better for all involved.

After the test, however, they have completely lost their minds.

I had to break up an "almost-fight" in my fourth period class today which resulted in a complete change of plans in terms of lessons as my kids all ended up writing witness statements about what happened so I could attach it to the discipline form. Lucky for us, no punches were thrown, but it still was pretty disruptive and got the kids a bit upset. I should have taken a grade on the witness statements, come to think of it.

And that was just fourth period. Every other class was loud, disruptive, argumentative, and generally just hard to get them settled and focused. And it wasn't just my team. The Principals spent the whole afternoon putting out fires as the kids pretty much just exploded after testing was done and we had fights and disruptions all over the place - and we haven't had that this year with our Positive Behavior Support plan in place.

So, tomorrow, if the weather is nice, The Enforcer is going to come up with a plan that will allow us to take the kids outside to blow off some steam. They need it. (And yet again, another reason why I feel that middle schoolers still need recess!) Hopefully we can wear them out to the point where they won't have the energy to cause any trouble.

Ah Spring

2011-04-04T21:00:00.000-05:00

You have to love Spring in The South. The daffodils...the greening of the grass...the Redbud trees and Bradford Pears in bloom.

And of course, we can't forget the tornadoes.

We had a warm weekend - actually hit 82 degrees which is pretty warm for this time of year, and a cold front was headed our way. It was 70 when I got up this morning, and windy, so I knew we were in for a busy day in terms of weather.

And oh my, was it busy.

We got all the way through lunch without anything much than dark, ominous clouds, heavy rain and wind.

It wasn't until 5th period that The Principal came across the loud speaker, told us we were under a tornado warning, and requested that everyone get alongside the interior walls on the floor until further notice. My fifth period is usually pretty good, so they lined up along the walls like they were told and I sat there on the floor and tried to conduct class the best I could. We are, after all, in the midst of reviewing for The Very Big Deal Government Mandated Test, and I need every second of instruction time I can get. So, although we were all on the floor, I did manage to go through a PowerPoint on body systems, did an activity on levels of organization, and, since we hadn't handed out their review books, read to them from their review book about diffusion. It wasn't ideal, but I still got material covered, the kids were kept quiet (sort of) and we managed to make it through the end of the tornado warning.

I may add that the Enforcer, he who is in charge of safety and security, did away with the blaring tornado warning siren. That thing going off for twenty minutes was enough to drive anyone mad. Not only was it noisy and aggravating, but it made it fairly impossible to hear what was going on outside (I have no windows so I can't see anything.) Trust me, if there's a tornado coming, I seriously want to hear about it before it smacks us.

The warning ended, we wrapped up class and headed into sixth period.

Where we had another warning, ended up on the floor, and I did my "teaching from the floor" lessons yet again.

And we had another one seventh period as well. By then I had done more teaching from my spot on the floor against the wall than I had actually standing on my feet this day. This one was a little louder outside, the lights flickered a bit, but we made it through this last warning with flying colors.

Three different periods, three different tornado warnings.

Ah spring!

2011-03-25T17:29:00.000-05:00

A few years ago I picked up my first sudoku puzzle book and was instantly hooked. I've always liked puzzles anyway, although I never was quite like my mother-in-law who would do crossword puzzles in ink pen. Sudoku was more my speed. It was something I could pick up and work on for a few minutes, then set it down, and return to it hours, or even days later.

So, my husband, being the dear that he is, bought me a sudoku puzzle book featuring 601 puzzles. I really enjoy working on these in the morning, when the sun is coming into my living room, and I'm enjoying a cup of coffee. It's a nice, quiet, brain-boosting way to start the day.

As of today, I have completed each and every one of the 601 puzzles.

Yeah me!

But not to worry...I have a few other books ready to go, although I'll miss this one. The binding had long ago given up and pieces of the book have fallen out (held intact with rubber bands). It was well-used, well-loved, and well-worn!

Spring Break, or the Era of Yard Work

2011-03-21T17:59:00.000-05:00

Spring Break has arrived!

Truth be told, I would have preferred to use a bit of spring break to make up our snow days, but here it is, intact, and as luck would have it, really darn nice in terms of weather. (Although I know better. I remember one spring break where we went from 85 to 18 in one day.)

Actually the week before break was amazingly warm and spring-like, to the point that the kids were wild (ah, the sap rises and so do the hormones). They were excited about break, excited about warm weather, and excited about just about anything aside from doing work. They also were all wacked out about the time change and couldn't quite seem to get with the program this week.

A few highlights...and lowlights.

We had our reward party on Friday for the kids who didn't have a single discipline referral for the previous nine weeks. Basically it was a dance with prizes and food and fun stuff during their 2nd related arts period. One of my darlings got into a tussle with another kid at the REWARD party and managed to end up in ISS (and who knows what else). The irony of kids getting in a fight at a party for being good just kills me.

Dennis the Menace has returned and he's like a new kid. Granted, Mom has him on meds now and he's already learned that he'll be expelled if he screws up, but honestly, I think there's more to it than that. He's matured. He even looks a little different - the greasy hair and acne of a kid who's just been slapped upside the head by Puberty - and he's a lot more calm. He doesn't get pulled into other kids' drama, does his work, follows directions, and is polite and well-mannered and just wonderful. All the teachers on the Team have noticed it and have commented as much to The Principal and to Dennis' mom.

Anyhow, he's been here for about a month (and hasn't had a single write up for ANYTHING) and when the names of kids who couldn't go to the reward party were released, he wasn't on it - which meant he could go. The problem is, he thought he shouldn't be allowed to go because, after all, he had been in alternative school for part of the nine weeks and had had a write-up while there, so as far as he was concerned, he couldn't go.

He's in my homeroom, and sits right in front, so we'd talked a bit and I said I'd find out for sure if he could go or not. Because, this kid, out of all of them deserved to go. So basically, I went to The Principal and said I thought he deserved to go...and she agreed.

The best part of my day on Friday was telling Dennis that he could go to the party. You would have thought I'd given him a winning lottery ticket. His face lit up and he was so happy. And this is the best part - he came back from the party and thanked me for seeing that he could go. (You have got to be kidding...a kid thanking a teacher? How rare is that!?) He told me about the whole thing, what he bought with his reward dollars, the music, and just how much fun it was.

Made my day.

So, for Spring Break I am not doing anything remotely exciting. I went and got Daddy Bird, spent a day at his place cleaning up, and now he's here at our place for a couple of weeks. He can drive (doctor said he could) but I don't think any of us want him driving long distances yet. However, the pacemaker seems to be ticking along just fine and he's doing a great job supervising my yard work.

I have tons of yard work to do, it being spring and all. The list will blow your mind. Today was pruning roses day and digging up a rose bush that hasn't bloomed for a few years (you give me nothing but thorns and I'm getting rid of you). I have shrubs to trim back, yard to feed, winter debris to get rid of, early spring veggies to plant, and on and on. I don't know if I'll get it all done, but I'll try.

And then there's taxes to do.

But at least I can sleep in.

Just Ticking Away

2011-03-15T19:59:00.000-05:00

Sorry folks, I've been away from the blog for a bit to deal with Daddy Bird and his ticker. Regular readers may remember that he had a TIA (mini-stroke) last fall. Well, to make a long story short, he was having blood pressure issues (too high) he blacked out while driving for just a second or two, ended up in a ditch, and instead of going to the doctor for a look at the blood pressure, ended back up in the regional stroke center (about 3 hours from me). Turns out the heart was ticking along at 40 beats per minute when it should be at 70. (Hence the blacking out while driving). They put in a pacemaker and the difference has been amazing. He's less winded, has more energy, and feels a lot better.

So, I missed three days of school.

Which meant my kids had a sub for three days (I managed to get one that knew the kids although they can't stand her).

The kids were rotten. Completely rude and rotten.

While I was gone, the Team members were good at emailing and filling me in the nutty things that were going on while I was gone.

Like three of our girls were texting in class and ended up in in school suspension.

Three of our boys - all BIG boys - got in a scuffle in Mr. Math's room by calling each other "fat". These are the fattest kids on the team and the fact that they're calling each other fat is, well, just beyond ridiculous.

Another boy apparently, at lunch, stuck his hands down his pants, played a bit with the family jewels, and then proceeded to rub his hands on two other (much smaller) students. Mrs. Social Studies was grossed out by this when it was reported to her that she wasn't even sure she know how to write up the referral. Fortunately The Principal was nearby and informed her that it fell under "lewd and lascivious" behavior and that "unfortunately it's been happening quite a lot lately."

Disgusting.

My Seventh Period Class From the Very Depths of Hell Itself had an issue when our Drama Girl (this one is something else - she invents drama like nobody's business) apparently reacted when one of the boys made a comment (who knows what) and had a complete and total meltdown in class. Crying, screaming, sobbing, so forth and so on. My poor sub managed to get her to the hallway where Mrs. Social Studies saw her, called guidance and they took her away.

So, in short, life is normal.

Seventh graders, however, are not.

I Won't Make the Majors with this Batting Average

2011-03-07T19:57:00.001-06:00

Three parent meetings.

Three cancellations.

But hey, at least they called/emailed...about 5 minutes before the meeting.

With this batting average, I won't ever make the Majors.

Update 3/15/11 - Had a parent meeting today (scheduled by the parent). Can you guess what happened? Yup, another no-show. I am now 0 for 4.

Buttons

2011-03-06T15:04:00.000-06:00

During class the other day Silly Boy, one of my homeroom kiddos who is one of the silliest kids I know, got all worked up because he'd lost a button off of his shirt.

Go figure.

The kids were busy working on a group activity about Newton's Laws when Silly Boy came up and asked me what to do with the button that had popped off his flannel shirt.

"Well, take it home and sew it on," I suggested. "Or have your mom do it."

"I don't know how to sew, and I'll probably lose it before I get home," he admitted. At least he's honest. This is a kid who loses his locker several times a week because he can't remember to bring his books to class.

"You don't know how to sew on a button?" I asked, figuring that was one of those life skills that everyone pretty much knew how to do, sort of like boiling water. Granted, Silly Boy is, after all, a boy so maybe he missed the "how to use a needle and thread" lesson somewhere in life.

Which got me to thinking. Maybe he's not alone.

So, while I went to my desk and whipped out my "housewife" (you Civil War buffs will know what I'm talking about but it's a reproduction sewing kit that soldiers would use to do their own mending - me, I use it to fix things at school) I stopped the kids for a minute and asked them if any of them knew how to sew on a button.

My jaw about dropped. Out of 23 kids, two raised their hands.

"Seriously?" I said. "You don't know how to sew on a button? What do you do when you lose one?"

The answers varied from "I dunno", to "Give it to mom/grandma/older sister" to "Don't wear it anymore".

Oh dear. Even the girls, many of them in Girl Scouts at some point in their lives, didn't know how to sew on a button. They were, I might add, just fascinated as they watched me sew the button back on Silly Boy's shirt (with him still in it, squirmy little twerp that he was). Most of my kids don't come from money and the fact that they can't do basic clothing repairs just blows my mind.

So I'm thinking...the last week of school, when we're wrapping up the year, I just may get a bunch of buttons, fabric scraps, and needles and thread and teach these kids one of those basic life skills - sewing on a button.

When Kids Are In Charge

2011-03-01T17:38:00.000-06:00

I really like my kids, for the most part, this year. (Okay, I hate my Seventh Period Class From the Very Depths of Hell Itself but there are kids in there I like - it's just the combination of kids which make me crazy).

Their parents, on the other hand, are making me insane.

Case in point. We have a kid I'll call Absent Boy, because, you guessed it, he's absent all the time. He misses every test. He misses every benchmark. He's usually gone on Fridays and often times he's gone on Mondays. When he comes back he's healthy as a horse, nary a sniffle or a sore throat in sight. In short, he basically tells his mom when he wants to come to school and she lets him get away with it. He was absent yesterday, the day we had our two hour delay, and when one of the teachers asked him why, he said, "Well, there was a two hour delay and we didn't know if they'd cancel, and mom didn't know how she'd get me to school, so I didn't come". (Did this lady never hear of a bus?)

Absent Kid has a whopping 37% in my class and he's pretty much doing the same in all his other classes. He's a bright kid, when you can get something out of him, which isn't often. He is on an IEP as a special education student, but seriously, he does well on the things he does. He is capable. As a sped kid he can turn in late work (never does) and in my class he gets a homework helper which basically is an answer key to help him do his homework. All he has to do is copy it and turn it in. But he doesn't. He has, in fact, informed his sped case manager and the enrichment teacher that he's not bothering to do much in seventh grade since he'll get passed anyway because he's on an IEP. He won't even turn in things we do in class.

We have tried to get his mother to come in for a meeting. She'll agree to a meeting, then five minutes before she is to show up, she'll call and cancel. Today, yet again, she pulled this stunt. So we have yet to get her in here (she also apparently doesn't show up at IEP meetings either.)

This kid is running the house. If we wanted any more evidence of this, Mr. Math ran into Absent Mom (how appropriate) and Absent Boy at a local fast food join yesterday. Absent Boy didn't see Mr. Math at first and was running around being a brat and talking back to his mom. She told him he couldn't have something and he went off and slapped her in the face! And. She. Did. Nothing.

Apparently this is her coping mechanism...to do nothing. The kid talks back...she does nothing. He fails his classes...she does nothing. He whines and complains and wants to stay home from school...she does nothing.

But I'm the one being held accountable.

Just Can't Win With the Weather

2011-02-28T18:24:00.001-06:00

So after the winter we've had (and I'm not sure it's all done yet), we've actually managed to go two full weeks of school without a snow day. I know, pretty amazing, eh? And, truth be told, it's been almost spring-like.

However, spring-like warm weather can often bring spring-like bad storms. Nothing like a warm front and a cold front banging up against each other and producing thunderstorms and those lovely little things known as tornadoes. We've already had the tornado sirens go off twice in the past week and it's still February. Fortunately these have happened while we were at home, not during school, so it simply means hustling all the felines into the basement and hunkering down until the storm passes (praying the whole time that we don't have any damage). I must admit that the felines are not happy with these little interludes and spend most of the time in their kennels (so we don't have to chase them all over the basement during the storm) glaring at us with That Look of Complete Disdain that only cats can give.

Anyhow, all the weather sources were predicting A Really Bad Line of Storms coming through our areastarting last night and going into today. Oh fun. Usually that means little sleep between the storm, the sirens and the cats bouncing all over the place. However, the sirens went off yesterday (while Mrs. Eagle and I were returning from Girls Night at the Hockey Game) and I missed that fun. It settled down a bit and didn't get bad again until around 5:00 am this morning.

And then it just let loose. Thunder, lightning and buckets of rain, not to mention lots and lots of wind (no tornado warnings, however, Thank Goodness.) So I'm sitting there drinking my coffee and watching the weather as large yellow, green and orange blobs sailed through the map right over our town when the phone rang.

At 5:15 am. What the heck?

It was, surprisingly enough, the School District. Apparently they took a look outside, took a look at the radar and decided a two-hour delay was a good thing. Good decision. It was a mess, a rainy, stormy, windy mess. (Oh, and the temperature was 70 when I woke up, was 58 an hour later, and now is 38.)

Now, a two-hour delay means the kids have a delay but all the employees report at their normal time. I didn't have to much trouble getting in, but a few teachers who live in some of the more rural areas, really had some issues. The rivers in town are rising (almost as bad as last' year's 100 Year Flood, but thankfully, not quite) and it was raining so hard that the streets were having trouble draining.

But we made it through. The good news is this counts for a full day. The bad news is I'm hoping and praying that I get everything taught that I need to before The Very Big Deal Government Mandated Tests in April and I'm not feeling really confident about it.

The Sharpie Wars

2011-02-24T18:22:00.000-06:00

So today I was walking around my classroom during third period (my first period of the day) when I noticed that my students looked like a bunch of dirty ragamuffins.

There were black smudges on their faces, necks, arms, hands, and just about any bit of exposed skin. Weird. Most of these kids are in my homeroom and I didn't recall them looking like this earlier in the day. It wasn't until I walked around the room while the kids were working on their activity, that I found my answer. Jock Boy, a jolly good-natured kid ever there ever was one, had an entire arm covered with writing, smudges, and who knows what.

"So what's with the tats?" I asked him, pointing to his arms.

"Oh that? That's just Sharpie," he said. "Cool, huh?"

"Uh, not exactly," I said. "You know it's not allowed in the Student Code of Conduct, right?"

He looked crestfallen. "It's not?"

"It's not," I said. "So, let's get cleaned up tonight and not do it again, okay?" He agreed with a smile and went on with his work. And as I continued to walk around I realized that what at first looked like dirt was actually Sharpie smudges. I didn't pursue it beyond the quick conversation with Jock Boy (which all the kids eavesdropped on) but continued with my class.

And then my fourth period walked in looking just as bad. And then my fifth period, same story. So at lunch, the time when all of the teachers on The Team get together, eat lunch, and check in with what was up with the kids, I found out that all of us were seeing these Sharpie smudges on our students. As Mrs. Reading said, "It's a bit hard to focus on a kid's question when there's a big black line going across their face."

After lunch Mrs. Social Studies and I pulled aside one of our kids that we could more or less trust and get the truth out of and asked her about the Sharpie smudges.

Apparently the kids, on the way back from the gym and their other electives, were having "Sharpie wars," in the hallway. Basically they were taking Sharpies and drawing lines on each other as the mass of seventh grade humanity made it back to the core part of The School (where there is more supervision and they can't do anything that stupid without getting caught.)

Oh. Good. Gracious.

I'm used to Seventh Grade Stupid Stuff, but jeepers, it's only February! This kind of stupid stuff really shouldn't show up until after spring break! If this is a sign of the spring to come, it's going to be a long, long time until school is out.

Making a Splash

2011-02-18T19:27:00.000-06:00

This was only the second full five-day week we've had since December 6th.

And it seemed like a really long week. The kids are out of it and not motivated to do any work at all. I almost feel like I'm back in the first weeks of school where we have to go over everything again and remind them how to "do school", since it's been so long since we've actually had any kind of routine.

But Mrs. Eagle and I have found a new way to de-stress after school. We go to The Pool.

Our City Fathers, in all their wisdom, pissed off nearly the entire city by deciding to convert the community pool across from our school into a year-round aquatic center with the addition of an inflatable domed cover. You should have seen the nasty letters to the editor in the local paper about "how dare they put that aquatic center over in that part of town" (meaning the part where the poor folks live). That whole ruckus really annoyed most of us who work at The School because they were talking about Our Kids. Yeah, we know the Neighborhood isn't the best, and our kids are nearly all on free and reduced lunch, and yeah, we have gang problems and all sorts of issues, but is that any reason to deny them a covered pool because hey, we pay taxes over here in the 'Hood too!

So there.

So, they spent a couple of months working on the pool (because it snowed every other freaking day for the past two months) and it finally opened up a couple of weeks ago to much fan-fare and some really amazingly cold water. (It apparently takes a long time for a really big 500 meter pool to heat up.) And the Guidance Goober who is on a health kick (but who inhales peanut M&M's like no body's business and single-handedly keeps all the local coffee vendors in business) walked across the parking lot and asked if he could make a deal with the pool management. See, we had all these teachers Just Across The Parking Lot, and it would be really nice if they'd let us go together and buy family passes instead of making us all spend the big bucks and get the individual passes.

And the pool people said, "No problem!" and about ten of us are now "family" and have a much cheaper pool pass. We're actually considering getting t-shirts made up that read "The School Swim Club" or something equally stupid.

So, Mrs. Eagle and I have been going over to The Pool nearly every day after school. They offer water aerobics classes for $2 and we've done a few of those, plus we sometimes just go over to swim laps. But the best part is just the way that floating in the water makes some of the tension just ease away. (By the way, water aerobics is one heck of a work out - but it sure doesn't bother my knee like regular aerobics used to do.) I haven't been swimming since my own years in middle school so it's been quite a change of routine.

Every day there seems to be more and more people coming in to enjoy the pool and this week we've started to see some of our kids come in after school.

Which is interesting.

Because the kids almost seem embarrassed to see - GASP! - Their Teachers at the pool. It's a good thing that both Mrs. Eagle and I have reached the age where We Just Don't Care, and so neither one of us really gives a flip that the kids are seeing us in a swimsuit (which covers everything because we are of a certain age and our shape is well, round). Mrs. Sped next door to me, who is a fitness freak and a regular swimmer made the comment that she thinks it's good that the kids do see us at the pool engaging in healthy fitness activities. She has a point.

So it's nice to see the kids coming over and using the pool. It's a great way for them to get some exercise (and they aren't sitting in front of a video game console). They swim, they splash, they jump off the diving board, and they're having a great time. They're not running the streets, they aren't causing trouble, and they are having fun.

Really, isn't that what exercise should be about?

Hello...and Goodbye

2011-02-18T18:55:00.000-06:00

The Guidance Diva the other day made a very astute comment..."They can throw billions of dollars at schools for education but it won't do a bit of good until they fix what's going on out there." "Out There," being the neighborhood, the culture where education isn't respected or desired, the culture where working isn't a goal because drawing a welfare check pays better, a culture invested with drugs, gangs, abuse, and alcoholism. A culture where parents aren't being parents.

And where they hang up on the teacher who is trying to call them about their kid. (Yup, happened again today).

In any case, it never ceases to amaze me how people don't seem to have a clue about the types of kids we see every day and how amazingly screwed up their lives are, mainly due to the grown ups in their lives who aren't acting like grown ups.

Case in point.

We got a new kid this week (part of the seventh grade infestation) who came from outside our county. Seemed like a nice kid (although we had to have a conversation about sagging). Didn't say anything, got to work, said "Yes, Ma'am" and all that. No problems with him at all.

The second day he was here, Mr. Enforcer strolled into Mrs. Reading's class and asked to have him pointed out. Apparently some of his records were catching up with him, and Mr. Enforcer wanted to be able to recognize this kid should his name cross his desk.

This is not a good sign.

The next morning New Kid was absent from my homeroom. Mrs. Reading came in after the kids went to their elective classes and told me that The Principal had ran into her in the hallway and mentioned that the New Kid wasn't going to be coming back. Apparently more of his records had arrived the day before and The Enforcer brought them to The Principal's attention.

And what they saw apparently scared the living daylights out of both of them. As The Principal put it, "It made me sick to read."

Again, not a good sign.

So he's gone. No one is really saying much, but he was a kid in foster care. The Principal took one look at his file and realized that this kid had emotional issues and problems too big (and too scary) to keep him in school with our student population. She called the foster parents (who had no clue about any of this apparently which is just wrong) and informed them that due to his issues that she was going to get him placed in a nearby school that serves severely emotionally disturbed students. I hope she succeeds in this and that he gets the counseling and care he needs.

But really it all comes down to this. The kid is twelve. Twelve! And his life is already so screwed up by the grown ups in his life that he's considered a threat to the normal school population. He has been, according to The Enforcer, "completely let down on every level by every grown up in his life."

I wish people who had no business or desire to be parents just stopped breeding.

The Seventh Grade Infestation

2011-02-18T18:33:00.000-06:00

This past fall, due to declining enrollment, the seventh grade went from three full teams to two teams, and then some eighth grade teachers picked up a seventh grade class to help lower the class sizes. The eighth grade had two full teams and a "mini-team", and the sixth grade had three full teams.

Except by November it was apparent that there were eighth grade teachers with class sizes in the teens while we in seventh grade were trying to maintain some semblance of control over class sizes in the 30's. Fortunately our Admins saw that this wasn't good, so the eighth grade teachers teaching one seventh grade class, were upped to teaching two of them (along with three eighth grade classes).

And the numbers of seventh graders just keeps climbing.

We got an email from the Guidance Goddess early this week informing us that not two, not three, not four, but seven seventh graders were going to be enrolling and she'd appreciate it if we could let her know what classes we'd like to put them in. At this point, with special ed considerations and block scheduling for reading and language arts, it is nearly impossible to have a good schedule. Regardless of what we do, the big classes keep getting bigger. I pretty much said I didn't care where they put them as long as they weren't in my homeroom or third period.

Can you guess where two of them ended up? My homeroom and third period.

Sigh.

Both seventh grade teams are nearly out of lockers to give to the new kids, so I asked Mr. Enforcer if we were still going to have two seventh grade teams, was there a possibility of moving some of the school's unused lockers down into the seventh grade area. He said he didn't know what we were doing for staffing next year, but he'd definitely consider it.

We now have more seventh graders than we had last year (and five fewer teachers). We have more seventh graders than eighth graders, and are five kids below the number of sixth graders. The seventh grade teachers are cranky. Seventh grade is a bad year for most kids - absolutely perfectly normal wonderful kids become dysfunctional goobers in seventh grade (and then, usually, outgrow it by eighth grade). It is The Year From Hell. Seventh graders have the most failures, the most discipline referrals, the most problems. So we're putting them in cramped classes with other kids who are losing their minds due to hormonal overload. I swear it's like a long car trip with a van-load of kids who can't get along.

I'm with Guidance Goddess...I want a sign on the marquee that says "Seventh Grade is Closed."

Another Snow Day and a Wonderful Tool

2011-02-10T15:02:00.000-06:00

We haven't been back to school since we dismissed early on Monday. That storm came in and dumped 3.5" of heavy white stuff. The roads were a mess (as usual) and although they were much better by Tuesday, the National Weather Service was forecasting another round of winter weather starting Wednesday morning, so they canceled school for Wednesday as well. It started snowing at my house around 10:00 am, and finished around 8:00 pm after dumping another 4" of the white stuff. Again, the roads were a disaster. To make it even more fun, the nighttime temperature dropped to -6 - and this in an area where our average temperature is 50 degrees! So today, Thursday is another snow day and who knows what Friday will bring? Hard to say.

So, we've really lost two weeks of instruction already and I've been getting a bit stir crazy.

However. Thanks to a Tech Geek at our district I have been test driving a new tool to use to keep my kids in the learning game even while they're home for a snow day. A few weeks ago the Tech Geek was out in our building working with some teachers and I asked her if there was anything she knew of that I could use to connect with my kids during a snow day - a social networking type site, a chat site, whatever.

She recommended Edmodo.

I'm going to sound like a commercial here, so apologies ahead of time, but this application just rocks! It's a social networking site that is teacher directed. I signed up, gave my kids the code to sign up for my class, and so far I have about 50 kids signed up and a number of parents as well (parents can get a code to monitor their child which is a fantastic idea!) It looks a lot like Facebook, but the one thing is the kids can't talk with each other, they can only talk to the group as a whole or to the teacher.

I have posted extra credit, I've linked to Brainpops, I've put in missing work for absent kids, and I even posted a video lesson this morning (my first video!). The kids who are absent absolutely love it, and they actually are turning in work (that's a huge problem for us - kids who are absent tend not to make up their work). I can send direct messages to kids ("while we are out on a snow day, please finish your writing prompt.") and to individual classes and to the group as a whole as well as to parents.

If you haven't had a chance to check out Edmodo, take a minute and do so. I can assure you that this will definitely be something I start at the beginning of the year next year.

Snow! Snow! Snow! or Why Bus Drivers Deserve Our Thanks and Respect

2011-02-07T16:55:00.000-06:00

So the National Weather Service called for rain starting last night, turning to snow around noon today, and an accumulation of maybe 1-3 inches.

And they sorta got it just a bit wrong.

It was raining and 36 degrees when I got to The School this morning. We went through 1st, 2nd, 3rd, no word of early dismissal which was a bit worrisome since Mrs. Social Studies had peeked out her back door and noticed that it had already turned to snow. (We have no windows in our part of the building). Halfway through 4th period The Principal came over the loud speaker and told us all to stop what we were doing and check our email. Apparently we were going to dismiss two hours early, and we had a slight adjustment to the lunch schedule. By the time we walked the kids down to the cafeteria, and past the bank of glass doors that go into the gym area, we could see that it was not only snowing, but snowing hard and everything was just covered. This didn't look good.

We got the kids fed, went back to class and taught until around 12:10 when all the buses showed up and we dismissed the kids. The good news is I got 3 periods taught. The bad news is that it was a mess when the buses left.

I stayed behind, as part of the snow crew, for a while along with Mrs. Eagle. We were supposed to be going to another middle school to see how their pilot STEM program was being implemented tomorrow, and worked on the sub plans for that only to get an email RIGHT AS WE FINISHED THE PLANS, telling us that the visit was canceled. As I told Mrs. Eagle, if we didn't do the plans, we'd be going. If we did them, we knew they'd cancel. Oh well.

After about an hour we went up to check and see what the bus status was. The whole idea behind us staying was in case a bus had to return or a kid didn't get picked up. By then, it was a complete and total mess outside. One of our teachers who lives in the county west of us decided that trying to get home was not a good idea, and had made arrangements to stay with another teacher who lives within walking distance. She had called her daughter and they were reporting school buses sliding off the roads and people having to get 4-wheel drive vehicles out to the buses to get the kids off and home. Not a pretty picture. The Principal was on the phone trying to figure out if all our buses had made it safe and couldn't get a decent answer. It didn't sound good.

She finally put her phone down and told those of us who didn't live within a few blocks to get home before it got even worse, and to text when we were home safely. You didn't have to tell me twice. By the time Mrs. Eagle, Mrs. Social Studies and I walked out to our cars, I had at least 3" of snow on mine and you couldn't hardly see the baseball fields behind the school. It was wet, slushy, and coming down thick.

My 12 minute drive home took about three times as long, but for once people weren't being morons. They were going slower, not tailgating (that drives me nuts) and I didn't see any wrecks on my way home. That, however, was around 2:00 pm. Since then we've had report of buses sliding off the road, some elementary schools just told the parents to come get their kids, and nothing but a huge big mess. The local on-line paper reported that parents were swamping the district office with calls because the buses were late. Another local news source is reporting over 80 wrecks.

I feel for these bus drivers. It's not an easy job on a good day, but then having to deal with slushy slick roads, and poor visibility...they deserve a lot of credit for getting our kids home safe. And I bet they won't get a cent of overtime for this.

And we're out for tomorrow. The 1-3" is now looking like 4-8". I'm beginning to think we may actually go to school again in March since there's another storm scheduled for Wednesday.

All I Ask is For a Little Effort

2011-02-05T14:59:00.000-06:00

Sigh.

We finally - finally - had five whole days in a row this week and weren't interrupted by weather, holidays, or zombies running in the streets. It felt wonderful to get back into the flow of things and to finally get our genetics unit covered.

I finished grading all the tests on Thursday evening and entered the grades in PowerSchool. I was hoping that I'd see some good results because, firstly, we've been covering this unit for over a month although it has been interrupted a lot. Secondly, the classes that are test-driving the notebooks were allowed to use their notebooks during the test and the other classes could use their notes.

The results were, in a word, ugly.

Many students completely bombed the vocabulary test because they absolutely refuse to learn the words we use in science. Genetics has a lot of key words that if you don't know what they mean, you won't be able to answer the test questions. Homozygous, heterozygous, genotype, phenotype, allele, and so on. We went over, and over, and over these words and did project after project using these words, but when it came down to their test, they absolutely croaked. What made it worse, is that in order to answer the Punnett Sqaure questions, they had to know the difference between these words or they'd just mess it up beyond belief. What annoyed me even more is even with all the time we spend going over how to answer a test question (underline key words being one huge strategy), only ONE STUDENT even did that when it came to the Punnett Square word problems. So, not only did they not know the vocabulary (after nearly six weeks) but they didn't even bother to underline the important features of the questions.

They just failed miserably. And half the test we did in class, so all they had to do was pull out their notes and simply copy them. Very few kids had their notes out for their test, and even some of the notebook kids never once opened their notebooks.

So they tanked.

On an aside, for those of you who were wondering, Wiggly Boy did a bit better. He didn't pass, but he didn't fail nearly as bad as some of the others. And he was the one who prompted a discussion we had about personal responsibility on Friday when he told the class, "Well, I didn't bother to study at all so it was my fault I failed."

As I told them, I can't follow them home and make sure they do their homework. I can't follow them home to make sure they study. That's their parents' job. And if their parents aren't doing their job, then they're just going to have to sit back and realize that they have the tools at their disposal to be successful if they only had the personal responsibility to use them. It is up to them. If they think they're worth success, then that's what they need to work for. I believe every one of them can be successful, but they're going to have to start working towards that goal.

We have a much shorter unit (and hopefully no more snow days) so we'll see if they do any better this time. Some of them, perhaps, have learned that using your notes, when Mrs. Bluebird says you can, is not a waste of time.

But I truly am at my wits' end on what it takes to get these kids - and their parents - to care as much about their learning as I do.

Wiggling and a Writing

2011-01-31T18:56:00.000-06:00

I haven't posted much because, truth be told, I'm tired of hearing myself whine about snow days so I can only imagine how you all feel.

For the record...we have not gone a complete, full, five-day week since the week of December 6th. We're hoping that we'll make 5 days this week because we've already lost every holiday scheduled, and we're so far behind on our scope and sequence that I'm not even going to bother looking at it.

So there.

It's been a absolute monster trying to get our genetics unit finished. We just love teaching this unit - it's so much fun, and there's so many cool things you can do. However, it's not fun teaching a unit when it keeps getting chopped up by days out of school. I feel like I can't get into my groove, and the kids seem to be getting things piecemeal. It's frustrating.

So anyway, we finally - FINALLY - got our unit test in today. As a rule I hardly ever give a test on Monday, but we are so far behind we really didn't have a choice. As soon as I finish this, I'm going to start grading them (yeah!).

I'm kind of curious as to how one of my students - Wiggly Boy - did. Because we tried something different today when it came to taking his test.

Wiggly Boy is tiny, and cute, and a lot of fun, and enthusiastic, and just a neat kid - but he can't pass a test - any test - to save his life. From class observations and discussion, he knows the material fairly well, but he just blows it big time when it comes to tests (and the subject doesn't matter). One thing, however, that The Team noticed, is that Wiggly Boy likes to stand a lot. He would much rather stand than sit in a seat, so I got the idea, why not have him stand at my teacher station while he takes his test?

I approached him with the idea, and he was willing to give it a try, so that's what we did.

So he stood there, and took his test...he did all the good test-taking strategies I've taught him, but since he was standing, we added in his natural bouncy enthusiasm. (I think he needs his own soundtrack, personally.) Even if he didn't do better (and that remains to be seen) he seemed a bit more focused, and certainly had fun.

And honestly, when's the last time a kid had fun taking a test.