Big 'Ol Goose Egg

We had parent conferences tonight from 4:30 to 7:30 pm.

The conferences are open to any parent who chooses to come, plus we were encouraged to invite those parents we really need to see. Guidance had sent out failure letters a few weeks ago to 17 of our lovelies - which were supposed to be signed by a parent and returned, however, none have been - so we decided we would send a special invitation to these seventeen parents, plus a few others with kids who are borderline.

So, we reprinted the failure letters, attached an invitation asking them to come to the conference so we could figure out how to help their child, and stapled these into the kids' agendas.

Any guesses on how many parents The Team saw tonight?

Zero.

Nada.

Not. A. Single. Freaking. Parent.

I'm going to go bang my head against a wall.

Carnival Time!

Sitting at home due to bad weather? Suffering the January blahs? Well, take a break and enjoy this week's Carnival of Education, hosted by The Reading Workshop!

Germ Factories and Sound of Ice

Monday morning found Mrs. Social Studies crawling into class, unable to hear out of her left ear, her right ear wasn't much better, and her face was tingling. We found a sub and she went to the doctor and was diagnosed with a double ear infection. Before she left, she said it was weird not being able to hear anything the students were saying. In some cases, it might be considered a blessing.

Mrs. Social Studies was not alone. All three administrators are sick, with The Principal croaking her way through morning announcements as she's the only one with a voice. A whole slew of teachers were out with the flu and just about every other contagion available. And I had what I thought was perhaps strep throat (were talking pain, here) but the test came back negative and was diagnosed as a weird throat virus that's going around. Oh yippee. So it was ibuprofen, salt water gargles, cough drops, rest, and oh yeah, try not to talk.

They were calling for a Really Bad Winter Weather Event to hit our area, so we were all hoping for a snow day today. Honestly, with the number of kids sniffling and croaking in class and along with the amount of teachers that were sick as well, a snow day would have been a blessing.

Except it wasn't snow. It was ice.

When the alarm went off at 5:00, I checked the temperature (31 degrees) and looked outside. It was raining and everything was shining with a glaze of ice. The local news reported that school was closed, which was pretty much a no-brainer. Most of the counties in this part of the state closed due to ice.

Since I have trouble going back to sleep once I'm awake, I sort of lazed around a bit, watched the kitties wrestle and chase each other, and prayed we wouldn't lose power.

Mrs. Eagle called a few hours later to find out what I was doing.

"Just reading. Drinking hot liquids that make my throat feel better. You?"

"I've been up since 2:30 am," she said.

"Why on earth?" I asked her. Mrs. Eagle, like me, can be a light sleeper.

"That's when all the tree branches around the house started to snap. It sounded like shotgun blasts all night long. I kept wondering if one was going to come crashing through the roof," she said.

She had power still, which is a plus. According to the local news, there's quite a few places in the county that don't have any power and may not get any anytime soon. They are calling for more ice and snow tonight, and more power outages, so hubby and I have been collecting gear just in case - candles, the little portable generator, my Civil War reenacting cooking gear, the little BBQ, and briquettes. We figure if the power goes out and lasts more than a day or so, we can at least cook something hot to eat in the BBQ on the driveway. I used to do a lot of camping and cooking over open fires, so that skill may come in handy yet again. As long as I can make myself a hot cup of coffee, I'll be fine. Even if I have to make it in the rain and snow in my driveway.

As for school tomorrow? Who knows? We have parent teacher conferences scheduled for Thursday. Past experience points to the fact that the parents won't come out unless the weather is clear and dry. We may end up sitting there playing cards all night waiting for parents to show up.

That is if we even have school by then.

Why I Have Really Grey Hair

I started going grey at 18, but I swear, the amount of grey has just exploded with this year's crop of seventh graders. I'll be solid silver by the time May hits.

Today we the last of our five benchmark days, and it was science. The kids hate benchmarks. They know they don't count towards their grades (although we put the score on PowerSchool so mom and dad could see it, should they care). They don't like that it messes up their routine. And they see it as a huge waste of time. Frankly, they really hate standardized tests of any kind.

I've been hearing the rest of the team moaning and freaking out over their scores which were just awful. It seemed they got lower as the week went by. So, when I went and scanned them this morning to see how they did, I wasn't expecting great things.

The good news? I had one proficient on the last benchmark. This time I had eight.

This is still, to me, unacceptable.

Mrs. Duck, Mrs. Eagle and I all had similar scores. Mrs. Eagle and I have never had scores this low in the three years we've been doing benchmarks. Ever. (Mrs. Duck is new to our school so she doesn't have any scores to compare.)

So I had a bit of a Come To Jesus meeting with these kids, especially since they couldn't wait to get their scores. They were sure they did fantastic.

I hated to burst their bubble, but burst it I did.

It was an interesting conversation. I laid it all there for them. Told them their scores were the lowest I've seen - and I knew they could do better (especially my advanced kids). Told them what they did well on (Mitosis) and what was weak (Cell organelles - this killed them as we spent weeks on this). Told them that last year the seventh grade overall had a 90% homework turn in percentage. This year? We're at 50%. I reminded them that they're only a year and a half away from high school - where there's no second chances, no late work, no passing unless you earn it.

They were pretty honest. They admitted to never studying their vocabulary words, not doing homework, not trying their best. They admitted, for the most part, that they don't like failure, but weren't motivated enough to really do much about it.

So I asked them what motivated them, what would get them to turn on the jets and start performing at the level I know they can.

The answer? There wasn't one. They couldn't really come up with anything that motivated them.

I find this tragic. And frustrating beyond belief.

The Year of the Coma

Team leaders (such as moi) got an email from Guidance Goober with a link to PDF files of all the failure letters that The School sent out this week. If a student is failing two or more classes, a letter went home explaining the possibility of retention (which will rarely happen), summer school, non-academic promotions and so forth. The letters are to be signed and returned to the homeroom teachers, so that we know that the parents actually saw the letter and Junior didn't get home and destroy the mail before the parents came home.

Out of 103 letters that went out, any guesses on how many belonged to seventh graders?

Ah, come on...just guess...you know you want to.

How about 52?

Yup. Fifty-freakin'-two.

Mrs. Eagle's team had the winning number of 22. My team had 17 and the balance belonged to Mrs. Bunny's team.

Are we surprised? No.

Disappointed. Of course.

Seventh graders, as a rule, seem to go into a coma during the school year. From the recent brain studies I've seen on adolescent brains, there's actually hard science to back this up. It's called puberty, to be blunt. The body is putting so much energy into growth and hormones and all that makes this age group so annoying, and the brain pretty much flat lines for about, say, nine months to a year. We're lucky they don't actually lose cognitive skills. I'm surprised most of them are alert enough to cross the street without getting hit by a car.

If I had a dollar for every kid that failed my class as a seventh grader, then moved on to 8th grade and passed with A's and B's and then ended up - yes! - in honors science classes in high school, I could perhaps buy myself a nice new pair of Danskos. It's depressing.

That's seventh grade - the Year of the Coma.

Carnival Time!

BRRRR! It's cold out there, so hope on over to this week's Education Carnival at Education Examiner! Check it out - lots of good stuff there!

A Classic Question

From a phone message left for Mrs. Strawberry, the social studies teacher on Mrs. Eagle's team, after report cards went home on Tuesday:

"Hum, this is ________. I was just calling to see if you were the one who whited out my daughter's grades on her report card, or if she did it. Thanks!"

When Mrs. Strawberry called this mom back (after picking herself up off the floor from her laughing spasm) Mom explained that she pretty much knew who whited out not only this nine week's grades, but the grades from the last nine weeks, and the comments as well. She just wanted confirmation.

Hey, at least she got a phone call. No one on my team did.

What a Little Bit of Relevance Will Do...

As I've mentioned before, our standards are changing next year. One of the grades getting worked over the most - SURPRISE! - is seventh grade science. We're losing about half our curriculum (matter and weather) to 6th and 8th grade, and we're inheriting new curriculum (DNA, genetics, geology, simple machines) from the 8th grade.

Peachy.

So, since the current 7th graders will get about nine weeks of matter - again - next year, and will miss DNA, genetics, geology, and simple machines, we're trying to cram some of this stuff in where we can so they don't hit high school without having been exposed to this stuff. (Of course they currently hit high school having forgotten nearly everything they learned in middle school so in some cases, it's a moot point.)

Since we're wrapping up the cell cycle, it was decided that this would be a good time to do a brief unit on DNA and genetics. Mrs. Eagle and Mrs. Duck have never taught this curriculum and it's been 8 years since I have, so we are, shall I say, a bit rusty.

Our book is void of any information on DNA outside of the fact that it's in a cell, so we've had to come up with ways to present this information to our kids. Fortunately, Mrs. Eagle and I went to a publisher's dog and pony show in December and got a whole bunch of free goodies that we're sort of test driving with this group of kids. (I'll be honest, I'm liking these materials.)

The past few days we've done Brainpops as introductions, and then moved on to some PowerPoints that we adapted from the sample materials. Since it's a lot of material to cover (and not much time due to benchmark testing - don't get me started) we are doing guided notes so the kids get the information down, and it's accurate.

I'll be honest. I love genetics. It's cool stuff. And it doesn't really get much more relevant for a kid than they realize how and why they ended up looking like they do, and how they go their nose from mom and their eye color from dad, and so on. It's neat. And you can talk about cool things like mutations (a good time to bring out the story of the Scottish Fold cats), and how diseases are passed on and just really cool stuff like careers and genetic engineering and, well, it's fun. Even if all you're doing is showing a PowerPoint and the kids are taking notes.

So here we are, the end of seventh period, and we've blasted through our notes and the bell has rung and two of my critters, Huggy Girl and Shy Boy come up to my desk.

"Shy Boy and I have decided that we'd rather stay in your class all day and learn about genetics than go to any of our other classes," said Huggy Girl. Shy Boy nods in agreement.

"Really?" I say. This is a surprise because these kids are not, not, not, A students - they're C, maybe, if they try, so this is something.

"Yeah, this was totally fun," says Huggy Girl. "We can't wait until tomorrow." More nods from Shy Boy.

Wow. I was stunned.

How often do you get a review like that?

Here, there and everywhere?

Bully Boy, we think, is gone.

Bully Boy, of course, was in my Fifth Period From the Very Depths of Hell itself, and he was a piece of work. He could slam a kid into a locker right in front of three teachers and an administrator than deny that he ever did such a thing. It didn't matter that there were witnesses (and often times video)of his stunts, he never did anything wrong, it was everyone else's fault, and the world was picking on him. He threw things constantly and spent a great deal of time up in ISS. The ISS Teacher, who has the patience of a Saint and loves these kids like no other, could hardly stand him. He was rude, mean, had no work ethic, and basically was going no where but down-hill fast.

Of course, if you knew his story, it all made sense.

Bully Boy, when he showed up in August, wasn't even living with a biological family member. He was living with his mother's best friend who also happened to be his godmother. This woman, bless her heart, was trying to do the right thing for a kid who probably never appreciated a single thing she did for him - buying him a television, games, nice clothes, and keeping a roof over his head and food in his belly. His parents both have serious drug habits and spend a lot of time in and out of jail. Any money they may have go towards drugs so there's times Bully Boy went hungry when he was living with a parent. His dad, according to godmother, is a bully himself and most likely abusive. His lying and bullying are most likely survival techniques he's learned living in the conditions he's lived in.

He had, in short, been bounced from relative to relative and now to a family friend all his life.

He wasn't in school on Tuesday and when I sent out an email to my parent contacts with the new study guide, I got an email back from his godmother's mother (who works for the district and would print out the emails and give to her daughter who didn't have email), asking me to take her off the email list as Bully Boy was no longer living with her daughter.

Hum. Interesting. I didn't pursue it for a few days because for all I knew, Bully Boy was still in our zone. However, today, curiosity got the best of me and I emailed godmother's mother back and asked if she knew what was going on as we hadn't heard anyone and Bully Boy was a no show.

Oh boy, did I get an earful. Apparently her daughter had to take a job in another part of the state and decided she couldn't take him with her. Part of her decision was she was probably just worn down with the effort of trying to help him pass 7th grade, and the other was the parents decided they wanted him back (they are both apparently out of jail). In the three weeks since we left for break, Bully Boy has lived with his father, then moved in with his mother, then lived with a grandmother, and now is back with his mother in another city nearby.

She hasn't bothered to even try to enroll him in school as no one has called to get his records.

As godmother's mother said, "I've known this family for years and they are nothing but a nightmare."

No kidding.

So right now, who knows where this kid really is, who he's really living with, and how long it will last.

Any bets on whether he'll graduate from high school? Or even make it to high school?

And whose fault will that be??? It should be the parents' but we all know that the government will blame the teachers, the schools, the administrators.

I feel like the government's scapegoat.

All I Want is a Good Night's Sleep

I never seem to get enough sleep. This isn't anything new. There's just never enough hours in the day to do all the things I need - and want - to do. There's school, but after that, there's the gym, the errands that need to be run (allergy shots, the market, trips to the post office, the chiropractor, etc), then on home for supper which I make, we eat, and I clean up. Then laundry, checking email (and hopefully blogging) and grading papers and cleaning house and on and on and on. If I'm lucky I can get some reading in and some knitting as well.

And I don't even have my own kids, or it would be worse.

One of my students today said he was doing a survey of what video game system each of his teachers owned and wanted to know which one I had.

"None," I said. "We don't have one."

The whole class gasped in shock. What? Someone without a video game system?

"Really? Not one?"

"Not one," I replied.

"What do you do?" he asked again. The kids all looked at me, wide-eyed. Really? What does one do without video games?

"Oh, I run errands. I cook dinner. I do laundry, I play with my cats, I talk with my husband, I read (this brought some looks of sheer horror to some of their faces), I watch movies, or the news, or History Channel, I knit, I do all sorts of things."

And as I said this, I realized that if I didn't have so darn much to do, it would, just maybe, be possible to get something like eight hours' sleep at night. A video game system would just cut into precious sleep time.

And I need my sleep time.

It seems that most of The Team, as well as most of the other Seventh Grade Teachers are suffering from sleep deprivation this week. Part of it is coming back off two glorious weeks where we could, for the most part, sleep all we want. I celebrated by taking naps on the couch with a warm cat or two for company. It was delightful. However, now we're back here at school, with most of us getting up at 5:00 am or so, and our minds are now fully engaged with all the drama and pathos that is Middle School.

Which is why, we discovered, most of us are waking up in the middle of the night and find that we can't go back to sleep.

For the past three nights I've awakened around 2:30 or 3:00 am and found that I can't go back to sleep. My mind just won't shut off. I try not to think of anything outside of pleasant sleepy thoughts, but my mind drifts off to thinking about an upcoming lesson, how we're going to handle our homework slackers this semester, things I need to do for a team meeting, and on and on.

And I'm still awake when the alarm goes off.

Sigh.

When is spring break?

What are they feeding these kids?

The chickadees rolled back in today. It was pretty typical. They were excited and gabby - after all they hadn't seen each other for two whole weeks - and about six of them couldn't remember their locker combinations. Nothing out of the ordinary with that chain of events.

However.

Am I the only one who is astounded - just astounded - that you can actually notice a growth spurt in a kid in a two week time period???

Honestly, Pinball Boy is now my height! He wasn't my height on the last day of school before break, but today I could stand there and look him in the eye. It freaked me out so bad, I called Mrs. Social Studies over (she, like me, is not exactly tall).

"Is it me, or has Pinball Boy grown?" I asked her as Pinball Boy stood there and giggled and smiled, loving the attention.

She looked him up and down, and her eyes widened. "Oh my gosh, he is taller! What on earth did your momma feed you during break!?"

Pinball grinned and giggled some more and said she fed him lots of good stuff.

Well, it's working. That kid took a leap in height, and he wasn't the only one. Another of my homeroom kids, who was a frail tiny thing two weeks ago, had to have added on an inch, as well as some weight, during break. Amazing.

Of course I added to my frame as well, but it was all in my butt and my stomach. Such is life. It's back to Weight Watchers and the gym.

Easing into the New Year

Alas, it is over.

No more sleeping in. No more sitting in my jammies doing sudoko puzzles until noon. Not much college football left to watch (I swear, Daddy Bird and I watched just about every bowl game there was). No more afternoon movies with Hubster.

Yup, it's back to school.

We went back today. The kids, however, did not. I happen to love this. It gives us a day to kind of ease back into the routine (getting up at 5:00 am takes some getting used to again) and we get some good in-service time in.

Tomorrow, the chickadees come back to roost. Hopefully Santa gave them some work ethic and motivation for Christmas, but more likely he just hit them over the head with the hormone hammer. We'll see. It could be a pleasant surprise.

The good news is two of our worst-behaved and lowest achieving students withdrew on the Thursday before break. One, to a pre-adoptive foster home which is something this girl needed. She had the most useless foster parents I've ever encountered (wouldn't return calls, answer emails, basically were non-involved with this kids' academic and behavior problems) and she needed to be somewhere where someone might actually give a rip about her. The other was a young man who was living with his aunt and since he didn't bother to put forth any effort he was failing all his classes and was spending way too much time in ISS for back talk and generally being a pill. His father decided enough was enough and off he went to live with him in...North Dakota. Talk about a culture shock. I hope he has a warm coat because he's going to need it.

As for me, I need a nap.

Carnival Time!

The good bowl games aren't on, you've shopped yourself out, and you're still munching on left over peanut brittle and sugar cookies - why not hoist yourself out of that easy chair and take a gander at this week's Education Carnival hosted by the Big Wonk himself!

The Best Gifts...Ever!

I'm always just flattered and tickled to death when a student of mine presents me with a Christmas card or even a gift. A lot of my students have families where there's more month than money so the fact that they spent anything, even a dollar for some bubble bath at the Dollar Store, really touches my heart. I love the homemade cards (complete with misspellings - I'm supposed to have a "happy and heathy Christmas" this year), and the drawings of stout reindeer and flying cats (figure that one out) make my day. Even the coffee mugs (and we teachers have more coffee mugs than a Starbucks, don't we?) are appreciated.

However, every once in a while you get a gift from a student that really lets you know that they thought about it, carefully selected it, and it was definitely a gift that was intended for you and no one else.

Freckled Boy gave me one such gift this year. I love this kid. He's in my homeroom, and sits right in front of my teacher station. He's always the first kid in every morning, and he's made it his mission to take all the chairs down every day while at the same time engaging me in some of the most interesting conversations. He asked me this morning if I'd be here for a few minutes after the students were dismissed. Apparently his mother was bringing a few presents for him to hand out and he wanted to make sure I'd get mine. I assured him I'd be here, and then promptly forgot about the conversation with the craziness that is the half day before break.

After the buses rolled and the other kids were dismissed, I was walking back to my room and he came up with a shoebox-sized box wrapped in holiday paper.

"Merry Christmas Mrs. B!" he said as he handed me my gift and dashed off to deliver another one to Mrs. Language. (I found out later that he gave her a stapler!)

I went back to my room and unwrapped my package. First, I had to take off the outside paper. Then unroll lots and lots of tissue paper. And finally got to an object about 10 inches long that was also wrapped in paper. A giant pencil? A pen? What on earth?

It was a screwdriver.

Now this may not sound like the best gift ever but you have to kind of understand the back story here. Earlier this year my handy little screwdriver (both flat head and phillips head) was stolen from my pencil cup. I loved this screwdriver and used it all the time. It tightened the screws on the hole punches so they stayed in place. It allowed me to disassemble the hand crank pencil sharpener to remove the broken pieces of colored pencil that got stuck inside. It let me fix chairs and tables which are slowly falling apart on a regular basis. There probably wasn't a day that went by that I didn't use that thing. And it was stolen and that really ticked me off. We had a rash of thefts that week, and that was just icing on the cake.

Freckled Boy was actually standing in front of me when I discovered the missing screwdriver and he'd seen how often I'd used it. So he got me a new one. Granted this one is a lot bigger (I definitely won't be working on pencil sharpeners with this one!) but the fact that he took the time to think about what I really needed and then went out and got it, really made my day.

I totally love the little curly ribbons he tied on the top. I kept them on it when I put it in my pencil cup. It's an awesome screwdriver!

Just when I didn't think it could get any better, my team came trotting around the corner with sneaky grins on their faces and a big silver bag with shiny paper sticking out of the top. What on earth???

Inside? A big huge bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream and two Bailey's glasses, and a great card thanking me for being a great team leader.

Ahhhhh. Made me want to cry. I've got a great, wonderful, fantastic team!

Popsicles Anyone?

We have our first snow day of the year today.

Well, actually it's more of an ice day since that's what's on the ground - and roads - hence the cancellation of school. It pretty much rained all day yesterday. However, when I left my house yesterday morning at 6:00 am it was 55 degrees on my front porch. When I got to school fifteen minutes later it had already dropped to 45 degrees. It continued to drop - and rain - all day long and by yesterday evening ice was starting to form.

Having spent about fifteen years up North where it snows and ices and generally is ugly from about November through March, I have some experience driving in stupid weather conditions. However, when ice is in the picture, I'm not driving anywhere. It's dangerous and it's scary and there's too many idiots with testosterone poisoning who think that because they have a four wheeled drive vehicle they can drive at high rates of speed on icy roads and nothing bad will happen to them. Wrong.

So I have a day off and I'm not terribly excited about it.

Why? Snow days are precious. We get three a year and using one right before we get off for our Christmas break is a waste of a perfectly good snow day. We can see the light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. Snow days are better spent in the deep dark depths of January and February and even March where we don't have many extra days off, the weather is gloomy, the kids are cranky, and it seems like forever until there's something to look forward to.

But at least I'm not out there driving on that mess!

P.S. Some of you have commented on still having school in very cold snowy weather, so I probably haven't explained how things work down here. I was stunned - stunned - the first year I was here and a snow day was called as it was barely snowing (at least in my opinion as an economic refugee from Up North). However, maybe only 20%, at most, of our kids walk to school. The rest are bused in, some from about an hour away in the rural parts of the county. There is also no such thing as a straight road here. Everything is hilly, curvy and there are more rivers, branches of rivers, creeks and whatnot to cross to get anywhere in this area. So, when it gets icy (and we get more ice than snow), it gets treacherous and no one wants to be the person responsible for a bus crash on an iced over bridge or narrow rural road. So, they cancel school.

When Smaller is Better

As I've mentioned before, we have a somewhat legendary class of seventh graders this year. We've been hearing about them for the past few years, beginning with the elementary teachers who were thrilled to see them move to middle school. (Interestingly, it wasn't one group from one elementary school - all three of the schools that feed into our building had a wild group of kids.)

The sixth grade teachers last year were ecstatic when they moved on to the 7th grade. Cheering and dancing in the halls doesn't begin to describe the joy.

This year the seventh grade teachers are counting the days until the end of May.

This was, coincidentally, the same year that Mrs. Eagle, Mrs. Robin and I volunteered to teach an 8th grade health class (Mrs. Robin taught 6th grade health), with a different group of kids every nine weeks. The drawback to this was that we had to cram five classes of seventh graders into four classes in order to give us the open period to teach the health class.

Most likely with any other group of kids (like the wonderful group we had last year) this would have worked out fine. With this group it was a recipe for disaster. We had our proof when we took our first benchmark.

I had one kid proficient. ONE. Uno. That was it. Mrs. Eagle and Mrs. Robin fared a bit better, but overall we still had only eight kids proficient in the entire school. What makes this even worse is that in the past, we've always been tops in the county when it came to scores, and our kids have always done better than their peers, despite being a low-income building with a fairly unmotivated population.

This was completely unacceptable to us, so as soon as we saw our scores we asked The Principal to come to our data chat to figure out what was going on.

What was going on was that we were spending so much time on management issues that we had precious little left to actually teach science. Our rooms are oddly shaped and somewhat small and we had kids crammed in there with every seat filled (and then some). The kids, who had trouble getting along with each other on good days, were having real problems with each other when they were crowded into our rooms. Even The Principal commented on the different feeling our rooms had with about five to six extra kids compared to the other teachers.

So, The Principal drafted some wonderful souls (librarian and guidance counselor) to take over the health classes, and we got to move kids from each of our big classes, thereby lowering the numbers, into an fifth section of science. This started right before Thankgsiving. It gave us a chance to build a class and put kids in there that were a good mix, as well as giving us a chance to separate kids who had no business being in the same room together.

I can't believe the difference.

I told the kids right up front why were doing this ("Your benchmarks were unacceptable which tells me you aren't learning what you should be.") and told them that this was one idea we had to help solve the problem. Three kids actually came up and thanked me for moving them to the new class so they could actually learn something. How often does that happen? I was able to get some kids away from each other, and the entire class noticed. My homeroom had four boys in there who could be case studies for severe ADHD. Two of them are now in the other class and my homeroom is actually somewhat peaceful.

Now granted, these classes aren't perfect (Fifth Period still gives me hives) but it's a whole lot better. The kids even noticed. A lot of them were delighted, after a few days, when they realized they were getting a lot more individual attention from me (I can help them rather than spend all period telling them to sit down, stop throwing things, keep their hands to themselves, blah, blah, blah.) They commented on that. They commented on how faster the classes went now that we were actually able to do something because deal with idiot behaviors. They love the fact that they actually have more room at their seats. It's been a good move all around.

They've taken two tests since the change and the grades have been quite a bit better then previously. Our next benchmark isn't until January, but we're hoping we'll see an improvement there.

They were so good (except for - guess who?! - Fifth Period) that I actually tried a lab today.

And it actually worked!

Carnival Time!

Check it out over at Mamacita's page, and while you're there, bookmark it! She's awesome!

Hey Dude, Where's My Doorprize?

This is the sixth year we've used our science texts so we're due for new books next year. Assuming, of course, that there's money in the budget to pay for them. We've been told that they're in the budget, but you can guess what will be the first thing cut when the cutting begins.

And of course some nitwit will write a letter to the editor bemoaning the fact that we buy new books - Outrageious! Ridiculous! Information hasn't changed any! Why do we need books! What a waste of money! (I am not kidding here - it happens every year.)

Do you have any idea what a book looks like after six years of seventh graders have slung it in and out of lockers, tossed it on the floor, flung it in backpacks, and goodness knows what else?

Still, the books we use now have held up pretty well, yet will become almost useless next year when our new standards go into place. Simply put, about half of what I currently teach will be moved to 8th grade, some will go to 6th, and a lot of the 8th grade curriculum will come down to 7th. If we don't get new books about the only idea we've come up with is to have a class set of each grade level and mix and match as we go through the year. Not ideal, but workable.

And then there's the fact that our entire plant unit, which is in our current standards and will be in our new standards, is not found in any of the books used at the middle school level. We spend about six weeks every year with the books in the lockers and pull information from all sorts of outside sources.

Our district, apparently, selects textbooks a bit differently than some as they teachers actually select them, not someone sitting in central office who doesn't live eat and breathe standards day in and day out like we do. What this means is that the various publishers come to town, rent a hotel conference room, lay out a big buffet (free food is an important component here), does a big pitch on Why Our Product Is Your Best Choice, hands out some cool door prizes (free stuff, gift cards, you name it), and of course the swag...lots and lots of free samples.

We live for free samples.

Mrs. Standards made a comment in all the workshops we taught on the new standards this summer that every single one of us should go to these events, not only so we make a good decision on what we end up with, but so we can get the free stuff. We are, after all, living in fear of not having new material for our new curriculum, but if we have enough of these freebies, we'll at least have something to work with.

So, last night Mrs. Eagle and I went downtown to The Big Fancy Hotel, mooched at the buffet, sat through the presentation, and got a huge bag of free stuff. We walked in, were pointed out the middle school table and told to take a pile of samples.

We sat down and flipped open the student book and took a look at the table of contents.

"Oh my gosh," said Mrs. Eagle. "They actually have everything we'll be teaching...even plants."

We were impressed. The book was smaller (and lighter in weight) than what we currently use. They essentially cut out everything we won't be teaching with the new standards. This is a huge improvement as our current book is big, bulky, and we don't use half of the chapters. The standards were all over the place, the section review questions were designed with Bloom's in mind, and it had all the STEM stuff we need (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics).

We also discovered that it has a companion workbook/book that is written at 2-3 grade levels below what the book is written at - instant differentiation! We loved this because it will really help the spec ed kids we teach as well as our lower readers, many of whom are completely lost when it comes to reading our book.

Technology was all over the place - pre-made PowerPoints, video quizzes, labs, you name it. Considering that we're going to have to teach some of the 8th grade content this year (squeezing in the stuff the kids will miss when the standards change) some of the free CD's and DVD's will be a big help. We'll be able to utilize some of the free stuff to teach this content, and that may give us a chance to test drive some of it.

All in all, we had a good time, got some neat stuff, and although we didn't win a door prize we were just tickled with what we did get.

Oh yeah, and the buffet rocked.

Carnival Time!!

One of my dearest blogging friends is hosting this week -Mr. Teacher over at Learn Me Good (Buy his book - it's a riot! It will make great gifts for teacher friends!) He does a fantastic take on Dickens, so check it out!!!

Slice 'em and Dice 'em

We had our third After School Science Lab today.

It wasn't for the faint of heart (or stomach) as we dissected frogs.

Now, dissecting frogs is not in our curriculum. In fact, the kids don't even get to dissect until they hit high school biology. However, every single year the first question we get asked is "Will we be dissecting frogs this year?" The kids are obsessed with the idea of dissecting frogs. So, when we found a tub of frogs in the lab (bought a few years ago for a science club thing and never used) Mrs. Eagle and I thought it would be a good idea to reward the kids who've come to our after school labs and let them dissect. After all, they kept asking for it.

So, this lab was by invitation only - we invited the kids who've shown enough interest to come to the previous labs - and they all knew beforehand what we'd be doing. Mrs. Eagle and I didn't want some kid coming who couldn't handle dissection and would faint and cause a lot of paperwork. It had been so long since I've dissected anything that I ended up asking Mrs. Standard, our science consulting teacher with the district, to send me some handouts.

We had the frogs, the kids, the worksheets, and all the tools.

And we had a blast.

None of these kids had ever done anything like this before, and I was amazed at how well they did. They took their time. They made careful cuts and incisions. They referred to the worksheets to identify the various objects they saw. And they really worked those frogs over, just looking at stuff.

"Hey, look, ours is female it has eggs!" yelled one pair.

"Cool! You can see the liver right there!" was another comment.

"Man, eyeballs are hard!" exclaimed another.

They loved it. One student said she was glad she did the lab because she's been thinking of being a surgeon and wanted to make sure she could deal with it. The only complaint, really, was the smell, but believe me, it was a lot better than the smell of the frogs I dealt with in High School that were preserved in pure formaldehyde.

I can't wait to hear them talking about it tomorrow!