The lockers in my part of The Building are OLD. Not just OLD, but DIRT OLD and could be, in fact, older than I am (which is pretty amazing). I believe some of them are original to the building (1964 era) and some were moved over from another building that was even older, so you can imagine what we're dealing with here.
Old cranky lockers that can give a kid fits.
However, I'm used to this. I'm used to the kids having to deal with sticky lockers and knobs that don't want to turn and handles that actually snap off.
What I'm not used to is kids who can't, after six weeks of school, remember their locker combination from one day to the next.
Seriously.
I have two boys in my homeroom who never, ever, remember their combinations. Ever. I'm at the point where I'm tired of looking it up for them and figure if they can't remember three little numbers (and which direction to turn the knob, yet another issue with these kids) then they don't need a locker and can just carry their books around all day. That may sound like a chore, but since they only have three textbooks this year (reading and LA are using class sets), that's not as bad as it sounds.
I thought it was just my kids who were having trouble, but found out from some of the other seventh grade teachers that they were seeing the same thing. Mr. Math has one kid who asks for his combination every morning and Mr. Math doesn't even have to look it up - he's told it to the kid so many times that he has it memorized. Apparently we have a whole group of kids this year who can't memorize a three letter combination.
Which got me to thinking...are we raising a generation of kids who can't memorize sets of numbers because we're all running around with cell phones where all we have to do is touch a screen or hit a pre-programmed key and the phone automatically dials? I have kids honestly tell me that they don't know their parents phone numbers when I'm filling out a phone pass (which makes the secretaries up front nuts as they have to then look up the number since the kid doesn't know it).
I know these kids can memorize some things - I've seen them memorize rap lyrics, dance steps, and football plays. So you think, as much as they love having those lockers, they could at least memorize three little numbers.
But apparently not.
Showing posts with label Lockers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lockers. Show all posts
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Lost Books, Lockers, and Lazy Seventh Graders
Middle Schoolers are a strange bunch.
When they hit sixth grade they are nearly beside themselves with joy over the fact that they actually get a real, honest to goodness locker. It's a rite of passage for them. In elementary school they kept their books (and various sundry other articles like string, tech-decks, parts of ink pens, broken crayons, and goodness always knows what else) in their desks, but when they hit middle school they grow up (in theory) and get lockers.
Of course, to hear the sixth grade teachers tell it, it takes about half a year for them to figure out how to open the darn things. I believe they may be stretching it a bit.
However, for some weird reason, we have a bunch of seventh graders this year who just don't feel the need to use their lockers and proceed to leave their books just about anywhere they drop. I find books on the floor of my room, under tables, left on counters, out in the hall, you name it. This bunch of kids, of course, rarely ever have their books in class because - surprise! - they don't remember where they left them! What's strange is these kids all have lockers that work perfectly fine. They just choose, for whatever strange reason, not to use them. Most likely they are preferring to hang in the hallway gossiping with their friends and just don't have time to fiddle around with a combination lock.
We have one kid, Lazy Locker Boy, who thinks that his homeroom teacher, Mrs. Social Studies, is the keeper of his books. And if she's not keeping his books, apparently they're residing in my room.
Think again, kiddo.
Mrs. Social Studies and I hit our limit this week when, for something like the two hundredth time, we found all of Lazy Locker Boy's books scattered in our rooms. I decided to go to the big gun and that would be Mrs. Squirrel, the administrator in charge of textbooks. Mrs. Squirrel is determined never to have the school lose a single book so when she finds out that kids aren't taking care of books, she gets really, really irate. Really. It drives her nuts that kids can toss a sixty dollar text book out in the hallway where anyone can steal it, lose it, mutilate it, and so forth.
And trust me, although Mrs. Squirrel is a nature lover and is a kind, big-hearted softie when it comes to most kids and small animals, when she's irate, she's downright scary.
I dropped off the pile of books that belonged to Lazy Locker Boy and explained the situation to Mrs. Squirrel. Her eyes blazed. She said to send Lazy Locker Boy to her and she'd give him his books after she gave him a lecture and informed him that the next time his books found their way to her office he'd earn a discipline referral.
Lazy Locker Boy slunk back to his class and seemed to get the picture. No books were found strewn through the team area yesterday.
However.
Due to the age of our lockers, and the generally poor condition they are in, we have a number of lockers in our area that are broken and that don't close. These are not assigned to anyone (obviously, since they are not secure), and are supposed to be kept empty and clean.
Guess what I found in one of these broken lockers today?
Oh yeah...some of Lazy Locker Boy's books.
They are now sitting on the desk outside Mrs. Squirrel's office. Tomorrow should prove interesting.
When they hit sixth grade they are nearly beside themselves with joy over the fact that they actually get a real, honest to goodness locker. It's a rite of passage for them. In elementary school they kept their books (and various sundry other articles like string, tech-decks, parts of ink pens, broken crayons, and goodness always knows what else) in their desks, but when they hit middle school they grow up (in theory) and get lockers.
Of course, to hear the sixth grade teachers tell it, it takes about half a year for them to figure out how to open the darn things. I believe they may be stretching it a bit.
However, for some weird reason, we have a bunch of seventh graders this year who just don't feel the need to use their lockers and proceed to leave their books just about anywhere they drop. I find books on the floor of my room, under tables, left on counters, out in the hall, you name it. This bunch of kids, of course, rarely ever have their books in class because - surprise! - they don't remember where they left them! What's strange is these kids all have lockers that work perfectly fine. They just choose, for whatever strange reason, not to use them. Most likely they are preferring to hang in the hallway gossiping with their friends and just don't have time to fiddle around with a combination lock.
We have one kid, Lazy Locker Boy, who thinks that his homeroom teacher, Mrs. Social Studies, is the keeper of his books. And if she's not keeping his books, apparently they're residing in my room.
Think again, kiddo.
Mrs. Social Studies and I hit our limit this week when, for something like the two hundredth time, we found all of Lazy Locker Boy's books scattered in our rooms. I decided to go to the big gun and that would be Mrs. Squirrel, the administrator in charge of textbooks. Mrs. Squirrel is determined never to have the school lose a single book so when she finds out that kids aren't taking care of books, she gets really, really irate. Really. It drives her nuts that kids can toss a sixty dollar text book out in the hallway where anyone can steal it, lose it, mutilate it, and so forth.
And trust me, although Mrs. Squirrel is a nature lover and is a kind, big-hearted softie when it comes to most kids and small animals, when she's irate, she's downright scary.
I dropped off the pile of books that belonged to Lazy Locker Boy and explained the situation to Mrs. Squirrel. Her eyes blazed. She said to send Lazy Locker Boy to her and she'd give him his books after she gave him a lecture and informed him that the next time his books found their way to her office he'd earn a discipline referral.
Lazy Locker Boy slunk back to his class and seemed to get the picture. No books were found strewn through the team area yesterday.
However.
Due to the age of our lockers, and the generally poor condition they are in, we have a number of lockers in our area that are broken and that don't close. These are not assigned to anyone (obviously, since they are not secure), and are supposed to be kept empty and clean.
Guess what I found in one of these broken lockers today?
Oh yeah...some of Lazy Locker Boy's books.
They are now sitting on the desk outside Mrs. Squirrel's office. Tomorrow should prove interesting.
Saturday, February 07, 2009
Good Doggie, or The Most Interesting Things Happen When You Have a Student Teacher
Mrs. Jayhawker is flying solo this week (and doing a pretty good job of it, I might add), so I'm trying to make myself useful outside of my classroom. I've been getting a lot of team paperwork done, wrote a new benchmark quiz, and have done some one-on-one sessions with most of our kids to let them know what they need to do for the remainder of the school year to get academically promoted to eighth grade. For lack of a better place to work, I've sort of camped out in guidance, using a student laptop to work on stuff and hopefully lend a hand when needed (like the other day when Pinball Boy was having his meltdown.)
So, when Mr. Enforcer told me he'd need my help around 9 on Friday morning, I got curious.
"Something interesting going to happen?" I asked. I worked with him earlier in the year when we had a big deal disaster drill with some visiting consultants, and I knew they were coming back some time so I thought that might be it.
"Maybe," he said vaguely.
"Well, I have a student teacher so if there's anything she needs to know, I'd like to prep her," I said. I've been a sub and a student teacher and there's not much worse than being in a situation where you have no clue what to do.
"We may have some visitors and we may do a lockdown," he said. "Here's a print out of the procedure so she has it handy."
I thanked him, went in to see her (the kids were at their related arts) and gave her the lowdown, or what I knew so far. If she was lucky, it would happen at nine when all she had in the room were the kids that were supposed to show up for homework clinic.
I was on my way to Mr. Enforcer's Office when I heard him come over the intercom with the lockdown message. Kids were snatched into classrooms, doors went closed, and I hustled up to the front office to see a whole slew of law enforcement vehicles out front and a lot of officers in the lobby - with dogs!
Hey, it's a great day for a locker search!
It's no secret that drugs are a huge problem in schools, even elementary schools, sad to say, and even in schools in "good" communities. I taught in a nice rural area up North and we had a huge drug problem in that community (which always kind of made me shake my head when I'd hear parents yabber about how they moved to the country to escape the big city problems.) I've seen rich kids involved, and poor kids, and there's really no common denominator outside of the fact that they made some poor choices in life and were obviously missing something somewhere. We had regular sweeps, and managed to limit a lot of the drug problem at school because the kids knew that there could be a sweep at any time. True, they took the trade off-campus, but it did put a dent in the on-campus problems.
However, in the six years I've been at The School, we've never had a drug sweep. The first superintendent I served under absolutely refused to do so as he feared it would give the public the wrong idea. Honestly, I'd love it if they did the sweeps every quarter so the kids knew, like the ones up North, that bringing the stuff to school was a risk. Sadly, however, we've seen a big spike in drug trafficking in our area, including some rather large drug busts (one of which happened on parent conference day and made me wonder if perhaps some of my parents were a bit preoccupied with being arrested..) Our current superintendent decided it would be a good idea to sweep all the high schools and middle schools and see what they could find.
Mr. Enforcer gave me a bag of locker key masters and told me to go with one of the officers and sweep the sixth grade area. I ended up with an officer from a neighboring county who had a very sweet yellow lab who was prancing around and bubbling with excitement. It was obvious that this dog loved her job. We went through the sixth grade area, checked all the lockers, and the bathrooms, and came up clean. That was good.
"So," I asked the officer as we headed back to the main part of the building, "what would your dog do if she did smell something in a locker?"
"Oh, she'd sit down in front of it, like those dogs there," he said as we rounded the corner and spied two dogs sitting down in front of some lockers right outside my classroom.
Oh dear.
I knew who these lockers belonged to, and it wasn't even a surprise that the dogs got a hit on those lockers. One of the kids is the child of parents who deal in drugs (a well-known fact in the area) and has often been named as a source in the building although we've never been able to catch him with anything. The other is a kid who I've suspected was a user simply because of his demeanor most of the time. The officers searched these lockers, and came up empty for any illegal substances.
The only other hits were apparently quite a few down in the eighth grade wing, but again, a search was conducted and nothing was found. The officer I was with said that they often take the dogs to elementary schools and let the kids pet them and often the dog will indicate the presence of drugs on one of the children - they are so sensitive to the scent they will pick it up on clothing that a kid wears in a home where the parents are users. Considering the two lockers that were checked by my room, this didn't surprise me at all.
All in all it took an hour to sweep the building (and it was their second of the day) and then they were off to another school. Once the kids were released from lockdown and sent off to their classes the rumor mill began, so the teachers were instructed to let them know that they were put in lockdown to keep them out of the way, there was no danger, and this was a county-wide search and not a target at the school.
But you knew the rumor mill was going to go into high gear right away. Mrs. Language and Miss Reading asked me to come into their classes and talk to the kids about it ("Because you were in on the whole thing...") and I basically said that I wasn't telling them anything about what I saw, and if any of them heard from someone else whose locker was searched then they should consider it nothing but a lie and idle gossip because no students were out there and none of them have a clue what they are talking about. It didn't stop the kids from speculating (and amazingly, can you guess what names kept coming up? The kids who did have their lockers searched).
An unintended consequence of this whole thing? It got the kids so worked up that many of them started going to guidance and telling on kids they knew who had, in their possession, illegal substances. (Obviously, we didn't search the kids, they were in the classrooms.) By the end of the day we had expelled three for possession, sale, and use of prescription drugs. Raiding Mom and Dad's medicine cabinet has become big business for some of these kids (wonder how many of them are selling their own ADHD meds?) This is obviously a step up from a few years ago when my students were busy stealing over the counter cold medicine out of the bathroom cabinet and trying to get high off of that.
Just another one of those days that they don't prepare you for in teacher school...
So, when Mr. Enforcer told me he'd need my help around 9 on Friday morning, I got curious.
"Something interesting going to happen?" I asked. I worked with him earlier in the year when we had a big deal disaster drill with some visiting consultants, and I knew they were coming back some time so I thought that might be it.
"Maybe," he said vaguely.
"Well, I have a student teacher so if there's anything she needs to know, I'd like to prep her," I said. I've been a sub and a student teacher and there's not much worse than being in a situation where you have no clue what to do.
"We may have some visitors and we may do a lockdown," he said. "Here's a print out of the procedure so she has it handy."
I thanked him, went in to see her (the kids were at their related arts) and gave her the lowdown, or what I knew so far. If she was lucky, it would happen at nine when all she had in the room were the kids that were supposed to show up for homework clinic.
I was on my way to Mr. Enforcer's Office when I heard him come over the intercom with the lockdown message. Kids were snatched into classrooms, doors went closed, and I hustled up to the front office to see a whole slew of law enforcement vehicles out front and a lot of officers in the lobby - with dogs!
Hey, it's a great day for a locker search!
It's no secret that drugs are a huge problem in schools, even elementary schools, sad to say, and even in schools in "good" communities. I taught in a nice rural area up North and we had a huge drug problem in that community (which always kind of made me shake my head when I'd hear parents yabber about how they moved to the country to escape the big city problems.) I've seen rich kids involved, and poor kids, and there's really no common denominator outside of the fact that they made some poor choices in life and were obviously missing something somewhere. We had regular sweeps, and managed to limit a lot of the drug problem at school because the kids knew that there could be a sweep at any time. True, they took the trade off-campus, but it did put a dent in the on-campus problems.
However, in the six years I've been at The School, we've never had a drug sweep. The first superintendent I served under absolutely refused to do so as he feared it would give the public the wrong idea. Honestly, I'd love it if they did the sweeps every quarter so the kids knew, like the ones up North, that bringing the stuff to school was a risk. Sadly, however, we've seen a big spike in drug trafficking in our area, including some rather large drug busts (one of which happened on parent conference day and made me wonder if perhaps some of my parents were a bit preoccupied with being arrested..) Our current superintendent decided it would be a good idea to sweep all the high schools and middle schools and see what they could find.
Mr. Enforcer gave me a bag of locker key masters and told me to go with one of the officers and sweep the sixth grade area. I ended up with an officer from a neighboring county who had a very sweet yellow lab who was prancing around and bubbling with excitement. It was obvious that this dog loved her job. We went through the sixth grade area, checked all the lockers, and the bathrooms, and came up clean. That was good.
"So," I asked the officer as we headed back to the main part of the building, "what would your dog do if she did smell something in a locker?"
"Oh, she'd sit down in front of it, like those dogs there," he said as we rounded the corner and spied two dogs sitting down in front of some lockers right outside my classroom.
Oh dear.
I knew who these lockers belonged to, and it wasn't even a surprise that the dogs got a hit on those lockers. One of the kids is the child of parents who deal in drugs (a well-known fact in the area) and has often been named as a source in the building although we've never been able to catch him with anything. The other is a kid who I've suspected was a user simply because of his demeanor most of the time. The officers searched these lockers, and came up empty for any illegal substances.
The only other hits were apparently quite a few down in the eighth grade wing, but again, a search was conducted and nothing was found. The officer I was with said that they often take the dogs to elementary schools and let the kids pet them and often the dog will indicate the presence of drugs on one of the children - they are so sensitive to the scent they will pick it up on clothing that a kid wears in a home where the parents are users. Considering the two lockers that were checked by my room, this didn't surprise me at all.
All in all it took an hour to sweep the building (and it was their second of the day) and then they were off to another school. Once the kids were released from lockdown and sent off to their classes the rumor mill began, so the teachers were instructed to let them know that they were put in lockdown to keep them out of the way, there was no danger, and this was a county-wide search and not a target at the school.
But you knew the rumor mill was going to go into high gear right away. Mrs. Language and Miss Reading asked me to come into their classes and talk to the kids about it ("Because you were in on the whole thing...") and I basically said that I wasn't telling them anything about what I saw, and if any of them heard from someone else whose locker was searched then they should consider it nothing but a lie and idle gossip because no students were out there and none of them have a clue what they are talking about. It didn't stop the kids from speculating (and amazingly, can you guess what names kept coming up? The kids who did have their lockers searched).
An unintended consequence of this whole thing? It got the kids so worked up that many of them started going to guidance and telling on kids they knew who had, in their possession, illegal substances. (Obviously, we didn't search the kids, they were in the classrooms.) By the end of the day we had expelled three for possession, sale, and use of prescription drugs. Raiding Mom and Dad's medicine cabinet has become big business for some of these kids (wonder how many of them are selling their own ADHD meds?) This is obviously a step up from a few years ago when my students were busy stealing over the counter cold medicine out of the bathroom cabinet and trying to get high off of that.
Just another one of those days that they don't prepare you for in teacher school...
Friday, September 14, 2007
How to Lose a Locker in 24 Hours, or Less!
Those of us on The Team keep shaking our heads and marveling over how good our kids are this year compared to previous years. It's a bit odd in a way, but I don't think you'll catch any of us complaining. It's just a completely different set of kids with a lot better behavior for the most part. Those sixth grade teachers obviously kicked some butt with this group last year and trained them well.
However, that doesn't mean we don't have our share of knuckleheads who just can't seem to get with the program. These are the few kids who think that they're just too cool to follow the rules, too cool to do work, too cool to do anything they're supposed to.
Like bring their freaking book to class.
At first we thought it was just a few of them being forgetful (which is a common state of unawareness with seventh graders) but during our discussions at lunch we noticed a fairly common pattern. These weren't kids who were forgetting to bring their books, these were kids choosing not to bring their books. Instead, they decided to spend their four minutes between classes socializing and hanging out at the drinking fountain rather than going to their locker.
Contrary Boy, when asked where his book was for the umpteenth time, informed me that he just didn't have time to get his book. I then pointed out to him that as a kid who played football, he was certainly capable of carrying more than one book at a time. That apparently never crossed his mind. The fact that our kids don't have to walk very far to get from class to class (we're all right there in a cluster, in fact, Mr. Social Studies and I have doors separated by a mere 12") tells us that they're just goofing off.
So, we laid down the law the other day. Lockers, we said, are a privilege, not a right and if they continue to choose to leave their books in their locker then they'd lose the use of their locker. Three "forgotten" books equals three days without a locker. We're basically borrowing this trick from the 8th grade playbook - they post locker eviction notices, empty the lockers, and secure them with zip ties for continual infractions of the student code of conduct (among other things). It's quite a sight to walk down the 8th grade hall and see the brightly colored eviction notices and zip ties up and down the hallway.
We announced the policy yesterday. Today we already had 3 kids who had lost their locker privileges. And guess what? They include Contrary Boy and two of his pals.
What a surprise.
They're gonna be mad on Monday!
However, that doesn't mean we don't have our share of knuckleheads who just can't seem to get with the program. These are the few kids who think that they're just too cool to follow the rules, too cool to do work, too cool to do anything they're supposed to.
Like bring their freaking book to class.
At first we thought it was just a few of them being forgetful (which is a common state of unawareness with seventh graders) but during our discussions at lunch we noticed a fairly common pattern. These weren't kids who were forgetting to bring their books, these were kids choosing not to bring their books. Instead, they decided to spend their four minutes between classes socializing and hanging out at the drinking fountain rather than going to their locker.
Contrary Boy, when asked where his book was for the umpteenth time, informed me that he just didn't have time to get his book. I then pointed out to him that as a kid who played football, he was certainly capable of carrying more than one book at a time. That apparently never crossed his mind. The fact that our kids don't have to walk very far to get from class to class (we're all right there in a cluster, in fact, Mr. Social Studies and I have doors separated by a mere 12") tells us that they're just goofing off.
So, we laid down the law the other day. Lockers, we said, are a privilege, not a right and if they continue to choose to leave their books in their locker then they'd lose the use of their locker. Three "forgotten" books equals three days without a locker. We're basically borrowing this trick from the 8th grade playbook - they post locker eviction notices, empty the lockers, and secure them with zip ties for continual infractions of the student code of conduct (among other things). It's quite a sight to walk down the 8th grade hall and see the brightly colored eviction notices and zip ties up and down the hallway.
We announced the policy yesterday. Today we already had 3 kids who had lost their locker privileges. And guess what? They include Contrary Boy and two of his pals.
What a surprise.
They're gonna be mad on Monday!
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