Losing Curiosity

This afternoon Mrs. Eagle and I headed over to one of our feeder elementary schools and judged their science fair. We've done this the past few years and it's always quite a bit of fun. This year they were horribly short of judges as the snow days we've had managed to knock everyone's schedule out of wack and many of the schools ended up scheduling their fairs on the same day. The result was that there were only three of us judging the entire fair this year, Mrs. Eagle, myself, and a retired science teacher who works at the local university as a student teacher mentor.

We walked into the cafeteria and were confronted by the sea of science fair boards. I don't even want to estimate how many projects there were, but there were a lot! Since we had three grades to judge, each of us took a grade. Mrs. University took the 3rd grade, I took 4th, and Mrs. Eagle took 5th.

The quality of science fair projects has definitely improved over the years. I didn't see a single project on "what paper towels are the best", or "what diapers absorb the best", (although I saw way too many, "which chewing gum brand has flavor that lasts the longest). There were some interesting questions such as "Can I make a magnet to help pick up my mom's silverware?", or "Who has the most bacteria in their mouth, my dog, my cat or me?", and "What affect does erosion have on our local river?." It took quite a while to work my way through the fourth grade projects, but I finally pulled out eight, which were all pretty good.

We decided that we'd would all work together to narrow down our first round of selections, and that worked out pretty well. We discussed and picked out my top four and ranked them from first place to honorable mention. We then narrowed down the eight that Mrs. University had picked (including a great one on sled materials and snow), and ranked them as well.

And then Mrs. Eagle pulled out her four because, truth be told, she couldn't find eight that really were that good.

"I hate to say it," she said, "But look how much better the fourth and third grade projects are."

She wasn't kidding. It wasn't that the boards looked all that much better, but the content was much better. Much more interesting questions, better hypotheses, repetition of experiments to increase the validity of their results and so on.

"Do you think it's because that's when they're starting to turn into middle schoolers?" I said.

"Puberty," she said. "That's probably part of it. Plus the older they get, the less they play outside and the less curious they seem to be about the world around them."

Tell me about it. We have often complained about the incredible lack of curiosity about anything our kids seem to possess. They are not interested in anything outside of their social lives, video games, and electronic gadgets. And even then they aren't all that interested in how anything works.

However, it was fascinating, and a bit alarming, to see this jump to adolescence paraded right before our eyes.

Hey Buddy, Can You Spare a Quarter?

There are just some things that you don't expect to have to deal with in middle school. Little kid things like frequent barfing, skinned knees, and potty accidents, and all that little kid stuff that the elementary teachers deal with (bless them!) on a regular basis. We're used to dealing with the more dramatic middle school stuff like boy/girl drama, body odor, and girls having to see the nurse because their "friend" arrived and they aren't prepared.

So I was a bit surprised when Skater Goober (why is it always Skatter Goober?) came running up to me in a panic between class changes.

"Mrs. Bluebird," he gasped. "You know Shaggy Boy?" he asked breathlessly.

"Um, yeah, he's in your class," I reminded him.

"Oh, yeah. Well anyhow he was throwing a quarter around and he tossed it at me, it flew in my mouth and I swallowed it and now it feels like it's stuck and OH MY GOSH, I SWALLOWED A QUARTER!" His eyes are wildly spinning around and he's bouncing up and down on his toes by this point.

Oh. Good. Gracious.

"You opened your mouth and swallowed a quarter?" I asked, just wanting to make sure I heard right.

"Um, yeah. Do you think I'm going to be okay?" he asked. "I mean, OHMIGOD, I SWALLOWED A QUARTER!"

"You'll probably be fine and I'm sure it's uncomfortable, so I'm sending you to the nurse," I told him. I went back to my room, grabbed the nurse form, filled it out with the description of "swallowed a quarter," and sent him on his way. I wonder what our new nurse is going to think about this latest adventure?

Mrs. Social Studies, who had Skater Goober the next period looked at me. "Where's Skater Goober going in such a hurry?"

"I'm sending him to the nurse. He swallowed a quarter." I then filled her in on the story because, like me, she was having a hard time keeping a straight face.

Poor Skater Goober. The nurse called Dad who came and picked him up a few minutes later. Considering that Mom and Dad are, again, at their wits' end with this kid, I'm sure this whole adventure was just icing on the cake.

I just hope he doesn't keep the quarter as a souvenir.

When Parents Stick Their Heads in the Sand

We have a girl on the team who has incredible potential but is probably one of the most messed up kids I've seen in a long time.

The fact that I didn't even meet her until the fifth day of school, because she was in ISS during the first four days, was an indication of trouble to come. Academically she should be an A and B student, but is getting by with C's and D's.

The kids all think she's nuts. They'll come right out and say it if you ask where she's at (often I see her in the morning, but she'll do something to get in trouble and end up in ISS).

"Oh, Crazy Girl, she's up in ISS," they'll say to my inquiries. "She's nuts! She's just crazy." Now, in middle school, when your peers think you're crazy, chances are that there's something off somewhere.

We had a meeting, called by Mom, early in the year which was a bit odd in itself. Mom is going to college so she isn't home a lot, but Crazy Girl has both parents (biological dad is in the picture which is almost unusual these days), and they live in an area in the rural part of our county along with a lot of their kin in the same neighborhood. "She's never by herself," Mom assured us. "She has lots of love and support from her parents, her grandparents and lots of aunts and uncles." Mom didn't understand the dark eye makeup, the defiant attitude, the refusal to do work, the mood swings. Mom nervously giggled during the entire meeting and Crazy Girl sat there and sulked until we asked her to leave so we could talk to Mom in private. Mom didn't seem to get that there were problems out there, much more than academic.

Like Crazy Girl's obsession with the really bad boys in school - she's drawn to the kids that ooze hatred and trouble. Her latest was a boy she met in ISS (and passed some incredibly graphic notes to explaining the various sex acts she was willing to do with and for him). He's been sent to alternative school and she's been trying to get there ever since. Prior to his removal, she ended up in ISS a number of times for groping and kissing him in the hallway.

Another weird habit of hers is that she hangs on kids. It's kind of hard to explain without a picture, but she'll literally drape herself over her friends' backs and hang on them. She's very touchy - always grabbing at her girlfriends, hugging, holding hands, and hanging on them. So much so that Mrs. Social Studies asked me in the hall one day if I thought that perhaps Crazy Girl was a bit confused over her sexual orientation.

And then there are the days that she's absolutely wild and manic prior to lunch, and then almost falling out of her chair, woozy, and incoherent after lunch. Substance abuse? Stealing mom and dad's meds out of the bathroom? Hard to say, and I simply type up another referral to guidance to have the counseling pros check it out.

And she's a cutter.

I had heard from guidance that we were getting a few kids who had had issues with cutting in sixth grade. From what we were able to tell, most of these kids had stopped cutting and were dealing with life a lot better. Not Crazy Girl, however. She has, from the first day I've seen her, cut herself, on the face, of all places. You actually have to look fairly close to see the cuts, but they are there and they are definitely caused by a razor blade.

So, this last week, Crazy Girl cursed out a substitute teacher and ended back in guidance and Mr. Enforcer finally decided that she'd earned herself a ticket to alternative school. Where, I hope, she and the boyfriend don't get put in the same room together - however, if they do, it won't take long before they do something really stupid and find themselves expelled. Crazy Girl spent most of the day in guidance waiting for her parents to come in and meet with Mr. Enforcer.

Which gave the Guidance Goddess and Guidance Diva a lot of time to observe some really odd behavior.

"I think that kid needs a therapist in the worst way," said Guidance Goddess. "She's crying and sobbing one minute, giggling and laughing the next. And every time we gave her something to eat, she'd go into the bathroom and throw up. Heavens she's probably bulimic."

I had to agree with her. This is one troubled kid. I checked with Mr. Enforcer at the end of the day to find out what was going to happen with her.

"She's got 30 days in alternative school," he said, shaking his head. "Her parents are just clueless about what's going on with this kid. It's so sad. Do you realize that her mom thinks those cuts on her face are from the family cat?"

This absolutely stunned me. Those cuts look nothing - nothing! - like cat scratches. And they've been there for months, in the same exact place.

I feel so bad for Crazy Girl, and for her parents. They want to believe that everything is fine because all their other kids are fine, they have a nice nuclear family, and everyone is fed, clothed and cared for. However, something is missing in Crazy Girl's life, or she wouldn't be engaging in such self-destructive behavior. I hope and pray that she gets some help soon, because she's on a dangerous path.

But if parents keep sticking their heads into the sand kids like her won't get the help they need.

Trading Places

So last week The Principal catches me in the hall and says, "Just the person I need to see."

Uh-oh...

Mrs. Squirrel is retiring, bless her heart, and after a pretty extensive search The Principal hired a replacement, although we all know that Mrs. Squirrel is irreplaceable. The new AP, Mrs. Sparrow is currently a sixth grade science teacher at another school in the district. I've actually run into her in the past during science in-service stuff, and it's nice to have a former science teacher added to the admin staff.

"Mrs. Sparrow needs to spend about a week shadowing Mrs. Squirrel, Mr. Enforcer, and myself to get a feel for the building," continued The Principal, "but her principal isn't wild about paying for a sub for a whole week, let alone having Mrs. Sparrow gone. Well, Dr. Big Wig, actually suggested that you go over there for three days and introduce her sixth graders to some seventh grade science."

Whoa. Dr. Big Wig? The Director of Middle Schools? The Principal's boss? Actually he's a real cool guy (and the first to tell you that as a child he was labeled "at risk' at one time), and he's out in the buildings quite a lot and knows most of the middle school teachers by name - which is saying something in a district this size.

"He said that since our seventh grade science scores are the highest in the district, he thought it would be good to have one of you visit Mrs. Sparrow's class and he suggested you."

(At last! A confirmation that we really were the highest in the district! Take that all you rich schools!!)

So, I agreed to spend three days at the Rich School Across Town, while one of our aides took over my class. I got with Mrs. Sparrow last week to get the lay of the land over at The Rich School Across Town, and to fill her in on what I was going to do. I actually asked my current seventh graders what they would have wanted to know about seventh grade science before they actually got to seventh grade and they all said the same thing: cells. So, with their input, I put together a three day introduction to cells.

Today was my first day there and I'll have to admit, it was a lot of fun. I have to keep reminding myself that these kids are sixth grade, not seventh, so they're even more immature than what I'm used to (but not by much). Mrs. Sparrow has her kids in desks in rows, which I haven't had for years in my room, so that's taken some getting used to as well. It's kind of nice to see different styles and procedures and ways of doing things.

The kids themselves were really nice kids, and seemed excited to have a visiting "real teacher" and not just another sub. They were really concerned about who was watching my class so I had to explain how we had aides in our building who helped teachers so one of our aides was taking care of my class. The idea of aides was new to them, but then again, this is a school that does not have 60% free and reduced lunch like my school does. They don't get funding for aides. The other thing that they were really intrigued with was how I do notes - I never have kids get out paper and take notes, we always do foldables, and they'd never seen these before.

One thing that struck me...compared to these kids, my students look like a bunch of ragamuffins. These kids obviously come from better backgrounds financially, and they show it by how they dress. It's not that they have designer clothes so much, but they are cleaner and just seem to take more care in their appearance. Their hair is combed and neat, they have clothes that are obviously clean, and they just carry themselves better. Many of my students wear the same thing day in and day out, are sloppy in their dress, and don't do as good a job with personal grooming.

Then again, I have kids who've lived in cars, and these kids all have a roof over their heads.

One of my girls that comes to mind is a quiet little thing that I have in my Fourth Period Class From The Very Depths of Hell Itself. Quiet Girl is one of about ten kids (his, hers, theirs) and there's not much money at home. I think she has maybe four outfits. Her hair is limp and stringy, her clothes aren't always clean, and things don't fit quite right. She's smart as a whip, but doesn't do any homework as she's responsible for babysitting all the younger kids when she gets home, because mom and dad are always out "shopping". We're not quite sure what they're shopping for since they don't have any money, so we're wondering if she means "shoplifting", or "shopping for drugs," as there's some anecdotal evidence that there's drug use in the home. It's sad. She's raising herself and her siblings, and is barely taken care of. Quiet Girl would stick out like a sore thumb here with all these kids at The Rich School Across Town.

That being said, it's nice to visit, but I think I'll stick with my ragamuffins. They need me more than these kids do.

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...

Busted!

I have a student teacher, Mrs. Jayhawker (she's from Kansas) who is doing fantastic. I met her for the first time last year when she did an observation with Mrs. Eagle, and I was tickled to find out she'd do the first part of her student teaching with me. She's a Mom, has two middle school kids of her own, has subbed and has a lot more maturity and with-it-ness than some of the twenty-sometimes that come through my room during observations.

And she busted some cheaters.

We had our unit test on Friday, so I had Mrs. Jayhawker take them home and grade them over the weekend, while I took home the writing prompts and graded those. I figured the experience would be good for her. I got an email over the weekend telling me she suspected four girls (who all sit at the same table)of cheating as they all had identical answers (word for word) on their essay questions. In addition, two of the girls, who rarely pass a test on a good day, not only passed, but got A's!

This morning she showed me the tests and it was pretty obvious that there was some cheating involved. The same answers, the same misspellings, and my favorite, a couple of "floating" letters on the edge of the test where it looked as if someone asked for an answer, and another one of the girls had written it down for them.

Oh boy.

The worst thing is that these are good kids. Three of them were invited on our camping field trip for this spring (and have paid the nonrefundable deposit). Two of them should be regulars on the A/B honor roll. One is a basketball player whose mother manages the cafeteria.

To say I was disappointed (and let's be honest, a bit pissed off) was an understatement. Mrs. Social Studies and Ms. Language both looked at the tests and were just as upset as I was. So, we pulled the girls into my room before they went off to first period and see if they would come clean.

I started off asking them if they ever noticed the big "Make Good Choices" slide I have on my daily PowerPoint agenda. That's my mantra with these kids. I then asked them if any of them wanted to talk about the fact that they may not have made a good choice on Friday.

Silence. Serious, scared faces.

Mrs. Language gave them her mean face. Mrs. Social Studies shook her head in disgust. Mrs. Jayhawker took notes (I'm sure this was her "critical incident" she had to write about this week). The girls sat there.

We talked about how disappointed we were, how it was obvious something unusual had happened, how we were dismayed that they felt they had to stoop to cheating, how it takes at least two to cheat - one to copy and the other to let the copying happen.

Silence. Tears starting to flow for two of them.

I read the paragraph in the code of conduct that basically said I could write a discipline referral and they'd probably get detention or ISS or something. I opted, however, not to do that. Instead, I gave them lunch detention, they were having their seats changed, and they were taking the test again this afternoon.

And then Mrs. Language casually mentioned that we may not be able to take them camping as they've violated our trust. As a team we'd have to discuss it.

Silence and more tears.

I sent them on to their classes and Mrs. Social Studies said she was sure she could get one of the girls to confess. She did. She informed her that all four of them were engaged in the cheating.

When they showed up for lunch detention, they were a quiet, sober bunch. Part of the lunch detention ritual is that students have to write and sign a statement about why they were in detention and what they could do next time to stay out of detention. All of them admitted to the cheating and said they'd never do it again. They apologized. They groveled. It was obvious that the threat of getting kicked out of the camping trip made an impression.

During detention the basketball coach came in, saw her player's statement, shook her head and walked away in disgust. Player girl put her head down on her desk - in the meantime, her mother had emailed me back and said she'd support anything we wanted to do in terms of punishment, but did want us to know that she's grounded - no tv, cell phone, computer, etc. for an indefinite period of time.

They took their retakes sixth period. The results were as expected...one passed (the one the cheated off of) and the others bombed.

Figures.

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.

Accountability

The Team came back from Fall Break, rested, rejuvenated, and refreshed, only to notice that, one week into the new grading period, our kiddos were doing pretty much nothing. They weren't doing homework and even some of them couldn't manage to turn in in-class assignments.

My homework turn in percentage the past few years has been really high. For one, I assign it on Monday and it's due on Friday. I usually give the students a choice on which assignments they want to do (I'll list four, they do two). The homework itself is practice for what we've done in class, but if they have questions on it, I do have homework helpers that they can use during am homeroom, pm homeroom, or check out to take home - some of my special education students get the helpers stapled into their agendas or emailed home to their parents. It essentially gives the answers to the homework, so even if a kid is completely clueless, if he or she copies down the correct information, at least it was in front of them for that one time. (That idea isn't original - it came from an NMSA conference I went to a few years ago.) However, even with choices, even with four days to do the assignments, and even with the answers right there in front of them, they didn't bother to turn any work in - this is a huge change from previous years when I had nearly all my kids turning in work.

I wasn't alone. All the teachers in the seventh grade have the same problem, and even some of the eighth graders are exhibiting vast degrees of laziness. One of the eighth grade teams has implemented a homework clinic during lunch where the kids who owed work had to eat in a teacher's classroom and work on their homework at the same time. This seems to work pretty well as the kids started turning in work, rather than miss their social time, and at the same time their test scores and grades started to improve (especially in Math.)

Our Mr. Math was at another school last year that really targeted these kids who turn out to be, for the most part, our at-risk population. We took a little of what he did at his old school, a little what the 8th graders were doing, and came up with the Friday Homework Clinic.

By Monday afternoon, the teachers on my team have emailed me the names of all the kids with missing work for this grading period. I can cut and paste all this into an Excel spreadsheet (PowerSchool, our new grading program, makes this soooo easy), sort the kids by name, and have a print out of who owes what work.

On Tuesday morning I hand out to the kids a slip of paper with all their missing assignments listed. They have until Thursday afternoon to get this work made up and turned in, otherwise, they miss their first period elective class on Friday. Instead of doing art, or PE, or band, or computers, they are assigned to one of our rooms where they have to sit and work. We try to assign the kids to the teacher they need the most help with (for example if most of the work they owe is Math, Mr. Math gets them). This way they can get more individual attention. (I also make sure all my teammates have a copy of my Homework Helpers so that is available to help the kids as well).

The first week we did this, out of 120 kids, we had 88 who initially had to attend the clinic.

By Friday morning that number was down to about 68.

They were not happy. At all. However, they did turn in a lot of work. For some kids this was the first work we'd seen out of them all year. When I went home and graded papers this weekend, I couldn't believe how many students had managed to not only turn in their missing assignments, but managed to pull their grades up as well.

The Principal, by the way, absolutely loves that we're doing this. I got her blessing before we started. As she says, we have absolutely got to get these kids growing academically, and if it means having high expectations and accountability, so be it.

This week our number of kids missing assignments is 73. Of that number, about 20 of them are kids who owe one assignment and can, quite honestly, get that turned in before the Thursday deadline. That would give us about 53. That's still a high number, but better than the week before. It may take a few weeks for some of them to realize that we're serious.

At it costs us is a bit of time, and losing one planning period (we get two) to help work with these kids.

It's worth it.

When Reality Smacks You Upside the Head

Friday will be the last day of our first nine-week grading period.

(It will also be the last day before our week-long fall break and those of us teaching seventh grade this year are nearly besides ourselves with glee, but I digress.)

This is the time of the grading period where we'll see some of the little cherubs who have done absolutely freaking nothing but suck in oxygen all quarter become a bit concerned.

One girl in my notorious Fifth Period Class From the Very Depths of Hell Itself, Softball Girl, who has a a whopping 50% in my class, came up to me on Tuesday with a printout from our PowerSchool grade program. Someone (Mom perhaps?) had gone over all the missing assignments with a highlighter. (On an aside, one reason I like this program is that when you give a kid a zero for an assignment, you can also code it as missing if it wasn't turned in.) There were about 15 missing assignments. "Can I make these up?" she asked. Normally I don't accept late work, but hey if she wants to spend all night making up fifteen assignments, I'll give her partial credit.

"Sure," I said. "Do you have them all written down in your agenda?"

She nods her head in the affirmative.

"Then go for it," I say. Any bets on if I'll see any of it.

Anyone? Someone?

They have been crawling out of the woodwork, asking for extra credit, wanting to turn in late work, wondering if there was a way to turn that 43% into a passing 70% (ah, no, there really isn't).

This absolutely slays me. Every three weeks we send out progress reports. Kids have their own PowerSchool passwords and can get on line and monitor their own progress daily if they so desire. If they don't have internet at home, I'll print out a progress report (and my new favorite report, the missing assignment report - that scares them a bit when they see it all listed there in black and white). In short, there's no way on this earth they don't realize that they're digging, digging, digging a hole. They're just busy finding ways to stay off task.

Until, of course, it finally dawns on them (after hearing us go on and on and on and on about it) that Report Cards Are Coming Out Soon and I'm Going to Get Grounded!

The good news is that, usually, a lot of these kids wake up from their seventh grade beginning of the year coma and actually kick it up a notch.

Usually. With this group, however, I'm not placing any bets.

I'm just hoping they mature a bit over fall break.

Yeah, right...

Middle Schoolers plus Snow equals Chaos

The local weather forecasters have been prognosticating for nearly a week that we were going to have A Very Big Snow Storm beginning this morning and going on into Saturday. This is the South where Very Big Snow Storms don't happen all that much and everyone gets all freaked out and rushes out and buys bread and milk. So you would think, considering that we've canceled school for the simple threat of ice, that we wouldn't have school today.

Makes sense, right?

After all, when I stepped out onto my driveway this morning at 5:45 am, it was sleeting nicely and there was ice on my car. I met the rest of the Breakfast Bunch (Mrs. Eagle, Mrs. Chicken, and Mrs. Momma-Aide) at Waffle House for our traditional Friday breakfast, and we were all sitting there, stunned, that they hadn't called school yet. My gosh, it was sleeting like mad out there!! We rolled into school about twenty minutes before they started unloading kids from the buses and they still hadn't called it. Although it hasn't happened since I've been at The School, in the past they've actually canceled school and had the buses go back out and drop the kids off.

Not today.

The kids came stomping in grumbling and complaining about how they all wanted to sleep in and it wasn't fair and it was awful and gosh it's just dreadful they had to go to school today. Considering that I finalized grades this past week and noticed that in between holidays, election day and snow days we haven't had a five day week since the middle of January, I think they were getting a bit spoiled. This four day school week was really appealing to them. However, we have already used up our three allotted snow days this year. Personally, I'm not enthralled with the idea of adding days to the end of the year.

So we had first period, and second, and third, and nothing...the kids had finally settled down and were working pretty well when it was time to go to lunch. Unfortunately we walk them down to lunch right past a series of big glass doors and they all looked out and saw....SNOW!

Great. They hit the cafeteria all wound up, convinced that, at last, they were going to go home. It only got worse when they heard an announcement over the broadcast system calling all the eighth grade team leaders to the office.

By the time we got back to class they were nearly pinging off the walls. We had an email waiting for us telling us that school was going to be released at noon.

In an hour and a half.

We had, obviously, already had lunch so we proceeded to continue on with the day, teaching and trying to keep our kids focused and on-task while the cafeteria quickly got the 6th graders and 8th graders fed. I felt bad for the eighth grade teachers as they had to march the kids to the cafeteria, have them pick up lunch on special foam trays, and march them back to their classrooms for them to eat.

By the time my fifth period rolled around, nearly half of them had already had a parent come by and dismiss them. By the time the call went out to load the buses the kids were nearly besides themselves with excitement.

We were just hoping they could all get the kids dropped off at home and didn't have to turn around and bring them back to school. The thought of being stuck with these kids for hours on end, and possibly overnight if it really get nasty, was enough to scare the bejeebers out of any of us.

Fortunately the buses got off, the roads weren't bad - yet - and we all got dismissed ourselves at twelve thirty.

And as for me, I don't go the bread and milk route. I've got a case of local wine and plenty of popcorn if I need it.

You Can't Make This Stuff Up.

We have a student I'll call Scatter Boy. Scatter Boy is, quite honestly, the most scatter brained human I have ever met. Ever. The bell will ring and he will get out of his seat and walk out of the room, leaving all his possessions - his books, his binder, his pencil, everything - sitting on his desk. He loses things constantly. He has already lost (and paid for out of his allowance) one science book. I've given him a binder, a pencil pouch and dozens of pencils. He lost the binder in two days.

Scatter Boy, although he has a quirky, sometimes sweet personality, is pitiful. He is the oldest of seven, and his father is quite the disciplinarian. Apparently the other six are all straight A honor students and are perfect little angels, but Scatter Boy can't even manage to get on his bus to get home most days. He has an awful time in his classes because, even with Mr. Title in most his classes to help him and the others that need more individual attention, he just doesn't get what's going on. A lot of it might have to do with the fact that he's playing with pencils, shooting rubber bands, or generally doing anything other than what he's supposed to be doing instead of paying attention. I've made him my classroom helper, in the hopes that giving him some responsibility might be a way to get him some self-confidence and I did manage to get him into our after school tutoring program, but he hasn't gone long enough for us to see results.

Last week he got left, again, at school as he missed his bus. In one of his elective classes he apparently got a hold of a marker and tried to give himself a beard. He ended up with marker all over his face and hands. I suspect that he didn't so much as miss his bus as he didn't want to go home with marker all over his face. Dad wouldn't be happy.

That was mild compared to what he did today. Dad's going to be really, really unhappy.

One of my fourth period kiddos, Clingy Boy had to tell me why he was late to class. Clingy Boy has his own issues. He decided earlier in the year that he wanted to sit as close to me as possible, so he's at the desk right next to my teacher station - his choice. He often tells me how I am a lot like his mom, and he often spills his guts about things that are bothering him. He's a nice kid, but has some problems, especially as his grandfather was an innocent bystander during a gang shooting and got killed.

Anyway, Clingy Boy said that he witnessed Scatter Boy doing some inappropriate things in class so he went to guidance to file a statement because "what he was doing just wasn't right." Apparently Scatter Boy had a rip in his jeans, which extended from his crotch to his knee, and left an opening that was a little too tempting for Scatter Boy. Aside from pretending to "have sex with Mrs. Math's electric pencil sharpener," Scatter Boy also spent some time
with his hand inside his jeans, doing things that he probably should not be doing in class. Or at least pretending to.

Oh good gracious.

I never saw Scatter Boy because Mr. Social Studies saw him in the hallway, saw the rip, and decided that one wrong move would give everyone a lesson in anatomy, and sent him to guidance to get a new pair of pants. Apparently they didn't have anything that fit him, so he ended up in In School Suspension.

Mr. Social Studies hadn't heard about Clingy Boy's statement, so I filled him in. We then proceeded to head over to Mrs. Math to fill her in, especially because Clingy Boy said the incident happened in her class.

Mrs. Math was aghast. "He did what?" she asked. "When?"

I filled her in and her eyes got big. "He sits in the back there as he seems to focus better when he's by himself. I thought he was sick and sneezed or something as he came rushing up to get some tissues and then he used a whole bunch of hand sanitizer."

Mr. Social Studies and I were convulsed in laughter at this point.

"Oh my gosh," said Mrs. Math. "You don't think...he...oh that's disgusting!"

Yes, folks, welcome to Middle School.