In One Ear and Out The Other

The School District didn't give us the head's up on the Very Important Speech By The President until late Friday - most likely because they were trying to figure out how to handle the parents who wanted their kids to opt out. An ed-connect phone call went out to the parents to let them know that kids could show up with a note from the folks if they didn't want them to watch it. We simply had to send them to another classroom with some seat work to keep them busy.

The reaction from most of the teachers was "How in the hell am I supposed to hit all my standards before the Very Big Deal Government Mandated Test if they keep interrupting my teaching time?" Many of us, myself included, teach bell to bell and didn't get enough notice (our plans were already done and submitted) to change our lesson plans to accommodate The Speech. Crap. Fortunately I was able to cram most of my lesson in, but with a little less discussion, and the kids didn't get too far behind. Hopefully.

I read The Speech the day before and the first thing that crossed my mind was "Whomever wrote this has no clue about the attention span of kids younger than high school."

No clue at all.

I could not, even on a good day, imagine any elementary kids sitting still for that long of a speech. Hell, even my seventh graders were going to be hard pressed to sit still that long.

Keep in mind that I've often believed that unless it has death, destruction or explosions, most seventh graders could care less. This is why they love tornado, earthquake, hurricane and volcano videos and can watch them ALL DAY LONG. However, someone just talking at them BORES THEM TO TEARS.

Their first big concern today was lunch. They had heard that the speech was going to be at 11:00 am and those that have figured out our bell schedule (honestly some never do) figured out that that was during lunch. So, of course, the rumor flew that they were not going to get to eat lunch. AT ALL.

Oh good gracious. They were in an absolute panic during homeroom until they finally stopped whining long enough to hear me tell them that they would have lunch at THE NORMAL TIME and would watch the speech on videotape later in the day.

Jeez people.

That was about the most interest the kids showed all day towards The Speech. They were more interested in the fact that we were having thunderstorms all day ("Do you think we'll have a tornado?? Uh, do you?") than the fact that The President was going to tell them the Very Same Things Mom and Dad and All The Teachers Tell Us OVER AND OVER AND OVER.

The fidgeted. They stared at the ceiling. They yawned. One wanted to go to the bathroom. Two had their heads bob a bit until I tapped them on the shoulder to wake them up. Most simply looked bored.

Just another grown up telling us what to do...

They could have cared less.

And considering that the class that watched this, my sixth period, has NO ONE passing as of right now, it was a tad ironic.

Another thing to note...last year we saw Obama t-shirts all over the place. The kids wore them to school all the time. I haven't seen a single one this year. Not one.

Weird.

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.