Better Late Than Never, I Suppose

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

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

In ink, of course.  Colored ink.

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

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

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

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

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

Really.

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

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

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

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

But the topper is that I have four Peytons.

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

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

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

The New Cell Phone Policy

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just Ticking Away

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

So, I missed three days of school.

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

The kids were rotten.  Completely rude and rotten.

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

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

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

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

Disgusting.

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

So, in short, life is normal.

Seventh graders, however, are not.

For Those Trying to Work the System

Just a little advice here.

When you come down to your kids' school to see about getting on the list to receive the care packages we put together for Christmas, it's not really smart to drive up to the school in a car that's nicer than those owned by most of the staff and the administration in the building. Yeah, we know you're really proud of that gleaming 2009 SUV, but when the teachers are driving cars that are at least ten years old, it's not really cool. Granted, you may have gotten it with drug money (I mean, who's to say?) but still...be cool. Walk to the school. Or take the bus. But don't flash around in your Escalade.

And another thing. We know you're really attached to that snazzy little bluetooth thing wired into your head, but since you're there to ask for free food for your kids because you can't possibly feed them, you may want to consider leaving all your electronic toys at home. Tuck that nice little iPod out of sight, unplug the damn earbuds from your ear, and for heaven's sake, stop the texting while the ladies in guidance are trying to help you. It's rude.

And then there's the clothes. Remember, you're here to ask for free food and clothes for your kids, because you can't possibly afford to feed and clothe them yourself, so it's a good idea to dress modestly. That means leaving the designer jackets and tennis shoes at home. And ladies, let's try to keep our bosoms covered up - this is your kid's school, not a try out for a Shakira video, so we don't need to be seeing your boobs. Especially when they're covered with about $1,000 worth of tattoos. Come to think, make sure you remove all those piercings and cover up those pricey tattoos so we don't really find out what your spend your money on.

I'm just saying...

Is it Me or Does it Echo In Here?

For the past two years, The District has utilized an on-line gradebook system called PowerSchool. I love it. I can update grades at home, run reports on missing work, progress reports, and probably reports I haven't thought of yet. Parents can check grades any time of the night or day, see that work is missing, and can even get grade updates emailed to them. Students hate it because parents can keep a really close eye on what they are, or more precisely, what they are not doing.

District surveys show that about 89% of our parents have access to email and a computer. I send out a weekly email to about 85% of my parents, so despite being one of the poorer buildings in the district, our numbers aren't too bad. Last year to save paper, they put the Code of Conduct and Student Handbook on line and parents had to sign a form saying that yes, they reviewed it with their kid or no, they needed a hard copy. This year I had one kid in my homeroom request a hard copy. So everything sounds hunky dory and all our parents are utilizing PowerSchool.

Except they aren't. I can go on-line and see the last time a parent or a student accessed PowerSchool and you would be amazed how many of them either haven't ever logged in, or how many logged in in August and never came back. Getting a password is not a challenge - they've been sent home at least twice, there is a table staffed by guidance at nearly every school event (except sporting events) where people can get their passwords. And I'm not the only teacher who sends out a weekly email that mentions checking grades in PowerSchool and to "contact Guidance Goddess at blah blah blah to get your password if you need it." Every single parent meeting we have we mention PowerSchool and if we get that blank look, we walk the parent down to Guidance, get their user name and password, and hopefully they can figure it out from there. All it takes is a little effort.

Last year The District decided that enough parents were on PowerSchool and that we would cease sending home paper Progress Reports. The Principal nixed that idea and said we'd keep sending them on paper because "it's the right thing to do", and since we had a feeling based on our numbers that PowerSchool wasn't being utilized like it should be. Considering the number of parents that went "What's PowerSchool?" when asked, we figured that we'd better do the paper thing.

This year we find out, courtesy of a front page story in the newspaper, that The District is moving to online report cards and will not be sending home paper report cards for the first grading period. Wonderful idea about moving to the 21st century, saving paper, going green, blah, blah, blah, blah...and parents that don't have access can request a paper report card, blah, blah, blah...

The Principal, again, said we'd send home a paper report card because "it's the right thing to do."

On Friday, there is an update to the news story - apparently the District folks did a survey of PowerSchool usage (probably prompted by the deluge of phone calls they received from people that wanted their passwords) and discovered that only 20% of the families in the District have ever logged on to PowerSchool.

Let me repeat that...20%. That's it. 89% supposedly have access to a computer but only 20% have made the effort to check their child's grades.

That silence you hear is the sound of parent involvement, or, more precisely, the lack thereof.

My team sent home 97 report cards. I had 47 students fail science for this nine weeks. To date, I have not heard a peep. No email, no call requesting a conference, nothing.

It's like they don't even care.

And we wonder why the kids don't care either.

Reason Number 324 Why It's a Really Good Idea to Review Materials

One of the standards that we kept when The State revamped the middle school standards, was body systems. Our old book had very little on this subject so we were pretty tickled to see that the new book actually had a lot more information on the different systems.

And in some cases, too much information. Like the full color, gloriously accurate illustration of the male reproductive system. The book publisher, however, apparently realized that the pictures in the teacher edition (which is what we get to preview before during the Book Publishers Dog and Pony Show) were a bit too graphic. The student edition of the book has nothing but white space where the pictures (both male and female) used to be.

Now before everyone crawls all over me about how important reproductive knowledge is, and how we're censoring books and all that, please rest assured that we do teach this but in a less "graphic" way (and I might add that our standards don't even specify what body systems to teach, but rather that kids "understand how they are interrelated.") These kids have all gone through the birds and bees talks in lower grades, and in their health classes, although in each situation permission slips were sent home so parents could approve or disapprove. Quite honestly, I have no desire to teach the whole birds and bees thing with a bunch of immature seventh graders, especially considering that some of them may already know more than I do, while others are still playing with Barbies and are as naive as they come.

And I think parents should be teaching this to their children, rather than me, but I digress.

Today my kids were taking their social studies benchmark test and I'm keeping one eye on them (which is like watching paint dry) while I'm looking ahead to try to see what kind of materials we can use for our upcoming unit. Our workbook is wonderful, so I'm flipping through it when all of a sudden, I see The Picture. I'm sure my eyes just about popped out of my head, because that was the last thing I expected to see. They removed the picture from the textbook, but kept it in the workbook.

Mrs. Eagle and Mrs. Hummingbird came by for planning after the test and I showed them the page. They were astounded as well. Mrs. Hummingbird, who has seventh grader on my team was particularly astounded. "Oh gracious, there's no way I'd want my kid looking at that without permission."

"I can't believe they haven't found that," said Mrs. Eagle. "We would have heard the uproar and giggles if they had."

"Now what?" I asked. "Think we should show it to The Principal?"

"Oh yeah," said Mrs. Eagle. "She could use the giggle."

Suffice it to say, The Principal about fell out of her seat, and echoed Mrs. Hummingbird's opinion that she didn't want her daughter to see that picture, and Academic Coach (who has a seventh grade boy) said the same thing. Mrs. Sparrow, who is in charge of textbooks, and used to teach science, went white and said, "Oh good gracious, that would be highly uncomfortable to use in a classroom."

"Oh my word," said The Principal, "the kids would lose their minds if they saw that, and we'd have parents storming the office."

I think it was the parent response that had us the most concerned.

So, after the dance this afternoon, we spent a few minutes tearing this section out of the workbooks. Thank goodness that we keep workbooks in the classroom (if we let them leave the room they'd disappear in the black holes that are backpacks and lockers). It took all of fifteen minutes for us to get the pages torn out. They'll work well in my compost bin!

You Just Gotta Wonder

So we had a meeting with Skater Goober and his parents.

First off, out of the six meetings we've had scheduled so far, only three parents have shown up. I shouldn't complain. Mrs. Eagle has had only one show up (out of six) and they're darn glad she did because they all stayed after school for an hour to talk to this parent.

Anyhow....so SG's parents seem pretty together and with it. We talk about the fact he does nothing. We talk about the fact that they uncovered, like some strange archeological site, page after page of undone homework, worksheets, notes, and the like buried deep within the recesses of his backpack. They ask him why He Does Absolutely Nothing and he mumbles "Don't know," and just sits there like the oxygen thief that he currently is even though he's capable of much more. They ask to be emailed (Dad has a Blackberry for work and can show up at school within minutes) with updates daily. In fact, the next day when Skater Goober spends an entire class period and did one freaking vocabulary card (despite the nearly constant taps on his desk, prompting, etc.) I email Dad. Dad says he and Mom are going to come down and follow him around this week, most likely on Monday.

Did they come? Nope. Not yet.

And what did Skater Goober tell me?

"Hey, Mrs. Bluebird! Guess what? I got tickets to go see Kiss!"

"Really?" I ask. They bought Kiss tickets for this kid?

"Oh, yeah, isn't that cool?" he beams. He does not, by the way, have his book or his binder with him. I doubt he has his pencil. He is not, yet again, prepared for class.

"Well, all I can say is it's a good thing you're not my kid," I tell him.

"Really? Why?" he asks. (He really is clueless.)

"Because there's no way my husband would let you out of the house, let alone buy you Kiss tickets and let you go see Kiss unless you had passing grades in all your classes."

Skater Goober looks stunned. "Really? I mean, he'd really not let me go?"

"Really."

And then they wonder why the kids don't do anything.

Ah the Drama!

I. Am. So. Sick. Of. The. Girl. Drama.

To the point where if one more whiny seventh grade girl comes up to me and says she needs to have a schedule change because so and so is talking mean about her, I'm going to completely lose it and it won't be pretty. I am not alone. The whole team is fed up with the drama and the whining and the fussing and the "she said, she said, she said," crap. Even Coach Math has had enough. We're about ready to pull a team Come to Jesus meeting and basically slap them upside with reality.

As someone who came to education after 15 years in the corporate world - 15 years spent working, at times, with complete idiots that I didn't particularly like or enjoy working with but I sucked it up because it was my JOB - it drives me nuts when a kid comes up and asks for a seat change or a schedule change because "I don't get along with so and so."

Suck it up and deal with it kiddo. You're going to go through life having to deal with people you don't like so get used to it now.

(Disclaimer: When it's a real case of bullying, we take care of it and take care of it fast. What we have here is just a simple case of a bunch of kids sniping and whining and being snotty to each other. I will not write a kid up for bullying who simply tells another girl that she doesn't like her outfit.)

They hate my answer by the way. The expect their teachers to simply rearrange the seating chart to accommodate their wishes. It kills them when they realize that my world doesn't revolve around them.

So, this past week, we've had the Girl Drama thing going on, which includes a formerly sweet girl who's now become the Mean Girl, who talked trash about Hyperventilating Girl who, apparently broke up with her boyfriend (good riddance I say) and when Mean Girl started being a bitch to her at lunch, hyperventilated and almost fainted at lunch. So of course, now Hyperventilating Girl doesn't want to come to fifth period even though Mean Girl is All The Way Across The Freaking Classroom from her. (I got an email from Guidance Mom asking to move Mean Girl away from Hyperventilating Girl. I responded that if I moved them any further away, one of them would be in her office and the other outside. Apparently the two girls made it sound like they were lab partners - NOT!)

And then Quiet Girl's Mother came down and requested a class change because - Guess Who?!?!? - was being mean to her and she didn't want to come to school because she was sick of dealing with it all. The fact that we've never even seen these two talk, they don't sit near each other, and Quiet Girl never said boo to us was par for the course. Hell, we didn't even know they even really knew who each other was. The class change happened and now the floodgates have opened. Every whiner on the team is now wanting to rush to guidance to get their schedule changed because after all, Quiet Girl did.

Mean Girl, in the meantime, is batting her eyelashes, proclaiming her innocence, and then running up to Ms. Language and Miss Reading (she knows better than to suck up to Mrs. Social Studies and me) tattling about Hyperventilating Girl and everyone else she can think of. I might add that Mean Girl, like most students, think of teachers as furniture so she doesn't realize how often I, and her other teachers, actually hear her snotty comments. I circulate through the room all the time (which is why my chair looks new - I rarely sit in it) and they'll all just carry on like I'm not there at times. Amazing what gossip you can pick up.

And then there's the whole lunchroom drama about someone taking a Capri Sun drink and squeezing it, and getting a few other someones wet with it and Now We All Want Class Changes Because We Don't Want To Be With Those People.

Oh dear Lord, if I don't go postal on these kids before the week is out, it will be a miracle.

And Now We Know...The Rest of the Story

Scatter Boy is gone. During Spring Break his father and step-mother apparently decided that he would be better off living with his biological mother in North Carolina. I'm not sure exactly why they came to this decision. It could have to do with finances, as there are a lot of mouths to feed at home and I know money is tight. Or, Dad, who is quite a disciplinarian, decided he'd had one phone call too many about Scatter Boy discipline issues. Who knows?

Scatter Boy came to The District as a sixth grader, when he came to live with his father. His sixth grade teachers had horrible problems with him, both with academics and behavior. He nearly lived in the guidance office and spent a lot of time getting emotionally worked up over just about everything. The sixth grade teachers had several meetings with his father who insisted that there was nothing wrong with Scatter Boy. He just needed structure and discipline. The records we got from North Carolina gave no indication whatsoever that he was a special education, nor if he was ever tested. Dad said he didn't need testing, so no testing ever happened. He was support-teamed, put into after school tutoring, and non-academically promoted to the seventh grade.

The Team got him this year and went through the same routine that the sixth grade teachers went through. It was obvious that something was wrong with this kid. He couldn't focus. He couldn't keep track of things. He was horribly immature one minute and the next minute he was acting like an adult (he's also a rather tall, lanky kid who looks a bit older than your typical seventh grader). Often times I'd glance over at him and he would be twitching ever so slightly and would have a look in his eyes as if fireworks were going on in his head. We got him into study skills with Mr. Title, and got him into after school tutoring. However, he was still failing every class and struggling. Dad, still, believed that there was nothing wrong with him that a little discipline couldn't fix. After all, it's his kid, so he should know, right?

It was frustrating. We knew there was something going on, but his cumulative file and his father never let on what it was, even when asked.

So, I'm cruising through guidance this afternoon during planning and the Guidance Goddess stops me.

"You are not, not, not, going to believe the phone call I just got."

"Scatter Boy is coming back?" I guessed. There had been an issue with custody papers and we were betting he'd be back. It has, after all, been known to happen.

"Remember when I told you that I got a call from the school he went to and they were asking where his special education file was and I told him that he wasn't special ed?"

"Yeah," I said, wondering where this was going.

"Well, they called back to let me know that they found his special ed file. His fifth grade teacher had it."

I was speechless. "You mean to tell me that he was a special ed student?" I asked.

"Yup," she said.

"And his father never told us, he never told us, and the school never sent us the records because his teacher had it in her room?" I was incredulous.

"That about sums it up," she said.

Mrs. Squirrel walks by around this time and we fill her in on the conversation. As a former special education teacher before she went into administration, Mrs. Squirrel has a soft place in her heart for these kids and is our special ed expert. She was stunned.

"All this time," she said shaking her head, "this kid was in regular classes, and he should have been in special ed classes. All because we never got the file."

Insanity.

Where's the Common Sense When You Need it The Most?

It was Field Day today and during the volleyball tournament, Mrs. Language and I took a quick trip to the bathroom and mailboxes which are just behind guidance. We figured we'd better take the opportunity before we all headed outside and wouldn't get a chance. We'd be too busy trying to keep 425 seventh graders from losing their minds.

While we were there we noticed two of our troublemakers from last year sitting there, along with a boy that Mrs. Eagle had last year. They didn't look happy. In fact, they seemed to be squirming quite a bit in their seats. On of ours had his hands clasped tightly in his lap and seemed to be biting his lip. Fabio Boy was there and his feet were bouncing up and down.

I swung by to give the Guidance Goddess a greeting and to ask how her day was going. "Oh it's going great!" she exclaimed. "Come here and see all these referrals!" she says as she hands me one from the top and sort of backs me up around the corner into the teachers lounge. It's obvious she's trying to tell me something without the kids in the office figuring it out.

Mrs. Language comes up and we both look at the referral on the top stack. It's for one of our goofballs from last year. I look down at the incident description. "X disrupted the class due to putting Icy Hot on his genitals."

My eyes must have popped out of my head. I look over at Mrs. Language and her mouth is hanging open with one of those "What the hell?" looks on her face.

Guidance Goddess can barely contain herself. "Yup, they decided to go into the bathroom and put on some Icy Hot and by the time they got to class they were, ahem, feeling the pain."

Mrs. Language and I literally doubled up with silent laughter - the boys, after all, were right outside in the lobby. We both ended up wiping tears from our eyes. What on earth possessed them to do something so incredibly stupid???

So there they sat...

Squirming in their seats.

Tapping their feet.

And biting their lips.

Because that had to really, really, really hurt!

An Award Just for Breathing!

I received an interesting piece of mail in my box on Friday. It was from our Title I Aides (a new program at our school). They have apparently been asked to put together a list of awards to hand out to the kids who have been identified as Title I students and have been receiving services throughout the year. We were supposed to rate them according to "improved academic achievement" or "improved attitude towards academics". I heard through the grapevine that someone "in charge of the program" from district office stated that "Everyone will get an award."

I have a serious problem with this.

Lately I've been seeing articles on the net and in the news about how this generation of kids are more narcissistic and self-centered than any before. Some people are linking this to the constant push to let children believe that they are "special", and that everyone gets a trophy for participating. In other words, you show up and you are rewarded. And then I look out at my classroom, at kids who've been socially promoted year after year, at kids who could care less about education, kids who make no effort to do anything and who have learned helplessness down to an art, and I wonder if we didn't create these lazy toads by constantly giving them things they haven't earned.

And coming from a corporate background, where you get promotions and pay raises depending on what you actually produce, and what you can accomplish, I'm convinced they're in for a rude awakening unless they plan on camping out on mamma's sofa for the rest of their lives.

My parents would have kicked my ass if I'd acted like that. But then come to think of it, they never convinced me that I was any more special than anyone else and that I'd have to work to get anywhere in life. It wasn't going to be handed to me.

So, I'm looking at this list and I see kids like Rude Boy who've done NOTHING all year except throw his homework and in-class work away in the trash rather than turning it in, who've lied to me and his parents all year, who've been nothing but behavior problems. I look at the three kids tossed out of the after school tutoring program for horrible behavior, and for refusing to even open a book, lift a pencil or punch in a problem into a calculator. I've see kids who have simply sat in my classroom and sucked in air all year.

And we're going to give them an award?

There's a kid on the list who enrolled in school a week ago from out of state. We're giving him an award? For what? Moving to our area?

Granted there are some kids on there who really, honestly, have earned and deserved awards and I feel they should be celebrated like no body's business. Some of them, including Hockey Boy and Nascar Boy, have made incredible strides - from F's to C's. They've busted their butts, worked hard, and they deserve a big deal. But if the kids sitting next to them, who've done nothing, get an award, won't that make their award a lot less meaningful?

So...the kids that deserved it got a nod from me. The other ones I left blank. I'll let someone else come up with an award for them. Maybe they'll hand them out for breathing regularly.

And Nascar Boy and Hockey Boy and all the others in my classes who've made great strides? I'm going to come up with something special to reward them...I haven't figured out what yet, but I want them to know that what they've done is fantastic and, better yet, it's something they earned.