Back at Last!

Finally!  Finally, we made it back to school, the high school kids were able to finish their exams and we'll be able to start the second semester tomorrow...8 days late.

I was beginning to wonder if we'd make it because just about every other county around us canceled and had another snow day (and many are cancelling already for tomorrow as well) but we went ahead and went.   I won't make any criticisms regarding the roads - I live in town where the roads aren't as hilly or twisty and they tend to get cleared and plowed before the county roads do.  For all I know, there's county roads under two inches of ice.  But we went ahead and had school (thank goodness), and we'll be making up our extra snow day on Monday, MLK day.

However.

One thing that has always perplexed me is how rarely we use delays.  When I taught Up North we used delays all the time.  The district would announce a two hour delay, which gave everyone a chance to see better in the daylight, and if the roads were still dangerous, they'd cancel for the day.  However, a lot of times that two hour delay was all the time we needed for the roads to begin to clear up, especially on a sunny day where the morning sun could begin the job of melting.  True, our classes were shorter, but we weren't having to make up so many snow days.

Down here, at least in my district, delays are rare.  And what's even stranger (and this just makes absolutely no freaking sense to me at all) is that even if we are on a delay, faculty and staff sill have to report at the regular time.  Which is two hours before the kids come in, assuming we're on a delay.  So, if the roads are too bad for buses, how come they aren't too bad for employees?  After all, supposedly, the whole issue is safety - we don't run buses when the roads are unsafe.  So why should the school employees get out on these dangerous roads to get to school?  And then, if it was eventually decided that we needed to go ahead and cancel school, (because the roads are unsafe) we then have to dismiss all the employees that went ahead and showed up and send them back out on dangerous roads.

Makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Ideally?  Everyone reports two hours late...and that way, if it's decided that a cancellation is in order, there's no one to send back home.  And if the delay is all we need, we'd get in our scheduled day.

But hey, no one asks for my opinion.  I just give it.

The Name Game

There are times that the typical seventh grader just absolutely blows my mind.  Seriously.  You would think after nearly a decade of spending most of my waking life with twelve and thirteen-year-olds (also known as the kids most of you would avoid like the plague) I would be used to some of their idiosyncrasies.  But nooooooo.  Life isn't that easy.  They consistently do things that absolutely make me want to beat my head against my desk.

For example, the apparent inability to put one's name on one's work.

This just absolutely drives me crazy. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why they consistently forget to put their name on their work.  I mean we're talking about an incredibly self-centered generation of kids who will write their name on their jeans, their shoes, their binders, their lunch bag, their lockers, the bathroom stalls, everything But On Their Freaking Assignments.  On those, their leave a big white vacant spot where their name should be.

This is a skill they learn in Kindergarten, folks.  The First Thing You Do When You Get Out Your Paper Is To Put Your Name On Your Work.  So for eight years my little darlings have been taught to always put your name on your work, and still - STILL! - they forget.  This past weekend I graded packets of vocabulary cards and I had fourteen kids who did not put their name anywhere on their cards.  That's somewhere along the lines of ten percent of my students.  Fourteen kids who merrily managed to do their vocab cards, even do some extra credit drawings on them, but they forgot their names.

Good gracious.

I have tried just about everything I can think of to solve this problem.  I remind them every time we do anything to Put Your Name On Your Work.  I go around and check to see if they have Put Their Name on Their Work.  I have a sign by the turn in basket that reminds them to Put Your Name On Your Work.  I also have torn up and tossed in front of their startled little faces, work that is turned in without a name.  (I'll admit, that's kind of fun, especially if I'm feeling theatrical.)  But still, They Forget To Put Their Name on Their Work.

I am astounded - astounded! - that these kids are alert enough to look both ways before their cross the street.