There's More Out There Than Malibu

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not overly impressed with celebrities. Perhaps it has to do with growing up in the L.A. area where every waiter was really an actor, where parents of classmates made their living in the film industry, and where you get so sick of hearing about celebrities that you want to hurl.

So I would like to remind my dear readers that, when it comes to the horrific fires in California, there are many people who aren't millionaires who are doing their share of suffering.

People like Momma Bluebird.

Momma Bluebird is retired and lives in a charming little cowboy town called Ramona, in San Diego County. This is a town with Title I schools, with residents who barely make minimum wage, with retirees and veterans who've saved to retire out here, and a few folks who have the money to live in Country Estates. (Keep in mind that a "half a million dollar" house in this area is equal to about $200,000 in most of the country.) Momma Bluebird tutors at a local school with kids who probably wouldn't get a meal if it wasn't for the nutrition department of the local school.

I knew when the Santa Anas were setting off fires in Malibu that it was simply a matter of time before Mom was affected. Four years ago the Cedar fire ran through her area and she was darned lucky she didn't lose her house (some neighbors did). By mid-afternoon Momma Bird had called and said that their luck had worn out, that there was a fire between Ramona and Julian and she was packing - just in case. Later that evening they were given a mandatory evacuation order and she packed up Kitty and headed out. (I have to give a big cyber-hug to her neighbor, the retired fire chief, who made sure she was okay, packed and had him follow his family out the single road that gets you out of her neighborhood. What a guy.)

She headed into Ramona to her friend's house, where she rode out the Cedar fire, only to get there in time to find out the whole town was being evacuated. Her friend loaded up her dogs and horses and headed out to Del Mar (this is a very horsey area), and Momma Bluebird found her way to a Red Cross Shelter. She's lost track of most of her other friends so it's just Kitty and Momma Bluebird (and her knitting) right now hanging out at the shelter.

She said it's a little weird and there's "people like your student Scratchy here." Great. She does have a cot, thanks to the National Guard, and a place to stay, thankfully. One of my old college sorority sisters emailed me and offered her a place to stay in Laguna but Momma Bluebird is afraid to leave because they keep closing roads and she doesn't want to get stuck anywhere.

Sigh.

So I'm here in My Beloved South, trying to teach my kids and worrying about my Momma Bluebird at the same time. Rough Day for me, but worse for her.

Keep all these folks in your prayers. They aren't all rich and famous celebrities...many are hard working blue collar folks who live pay check to pay check. And now, they might be burned out.

Things You Wish You Hadn't Heard

Mrs. Math relates the following conversation she had with one of our students, Quiet Girl, while she was checking agendas this week.

"Quiet Girl, you really need to make sure your mother checks and signs your agenda every night," says Mrs. Math. "You mother didn't sign it for the Friday before Fall Break."

"I know," says Quiet Girl with her eyes downcast. "I'm sorry, but mom spent the entire break drunk so I couldn't get her to sign it."

"Oh," says Mrs. Math.

Sigh.

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Disappearing Act

Scratchy had a very bad Tuesday.

He arrived mad because kids were yelling on the bus. We've noticed that he has issues with noise, which isn't surprising considering this is a kid who also hears voices in his head. During First Period he got mad at the kids that sat near him. During Second Period he again showed his intolerance for noise by screaming at the kids in social studies class to "Shut Up! Be Quiet!". He didn't have too much trouble in my class, although he did a lot of squirming, pencil tapping, wiggling, and scratching. (His legs are covered with scabs and bites.) After lunch he got mad at kids in his Fourth period and yelled at them. By this time Mrs. Math could see that he was rapidly reaching his breaking point and sent him to see the Guidance Mom.

Guidance Mom had him write down what was bothering him, which he did. He also drew a picture of how he felt. The picture was of a huge head with fire and flames coming out of the top and the words "explode!" written across the bottom. If that wasn't enough he proceeded to tear apart the stress ball that the Guidance Mom has had for years. He completely shredded it, pulled the stuffing out, and tore every piece apart. Hundreds of kids have used that ball to relieve stress and anxiety and he's the only one who managed to completely destroy it. She kept the pieces to add to the growing pile of documentation we have on this kid who so badly needs to get tested and identified as emotionally disturbed so he can receive some help!

On Wednesday he did not come to school.

On Wednesday afternoon his mother's boyfriend, who Scratchy and Mom were living with (he's also the parent of another student at our school), called Guidance Mom to let her know that he was concerned about Scratchy because he and Scratchy Mom had had a huge fight and she had packed and moved out, taking Scratchy with her. Guidance Mom, who had been trying for three weeks to get his mother to call us to set up a meeting, asked if he had any forwarding information (especially since the cell number she gave us was his). He said that she had another "friend" a county or so away and may be there. That was it.

He was absent again today.

We probably won't even get a phone call from Mom to withdraw him and will have to wait for another school to contact us for records to find out where he ended up. That school will be his fourth school this year. And, like us, they'll have to go through all the hoops before he can get tested and, most likely, Mom will be off with another boyfriend and he'll be whisked off to another school before his testing happens. And on the cycle goes. He will not get help.

Unless something drastic happens.

And that scares me like you wouldn't believe.


Friday Update: As we suspected, Mom didn't bother to withdraw Scratchy, but showed up at his new school and tried to enroll him. She was apparently royally *pissed* that she actually had to follow the rules in regards to paperwork. Fortunately he is still in the district, so Guidance Mom is going to call over there on Monday and give the guidance folks at his new school the head's up and see if she can get them to test him ASAP without going through all the paperwork B.S. Hopefully this will happen and he will be able to get the help he so desperately needs.

Fall Break ends with a Jolt...or not.

This morning I walk into my room after a delicious week off, and start getting geared up for the day. Turn on the computer, check mail, print out a homework helper sheet, write classwork and homework on the board...and realize that I haven't heard the printer hum.

So, I go over, check the printer and it's not on. Weird. I could have sworn I turned it on. I flip the on button again. Nothing. And then I notice that my phone is not on, and there's no power to my hub. It appears that everything on one side of the room has no power, whereas everything in the rest of the room is fine. However, the items without power include my LCD projector and the sound system I use with my microphone.

This is not a good way to start a Monday, let alone a Monday after break.

I go up and inform The Secretary and The Head Janitor of the problem. Pretty soon Mr. Social Studies comes in and notices that he's lacking power in parts of his room as well. This was followed a short while later by Miss Reading who has the same lack of power.

Great.

Technology is awesome, but when there's no power, it's time to punt. Mr. Social Studies got creative with extension cords. I figured I could survive the day without dangling wires all over the place, so instead of having the kids listen to the audio CD of the book for the chapter we are working on, I read to them, and they did their post-it notes on the reading. After that was finished, we had a foldable to do on levels of organization (cells, tissues, organs, etc) which posed some challenges as the document reader wasn't working. However, my big screw up the last day before break when I made too many copies of the foldable helper sheets for my special ed kids turned out to be a blessing. I had enough copies that each table got two and they could copy the notes from the helper sheets, rather than from the screen as I walked them through the topic and did the foldable.

Fortunately, they got The District Electricians in rather quickly. The drawback is they walk into the room while you're teaching and are infinitely more interesting than anything I could possibly be doing. Besides, their cell phones kept going off - loudly - which got the kids even more intrigued. They were a bit disappointed that the ringing belonged to an adult's cell phone, and not one of their classmates, which would have meant a mandatory seizure and write-up.

The problem was fixed, thankfully, by the beginning of third period. Apparently, someone in another classroom down the hall had jammed something into a socket and it shorted out the entire wall. It's a wonder we didn't burn down the building.

So can any of you guess what happened later this day, after I got home and was getting supper ready?

Yup, power outage. For an hour and a half.

Wonderful.

Yes, Virginia, Teachers do like Prog Rock Music

As Mr. Bluebird is working for a client for the next few months, we didn't make any travel plans for fall break. That's not to say, however, that we aren't doing a few fun things this week while I'm off.

Like going to Nashville to see Our Absolute Favorite Band in the Universe, Porcupine Tree.

Now most of you are going, "who?" because progressive rock bands get very little attention here in the U.S. and very few people have heard of this fantastic band from the U.K. (although one of the members is actually from Tampa). If you're into the Prog Rock scene, you pretty much have to find out about new bands through online sites, the awesome British magazine, Classic Rock, and other prog fans. Porcupine Tree is not a new band, they've been around for quite a few years, but they don't seem to tour the U.S. that often and the rarely every get anywhere in The South, outside of Atlanta.

So when hubby and I saw they were going to be in Nashville, we snapped up tickets right away. And the bonus was that it was during my break so I wouldn't have to take a personal day in order to recover from the show. (I'm used to being in bed by nine so a concert that begins at eight is pushing it for me.)

Talk about a fantastic evening. The show was everything I had hoped it would be and more. The venue, a relatively new club called City Hall, is just the right size, well ventilated (I hate hot and stuffy clubs) and the sound system was outstanding. Hubby and I had the absolute best time, the band was brilliant, and all in all we couldn't have hoped for more.

We had a lot of fun meeting with and mingling with other Tree fans (there are no seats, you simply stand around and chat with folks until the music begins) who are generally some of the nicest folks around. If I were still single, this would have been a great place to meet guys because you usually see a 10 to 1 ratio of guys to girls at prog concerts. (I have never figured out why more women don't like progressive rock, but maybe I'm just weird.) Many of the folks we met thought it was great that I was "passing the torch" by playing my Porcupine Tree CD's for my students.

My kids, by the way, absolutely love this band once I start playing it for them. It is unlike anything they've ever heard before.

Which is probably why I love them as well. Fantastic! I'd go see them again in a heartbeat!

Fall Break!!! Shadowbox, And Random Thoughts

It's Fall Break!

It seems weird because this first nine weeks of school have gone by so fast. Amazingly fast. And, interesting enough, we're in the middle of yet another heat wave so it's warmer now, during Fall Break, than it was last year during Spring Break. (The Spring Break where it got to 18 degrees overnight).

Mrs. Eagle, Mrs. Robin and I decided to have some fun with the kids on Friday by taking them outside to run off some energy. We're just starting in on our body systems unit so we did a quick Brainpop on body systems, sat quietly and made observations on our respiratory system and heart rate and then took them out to run around and notice changes. The kids loved it.

Scratchy Boy, of course, didn't participate and chose to stand off to the side and either swat at bugs or engage in an imaginary sword fight with an unseen foe. I'm not sure, but I think he won the battle.

Two kids managed to kick one football and one soccer ball onto the roof of the recreation center across the parking lot from The School. Sigh. I had just bought these a month or so ago and this was the first time that they'd been used. I figured they were lost forever. I mentioned this to the Guidance Goddess and half an hour later she shows up with my missing football and soccer ball. Stunned, I asked her how she managed to get them back. "I know people," she said. She certainly does!

Hubby and I left as soon as I got home from school to head up to Columbus, Ohio to see some of our good friends and to do some business for hubby. It's a long drive, but worth it. While there we went to our favorite entertainment venue, Shadowbox Cabaret. If you live anywhere in Ohio, and even if you don't, this place is worth the drive. It combines rock music with sketch comedy and is probably the best entertainment value around. Honestly, I've never attended a show where I didn't laugh so hard that I was in tears. The food is great, the atmosphere is fun, and the talent of the cast members if amazing. Go there!

So, what am I doing for Fall Break? Let's see, going to a concert tomorrow with Hubby, grading papers (yes, I brought work home), hopefully painting my deck if the weather cools down, and just getting stuff done around the house and yard.

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When a School Becomes a Mental Health Facility

One thing about teaching in a public school is that you get kids from all facets of society. You get kids who have two loving parents, and kids who have parents who would be hard pressed to give an accurate description of their child should he or she turn up missing. You have kids with clean clothing, and kids who are in desperate need of a bath and some clean laundry. Nice kids, mean kids, spoiled kids, ignored kids, abused kids, adored kids - you name it and we've probably seen a kid like that walk through our doors at one time or another.

However.

I have never, in my life, seen so many kids with so many mental issues as I've seen this year.

We have a kid who proudly proclaims that he's on meds because he's bi-polar and that although he did threaten suicide last year and spent a week in a hospital, he's doing much better this year. He's not kidding, Mom has been very up front with us about his issues.

We have another kid, also bi-polar, who arrived with a supportive but overwhelmed mother and two inches of paperwork from the mental hospital she spent most of the summer with due to her suicide threats. This one has a problem with anger, authority, and generally dealing with life, and has already landed in alternative school. It's sad, because when she's doing well, she's a sweet kid who's actually quite smart, but when the demons take hold, watch out.

And then we got Scratchy Boy.

Scratchy Boy arrived two weeks ago and we support-teamed him that first day. We were his third school in six weeks. Mom moves a lot due to her job and now she and Scratchy are living with her current boyfriend. Scratchy hasn't been at any one school, here and in other states, for more than several months at a time. Consequently, he hasn't been anywhere long enough to get tested and identified as emotionally disturbed, and therefore isn't receiving any kind of help for his problems.

And he has problems. Oh, does he have problems.

The notes in his file were scary enough - "hears voices in his head", "damages property", "bangs head repeatedly on wall when frustrated", "violent outbursts" - quite honestly, it looked like we had the makings for schizophrenia on our hands.

He endeared himself to his classmates by rapidly running his hands back and forth across his head and screaming "It's snowing!" as the dandruff flew. He scratched and itched and scratched at flea bites so bad that we were sending him to the nurse twice a day to try to see if there was anything she could do to get him to stop scratching until he bled. He steals things from other children (and was a bit upset when I caught him in the act). He refuses to do any work whatsoever. None. Nada. He won't even put his name on a piece of paper. He will, however, hum, play with pens, draw his cartoons, tap his pencil, rock back and forth, mutter, kick at chairs and yell at tablemates for no reason whatsoever. (I have him sitting with the two most patient kids on earth, bless their hearts). Today he pulled his shirt up over his head, tucked his arms in to his side, and assumed a fetal position for most of class.

At least he was quiet.

This kid needs help. Badly. The other students pretty much leave him alone because, as one of them told me, "Scratchy is weird and he's scary." He's gaining nothing by being in our classrooms and he's certainly not getting any treatment for the demons that are attacking his mind. However, he has to be in our rooms, with our other students, until we go through the long and tedious process to get him tested and identified as emotionally disturbed so he can be placed in the ED unit and receive help.

I've seen this process take over six months.

I think it's criminal to put a kid like this in a regular ed classroom. He's receiving no benefit from being there - he needs drastic psychological help and he's not receiving it. He's disrupting the class and quite frankly, frightening some of the other kids in the room. Who's to say that one day his violent outbursts won't involve another student? What then? Do the other parents know that by law, until we get this kid identified, or until he ends up in jail or alternative school, he's there in the classroom with their kids?

And what is it about our society that we're seeing more and more of these kids walking through our doors?

What? You Mean We Actually Get an Aide?

Our school this year is blessed, for the first time, with an aide for each team. That's nine new aides hired this year and some of us are still pinching ourselves to make sure it's real. I guess they're lucky we aren't pinching the aides just to make sure we aren't hallucinating. We used to go to these silly workshops where they would teach us "how to work with your aide" and we all used to roll our eyes and snort, "what freaking aide?" under our breath. But now, amazingly enough, we have real honest to goodness aides.

Our Aide, Mr. Title, has been around the building a few years, mainly as a long-term substitute. He's a delightful young man with INFINITE patience. You have to have infinite patience to deal with some of the characters he spends most of his day working with. He spends his day focusing on a core group of kids that have been targeted as our most at-risk. Most of these kids were non-academically promoted last year and are, yet again, struggling this year. They aren't special education, but have other issues - usually a lack of motivation and a home life that isn't the most supportive (just to be nice).

Mr. Title usually comes to my fifth period class. My fifth period class is one of my smallest, with 19 kids (I know, that's another story - our class sizes have dropped), but it's definitely my lowest. I just input grades yesterday and noticed that my highest grade for 5th period is a C. I have eleven students failing that class. In the five years I have been at The School, I have never had a class that consistently low (and the one special education student in that class is one of my top students). I am giving modified tests and quizzes to over half the kids in this class and they're still failing.

Mr. Title has, at times, shown a few cracks in his armor of Infinite Patience. For example, the Big Homework Issue. Out of the nine kids on the team that have his study skills class later in the day, only one of them turned in homework last week. The other eight laid a big ol' goose egg. Again.

Now this year, I have most of my kids turning in homework. In fact, so few of them are NOT turning in homework that both Mr. Social Studies and I actually have the time to email or call the parents of the few who consistently don't perform in this area. Homework for the seventh grade science teachers is so easy it's ridiculous. They get four assignments on Monday, chose which two they want to do, and turn them in on Friday. It gets even easier...we actually have available on the work table, in sheet protectors, the keys to the homework so that kids can check their work - and gasp! copy - if need be. (The reasoning behind this is another post I'll do soon). So, in reality, there's no reason why anyone should not be turning in homework.

Unless you're nothing but an unmotivated slug.

Mr. Title checked with me again today about whether or not his eight slugs managed to get their homework turned in from the previous week (I said I'd take partial credit). When I told him that not one had bothered, he looked like he was going to bang his head into the closest wall.

"Good gracious, your homework is so easy it's insane! How can they not be turning it in?"

Ah, the million dollar question, isn't it?

Interestingly enough, I've already taken most of these students to the support team and one thing I found in the files was that nearly all of them had family histories of drug and alcohol problems and/or parents who's highest educational level attained was either ninth or tenth grade.

A connection?

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When Good Kids Go Bad...or the Tale of Pout Boy

We have a kid on our team I'll call Pout Boy. He's a good kid, from a very solid, good family with parents who care and who want the best for him. He's very capable of being a solid B student, if not better, and is usually pleasant and respectful.

However.

Pout Boy wants to be bad. Pout Boy, within minutes of arriving at school on the first day, gravitated towards the kids on our team who are not, even in the best of times, good influences. He wants to hang out with the kids who are on the road (if they aren't there already) to careers in gang-banging. His idols are the kids who are non-academically promoted, kids who end up in alternative school, and kids who find themselves expelled.

So, he hasn't been doing homework, for anyone, isn't studying for tests, and basically is failing this grading period. He and his buddies are also tardy to classes (by quite a lot, which prompted us to have the SRO do a cruise of the boy's bathrooms to make sure they weren't up to some mischief.) All of which prompted Dad to come visit Friday (without Pout Boy's knowledge) to find out what's going on.

Dad apparently saw quite a lot and what he saw didn't make him happy. At all. So, again, without Pout Boy's knowledge, he had the Guidance Goober work with Pout Boy and requested that his schedule be changed so he has no classes with his new found friends, and we had his locker moved to another location as well. Guidance Goober did his best but Pout Boy just didn't see what the big deal was, didn't care that he was failing, and generally didn't seem to care that his parents were at their wits' ends.

Dad didn't want Pout Boy to know it was really his idea about the schedule change, and didn't say a word to him about it over the weekend. Pout Boy arrives in my homeroom, Guidance Goober calls him to his office to let him know his new schedule and all hell breaks loose. Apparently Pout Boy was rude and disrespectful to Guidance Goober, and proceeded to spend the entire day being disruptive, rude, and disrespectful to anyone and everyone. He told Guidance Mom that he thought his teachers had all conspired to mess with him and he hated us one and all.

He was, in a word, MAD. Furious. Absolutely beside himself because his schedule got changed. Now, in my five years at The School, I've seen a lot of schedule changes, for a variety of reasons, and I have never ever seen a kid make such a big nasty deal about it. Honestly, by the time he arrived back in my fourth period class (about 4 hours after he found out his schedule was changed) he was still furious. He slammed his books down, sulked, pouted, refused to work, rapped his pencil on the table loudly, refused to stop when I asked him to (he was driving his new table mate, Bird Boy - I've never seen this little fellow ever sit in a chair, he always perches - batty). The third time he refused he got a behavior note. When it still didn't stop, I made him stand in a corner where he pouted the rest of the period.

All he had to say for himself was "I don't care." Every warning was met with "I don't care." I finally told him, "Frankly, I don't care if you're mad at the world either, but you have no right to rob your classmates of a chance to review for their test because you're having an attitude issue. You're nothing but a time thief if that's how you're going to behave." What I really wanted to saw was, "Oh, grow the hell up and get over it. "

I then proceeded to email his father, which was met with another "I don't care."

We have a meeting, again, with Dad tomorrow. It should be interesting to see how that goes. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if his parents didn't pull him out and either home school him or send him to a private school, just to get him away from the types of friends he's so bound and determined to associate with.

I do have to give my Fourth Period class credit, however. They were not impressed with his antics and looked at him with these expressions of "Jeez, get over it and grow the hell up," when he was doing his sulking, pouting, and pencil rapping. If he thought he was being a big, cool, bad boy, then he failed miserably.

And just how do they manage to cross the street?

On Friday we had a quiz over compounds and elements. It's a pretty basic quiz about the eight compounds and elements that The State says my seventh graders need to know. Basically we want them to recognize them by both name and chemical symbol(s) and to tell if they're an element or a compound just by looking at them. Piece of cake.

So, before the quiz, I put a copy of it on the overhead and walked them through it by reading the directions and pointing out the different sections. In one section they give me the name of the compound or element, in another section they give me the chemical symbols along with circling E for element and C for compound, and in another section they look at five elements and compounds which aren't on the State Mandated List and tell me what they are based on just looking at them. (If it has one capital letter it's an element; two or more and it's a compound).

I figured that by going over the quiz in detail, in full color on a big screen, they wouldn't make any foolish mistakes. After all the directions are written right there on the quiz.

Boy was I wrong.

While grading these quizzes, I realized that a good 20% of my students obviously didn't pay any attention while I walked them through how to do the quiz, and even more obviously didn't read the directions either. My fifth period, the class with all the non-academic promotes and low achievers, had at least half of them that goobered it up. Big time. These were the kids who needed the extra bump the quiz could give them and instead, by not following directions, they missed 8 out of 29 points. And that's assuming they had everything else correct.

"Do you remember me standing up here and showing you the quiz on the screen?" I asked my kids after I'd handed the quizzes back and the kids were looking with horror at their grades. A few heads nodded.

"What did I talk about when I was showing you the quiz?" I asked.

One brave soul raised his hand. "You went over the directions," he said.

"Okay, so how come half of you still didn't manage to follow them?" I asked.

Blank stares.

It was so bad that Mr. Title, the aide that's in my room 5th period looking out for those non-academic promotes and low achievers, created one of those little quizzes that have about 15 questions (general information stuff), but if you actually freaking read the directions (what a novel concept) the last line of the directions reads, "skip numbers 1 through 15 and sign your name at the bottom".

He gave this quiz to the study skills class that the Title Aides teach, later that day.

One kid actually followed the directions. Out of about 18.

One.

These kids are so unaware, so unobservant, so in a fog, that I wonder how they get to school every day, how they manage to find their way home, and how they manage to cross the street without being hit by a car.

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!

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Today We Talked of Heroes

In remembrance of the events of September 11, 2001, I introduced my students to one of my heroes. I'd like to introduce him to you as well.

His name is Rick Rescorla.

He saved over 2,5000 lives on that day. In fact, he's often been called the Man Who Predicted 9/11. As the security expert for Morgan Stanley, he realized the vulnerability of the WTC, and he worked to make sure that everyone would get out alive should a terrorist attack occur. He drilled all the employees about safety procedures, practiced, and worked to make sure everyone knew what to do. And then, when it actually happened, he went back in to make sure that there were no stragglers.

He defined the words bravery and sacrifice.

A number of years ago one of my absolute favorite books military history books was written by Harold G. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway, titled We Were Soldiers Once and Young. This book tells the story of the 7th Cavalry and the battle of the Ia Drang Valley in November of 1965. It is, in my opinion, one of the most gut-wrenching stories out of that era. On the cover of that book is a picture of a lean and haggard soldier. That soldier was Rick Rescorla. As a platoon leader, he was definitely one of the best.

As I told my kinds, I don't know if I have the strength to do what Rick Rescorla did in his life, and hopefully I'll never have to find out. But I did want them to meet him and sometimes, realize that life is bigger than we are.

And amazingly enough, you could have heard a pin drop.

For more information on this true hero, go here.

The New Schedule - a Sample

I've had a number of people ask for the details on our new schedule this year, so here goes.

7:05 - 7:30 - Homeroom/Breakfast
7:30 - 8:15 - First Period Academic Class
8:19 - 9:04 - Second Period Academic Class
9:08 - 9:53 - Third Period Academic Class
9:53 - 10:17 - GPA = Binders, study tips, etc.
10:17 - 10:47 - Lunch
10:53 - 11:38 - Fourth Period Academic Class
11:42 - 12:27 - Fifth Period Academic Class
12:31 - 1:16 - Kids go to related arts, teachers have personal planning time
1:20 - 2:05 - Kids go to second related arts, teachers have team and subject planning

Keep in mind, this is the 7th grade version of the schedule. Sixth and 8th grade are pretty much the same except they have GPA/Lunch and their planning times at different times than we do. Other than that, it's pretty much the same thing.

Some positives:

• No split lunch - that was hell on earth
• We have large blocks of time to work with other teachers
• We don't lose our planning due to parent meetings
• We have time to work with kids on their binders, hand out paperwork, check homework, read, whatever with our GPA kids.
• Kids get more related arts and physical education
• We can have data chats about our benchmark tests without having to arrange for one teacher to have a sub - it used to be that two of a grade level team was on one schedule and the other was on a different one. We never used to all have planning at the same time.

Drawbacks:

• Shorter class periods.

So that's it in a nutshell. Hope this makes sense!

Ah, The Novelty of It All

During third period this morning I was going over the study guide for our upcoming test when a hand goes up. It's Waif Boy, one of the tinier kids on my team. (We seem to have cornered the market on twelve-year-olds that look like they are eight.)

"Mrs Bluebird," he asks after I call on him, "Is it raining?"

I listen for a moment and realize that yes, Waif Boy is right. "It sure sounds like it," I say and continue on with the study guide review.

We do a few more questions and I realize that the kids aren't really paying attention. They're too busy listening to the rain. It's a sound we haven't heard for a good long while, as evidenced by the extreme drought we've had since winter. In fact, we're well below half the normal rainfall for the year. Since my room is windowless, the kids couldn't see the rain, but they were turning their heads towards the back door where the sound was coming from.

"Okay," I say. "Let's stop for a minute. We can't go outside right now, but I'm going to open the back door so we can see the rain for a bit." I walk over and push the door open to a heavy gray sky, a steady rain, and water rushing off the roof of The School.

The kids all lean towards the door and let out a collective, "Ooooooohhhhhhhhhhhh."

I couldn't agree more.

Carnival Time!

Take a break from grading those papers and zip on over to the Education Carnival, hosted by his Very Wonkness, the EduWonk....

It's worth the visit!

Excuse Me While I Catch My Breath...

We've had a huge change at The School this year with an implementation of a new schedule.

There were several reasons behind the change. To start with, the State has implemented a requirement that all middle school students receive 90 minutes of physical activity a week. This means that more kids need to be taking gym, but at the same time we didn't want them to lose out on their arts, computers, and other classes that are necessary as well. In addition, those of us who've slogged it out trying to do the GPA (Greater Potential for Achievement) binders without time dedicated to it were really hoping we'd get a modified study hall or advisory so we could work with the kids on their binders, study skills and what not. Trust me, if you don't work daily with middle school kids on organizational skills, they just aren't going to get organized.

So The Principal, Guidance Goober, and a few others went to a conference on scheduling and came up with a really kick-butt schedule. We moved from six periods a day to seven, with no split lunch, and 25 minutes of organizational and skills training. We also ended up with a personal planning time and a team/department planning time every day.

Split lunch, by the way, was this creation from the depths of hell where you taught about 20-25 minutes of your fourth period class, then went to lunch, only to have them return to finish up the remaining 30 minutes or so of class. This meant labs were interrupted, tests were interrupted, and you lost time just getting the little ninnies back on track. We despised it.

In order to accomplish this seven period schedule, we went from a 55 minute class period down to a 45 minute class period. This means that Mrs. Eagle, Mrs. Robin and I, when we have our meeting every Thursday to do our plans - yes, we finally have actual time blocked out and set aside to collaborate! - are sitting there asking each other, "so, how are we going to cut out ten minutes every day?" We're cutting out some things (no more journals, we're adding writing into our tests and no more day long test reviews which didn't help anyway), and speeding up other things. The end result is that so far, we feel like we're on warp speed getting through the day. Amazingly enough, after three weeks we haven't slipped too far off the pacing guide, so I guess we're getting it done.

Honestly, I love this schedule...I just wished it allowed me time to breathe!

Duck! It's the Helicopter Mother!

I know I haven't been posting much, but it's quite simply because it's the week from Hades. I've had something to do every single night after school and it's all I can do to get it done before I crawl into bed, exhausted.

For example, Open House was on Thursday.

We get an amazing number of families in the building on Open House days. Not only do we see our current student and his or her parent or parents, but we'll often see all the brothers and sisters tagging along as well. Our big goal is to smile, introduce ourselves, and have the kids show their parents their rooms, lockers, etc. Mr. Social Studies and I both have PowerPoints scrolling on our screens letting parents know about our classes, along with music playing, and an email sign up list.

One thing we do try to do is to not get trapped in a room with a parent who wants to talk grades (not a good thing when half the neighborhood is wandering through), so we tend to stand in the hall area outside our rooms. Mrs. Math, Miss Reading and Mrs. Language even had a table set up outside their room area. Mr. Social Studies and I didn't do the table thing, but instead simply stood in the hallway which gave us a chance to see who was going where and keep an eye on our rooms as well.

And that's when our number one Helicopter Mother from last year came by, along with her husband (whom we never met), and her two sons, Chopper Boy who we had last year and one who's in sixth grade. Mr. Social Studies saw her heading towards us and whispered "Look out," under his breath at me.

See, this mother had some definite problems with both of us at different times last year. She didn't like the fact that I had assigned a PowerPoint project for the students because she didn't know PowerPoint and couldn't prepare her son for the project. She even threatened to take her "case to the principal" if I couldn't "justify" the technology project I was assigning. Mr. Social Studies incurred her wrath when he told the kids that if they handed in anything on a piece of notebook paper that had been torn out of their binders that it would be counted as a zero - part of our big GPA program is that kids keep EVERYTHING in their binders and tearing out paper is a big no-no. She proceeded to not only complain to the principal about him, but showed up with a case of reinforcements. I still have over a dozen packages of reinforcements in my desk drawer from her gift.

So we were a little surprised when she showed up in our hallway with a big huge smile on her face.

"Oh, I wanted so much to come by and see you two," she gushed at us. "I wanted to know if parents are allowed to request teachers, because our son will be a seventh grader next year and I want him to be on your team."

Mr. Social Studies looked dumbfounded and didn't say a word. I think he was in shock. It takes me a minute or two to come to my senses and then I mumbled something to the effect that I think parents can request teachers but there's no guarantee they'll get their request. I'm sure I sounded like a complete moron. Good gracious, did we want this mother as a parent yet again?

"We're just so pleased with all the work you did with Chopper Boy. We got his Big Deal State Mandated Test Scores last week and he scored off the charts in science and social studies and we know it's just because of the fantastic job you two did with him last year."

"Uh, thanks," both Mr. Social Studies and I manage to mumble. Were we talking to the same mother we had last year?

"I just really like your philosophy on education and your values and I want my other son to have the same great teachers Chopper Boy had."

"Well, check with guidance next year and they'll let you put in a request," I mutter again, still completely astounded by this apparent change of heart.

"Will do!" she says. "Thanks again so much!" She walks away with her family, heading to the 8th grade hall to inspect Chopper Boys current crop of teachers. I feared for them.

"Well," says Mr. Social Studies. "That was a surprise."

"No kidding," I respond. "Especially considering how mad she got at both of us last year."

"Looks like we'll have another steady supply of reinforcements next year."

Surprise! Surprise! It's Test Day!

Eight days before the unit test, I pass out the study guide. Which, if you get it signed by a parent, is worth 5 extra credit points.

Eight days before the unit test, I write in big letters on my white board that our "Test will be on Tuesday, August 28th!".

Every day before the test, I have as a homework assignment to "study for your test".

Every day before the test, when I point out what our classwork is going to be that day, and what our homework is going to be that day (so my little darlings can scribble this down in their agendas), I mention that "Remember, your test will be on Tuesday, August 28th".

Every day before the test, I remind the kids before they leave to "be sure to use your study guide to prepare for your test!"

Two of my weekly parent emails have mentioned that our first test will be on Tuesday, August 28th, so they can make sure their child is prepared.

On our school grades website, I post a message (marked "urgent") that reminds students and parents that our test will be on Tuesday, August 28th.

(And those of you who are teachers know, absolutely, what's next, dontcha?)

And it never, ever fails that I will get at least one nitwit per class who walks in, stares at the board where it says "Test Today!" and looks a me with total shock and amazement and utter those words that every teacher just hates to hear...

"You mean we have a test today?"

GRRRRRRR

Good gracious, just how unobservant and unaware can one person be?

Why I'm So Tired I Can't See Straight

It would be nice if a teacher's work day actually ended when the contract says it does. If that were the case I wouldn't be falling asleep in my supper. Truth be told, this has just been the week from hell, in terms of after-school-things-I-must-do.

Let's see....Monday....optional science teacher gathering at Central Office, but Mrs. Eagle and I had to pass because I had to run Hubby's vehicle to the repair shop (she was my ride home). We'll be making the next few, especially in October when we get to hear about our new standards (and they're really changing).

Tuesday...go to Central Office, meet with Mrs. Standard and help edit benchmark tests. That took about two solid hours, but was worthwhile. I was just losing my brain by the time we left and was turning to jelly. Looking at tests can do that to me. Oh, yeah, I have 110 tests to grade this evening because I'm hand grading tests this year (and that's for another blog).

Wednesday...literacy meeting (all academic areas must meet), and Mrs. Eagle and I have to prep for our Thursday lab, plus go get the vehicle, and try not to forget my allergy shot again.

Thursday...Open House. Enough said.

Friday...Mrs. Eagle and I, foolishly, volunteered to work the First Dance of the School Year. Fortunately it is a right-after-school-dance which means I should be home by 5:30 or so.

I think the first chance we'll get to the gym is this weekend. Thank goodness it's a long one.

Roasting and Baking

There is a huge uproar going on around the state, and including my community, about the fact that we start school before Labor Day. This has been brought on by the fact that we have pretty much shattered just about any record ever set having to do with heat in the month of August. Thanks to one of my new blog links, Category Five (a blog put out by the folks at the National Weather Service in Nashville), it's easy to check out all the records we've broken. Or to figure out how darn miserable the weather really is just in case you haven't figured that out already.

Here's a run down...31 consecutive days over 90 degrees, 15 days at 99 and above, seven consecutive days at 100 or higher. There's a lot more, but you get my drift.

The result is Metro Nashville schools were pretty much on half days most, if not all, of last week, and some counties shut down schools altogether for Thursday and Friday. Our district stayed open and on regular hours, probably because we have a kickbutt maintenance staff and our AC was working great. In fact, it's so cold in my room, and the kids keep complaining about it. I just tell them to bring a sweater and keep it in their lockers since we really don't have any control over how hot or cold it is in our rooms, as we're in the old part of the building. After last summer when the AC didn't work until the day before school started, I'm not complaining. I'm still being thankful.

However, I don't have to get on a hot bus and ride home in the afternoon when it's 105 outside, and I also don't have to walk home in the same dreadful conditions. Many parents are, understandably, having melt-downs because their kids are suffering in the heat as the buses are not, obviously, air conditioned.

The local paper had a survey that asked "Do you think that the District should put air conditioning on school buses?" The answer was something like 68% in favor. However, I contend that if the question had been worded, "Are you willing to pay higher taxes so the District could put air conditioning on school buses?", the response would have been significantly lower.

So the debate is raging - we should start school after Labor Day. I have no problem with this and could care less one way or the other. When I grew up in Los Angeles, we started school towards the last two weeks of September and got out in the middle of June. Up in Ohio we started the week before Labor Day. Here, we start around the 8th of August, which means most teachers are actually starting to work in their rooms in late July. Some of the reasoning given about why we start so early is it means the high school kids don't have to study for semester exams over the winter break, seniors can get their transcripts faster, people don't like to be in school past Memorial Day and honestly, September can be pretty amazingly hot as well. The big reason, however, in my eyes is the amount of time we have to prepare for our Very Big Deal State Mandated Tests, which are in April. If they scheduled them in May, which I wish they'd do because the kids think they're done after the tests, it wouldn't be an issue. But as it is, that August start date gives us nearly 3 solid weeks of instruction before Labor Day.

So readers and fellow teachers...when do you start school? And how does your public feel about it?

Crunchy, crunchy grass

I grew up in Southern California, the Land of Perpetual Drought, so I know a little about dry weather. To this day, fifteen years since I left The Golden State, I still am somewhat obsessive about wasting water. You spend a childhood having things such as "don't wash your car unless you're parked on grass", and "don't run the water while you brush your teeth", yammered at you all the time, you tend to have the habit of conservation somewhat ingrained.

However, I've never seen anything like the drought we're undergoing right now in My Beloved South. Southern California, after all, is brown most of the year. It's part of the landscape and it has its own desperate beauty. Here, however, we're used to green most of the year - green trees, green lawns, full green flowering shrubs, you name it. We're used to mowing the lawn at least once a week and sometimes complaining that we can't get it done in between rainy days and thunderstorms.

We haven't mowed our lawn in six weeks. Hubby gets out and weed wacks a bit here and there because weeds apparently can survive anything, but our mower has been used maybe three times since spring. The grass crunches. Even the crabgrass is looking stressed and I'm under the assumption that nothing can kill crabgrass (because I've tried just about everything). This is a a somewhat blurry picture of my lawn, or what's left of it. I don't have a decent digital camera so rely on my cell phone camera which is a pain to use in the sun - I can't see what I'm taking pictures of!!

I've also taken a picture looking down the street and you can tell that all the lawns are in bad shape. From the pictures you can't tell how bad the trees are faring, but it isn't pretty. Many of them are losing leaves and what leaves they have left are starting to get brown and burned looking on the edges. According to the folks at the National Weather Service we have had no rain for the month of August. None. The result of this is, according to the news, higher electric rates because most of our power comes from the TVA which is primarily hydroelectric. The rivers are down and aren't generating the amount of power we need, especially since we're breaking records left and right with triple digit temperatures for days on end.

Many cities and communities are starting to go with water restrictions. The drinking water itself is tasting really muddy and musty right now because the warm weather and slow moving river water (where most of the communities get their drinking water) is perfect for algae to bloom, so it's going gangbusters. The result is nasty. It's safe to drink but tastes pretty repulsive.

As a teacher, especially one who gets to teach about weather, this is one of those situations that I can pull into a quick 2-3 minute lesson. We don't teach weather much until later in the year (right now I'm working on matter), but when the kids are talking about how hot it is and how the water tastes icky and how people are dying in Memphis because of the heat, well, that's a teachable moment. After all, these kids are getting onto school buses at 2:15 in the afternoon when the outside temperature is at least 100 degrees...I don't want to even imagine what the temperature is inside the buses. This is some science they can relate to.

And in the meantime, I'm going to stomp around and whine and complain because all my efforts at gardening are just burning up. The begonia below is croaking despite being tenderly watered nearly every other day...but the days on end of this heat is not something this plant is obviously used to. Poor thing.

This is Not a Drill

Wednesday morning, 8:00 am, the third full day of school. I've got my kids working on a comic strip regarding science lab rules (or what would happen if you didn't follow the rules which gives the kids lots of chances to draw goofy cartoons of flaming labs, exploding test tubes and the like). We've pretty much just started our assignment when the fire alarm goes off.

I pointed at the back door and told them to start heading out, closed my front door, grabbed my keys and seating chart, and followed them out. The kids dropped their markers and followed my directions to the letter with no goofing off and no carrying on. Obviously the kids who were here last year know the drill, so to speak.

So we get out to the fence where our assigned spot is, I count all my kids, and we stand there quietly and wait. Mr. Social Studies and I discuss the fact that the administration apparently wanted to get our required monthly drill over early although we were wondering about the wisdom about doing it on a day where the temperature was predicted to hit 102 degrees.
Our assigned spot, after all, is not in the shade and it was already very warm. But heck, it shouldn't take more than a minute or two for them to give the all clear and we could head back in.

At about the time that I'm starting to think that it's taking longer than usual we start hearing the ever so faint sound of a siren. And the siren got louder. And louder. And pretty soon everyone is looking towards the front of the school, mouths agape, as a fire truck comes barreling into the front parking lot and disappears from view.

Holy crap. This isn't a drill!

The kids are immediately full of questions:

"Is the school burning down?"

"Are we going to get to go home?"

"Will we get lunch if it burns down?"

"Are we going to get to go home?"

"What's going on?"

"Are we going to get to go home?"

And so forth and so on. I guess it never occurred to them that we teachers don't communicate telepathically so therefore aren't privy to every little thing that's going on.

After about fifteen minutes, with no relief in sight, Mr. Social Studies and I decide we have to do something about the lack of shade. Assigned spot be damned, we're moving them to the shade because the temperature was rapidly rising. Fortunately shade wasn't too far away, and we were already situated there when Mrs. Squirrel, one of our Assistant Principals, came by to suggest we move. (Apparently the folks on Mrs. Eagle's side of the building had no shade whatsoever and The Principal called the City Recreation Department and asked them to come open up the Recreation center across the parking lot from The school.)

We stood out there for the rest of First Period, for all of Second Period, and part of Third Period.

Or for about an hour and a half.

Let me tell you, if you want to get to know your kids, standing outside for a fire drill for over an hour gives you lots of opportunities for conversation. Talk about a bonding experience.

In any case, what apparently happened was that a gas leak triggered an automatic fire alarm. The leak was repaired and we were all allowed into the building to finish the day. Of course, trying to get the kids to focus after their big adventure was a bit of a challenge.

Interesting way to start the year, dontcha think?

They're Starting to Freak Me Out

We have two full days of school under our belts.

And truth be told, this group of kids is starting to freak me out. Big time.

Because they're being so very, very good.

Seriously.

Case in point. Every year the first thing all my kids are taught to do when they walk in my room is to look at the schedule on the board, and then get out their agenda and fill it out, copying the information I have on the board. Every stinking year, every single class period, every single day, I have had to walk into my room and tell the kids to "please get out your agendas and fill them out." Some kids have had to have a personal invitation to do this.

So today as I walk into my room from watching the hallway, before the first period bell even rings, I get ready to make my daily announcement only to realize That Every Single Kid Already Had His or Her Agenda Out...and was filling it in. Correctly.

Okay. This is an aberration. Has to be.

Except it happened second period, it happened third period, it happened all day.

It gets better.

Students are supposed to take their agendas home every night and have their parents check and sign them. So today, during our MOST period (it's a twenty-two minute block of time after 3rd period where we work with the kids on organizational skills, study skills, check agendas, etc.) I'm checking my kids' agendas and every parent but one had signed off on the agenda. The kid who's parent hadn't signed was profuse in apologizing because his dad forgot to do it even though he left it out for him.

Oh. My. Gosh. Even the parents are following directions. Usually I'm lucky if 50% of my parents bother to sign the agendas. This was, well, freaky. Wonderful, but kind of unsettling.

I'm guessing that a lot of the credit goes to our sixth grade teachers who have, obviously, taught both parents and children the importance of using the agenda. Bless their hearts. They did a fantastic job.

But then again, could this just be a really good crop of kids? Or am I going to regret saying this in a week or so when their true colors show?

Because if they really are this good, this is going to be an incredible year.

Whew! It's Finally Done!

The first day of school arrived and went without any major crises and accompanying disaster. This, in itself, was amazing. The air conditioning worked, the phones worked, and the computers worked. Granted, the transportation website that we use to locate kids' bus numbers crashed, but other than that, it appeared to go pretty well.

And considering that it was 102 degrees outside, that's a good thing.

Every year I'm one of the teachers that volunteers to go out to the buses, get on the bus with marker in hand and write down bus numbers on the hands of the middle schoolers. (We do this because you'll ask a middle schooler what bus they get on to go home and they'll tell you "the one that stopped at my house"...with 30 buses lined up behind the school at dismissal, it's a little tough to figure out which one that is.) We started doing this at 7:00 am and the buses were already sweltering. Some of the buses were just crammed with kids, and they had to have been just about fed up with the heat. I can only imagine how the buses were later when they took the kids home.

Our guidance department did some unique scheduling this year so one team wouldn't end up with all the troublemakers, lower kids, smart kids, etc. The idea was to balance it all out a bit more. I can't tell if it worked or not yet, but I did notice that I didn't have too many kids who stood out with that "I'm going to be the thorn in your side this year" look. There definitely were a few, but not an overwhelming number.

This is a good thing. A very good thing.

I did notice that it seems as if nearly every sixth grader who was a member of the chess and board game club last year is now on my team. This means I seem to have a number of classes that have a relatively high proportion of, well, nerds. Face it, a lot of the kids in the club are a bit on the dorky side, which is one of the things I like about them. Mrs. Eagle said she didn't recognize any of the kids from the club last year so apparently they really are in my classes and not hers. In the meantime she says she has more siblings than ever before.

We did have a few minor problems, most of them having to deal with kids who didn't know their bus number, who didn't (apparently) follow directions to hold out their hand so we could write their bus number of it, didn't know their address, and didn't know their phone number. I'm amazed they made it to class. I'm assuming they made it home since we didn't get any hysterical parent calls reporting a missing kid.

It remains to be seen how this year is going to turn out. In the meantime, I'm ready to get it going. It's nice to be back in the routine again.

Although getting up at 4:45 in the morning still sucks.

Whoo-hoo! Carnival Time!

Mike in Texas just rocks. Want proof? Check out this week's Education Carnival!!!

Loop de Loop

Every year we are instructed to unplug and pack away all of our technology goodies. We can take our computers home over the summer (all teachers have laptops) which is handy if you're doing some in-service work over break. However, everything else, including phones, hubs, printers, document readers, etc. are safely tucked away. Being the slightly paranoid type, and not trusting my memory after a summer of heat and wine spritzers, I obsessively label everything I unplug so it's simply a matter of putting all the pieces together when I return.

However, a few years ago someone in the building in an attempt to get all of his or her technology hooked up, managed to create a loopback. This loopback basically shut down our entire phone and computer system for two days until the techy people from District located it and fixed it.

Not having phones and computers on the first day of school is, as you can imagine, a nightmare. Guidance was having new kids enrolling all day and basically was just putting them in rooms to have a place to hold them until they could get the computer problem fixed and schedule them.

So, one of the Powers That Be at District declared that no one was to hook up any technology. Instead, they would be sending techy people in to each building to get us all set up. No problem because we teachers have a lot of other things to do to get ready and having someone set up all our technology sounded like a great idea.

Except they didn't show up until yesterday afternoon.

In the meantime, we're all having meltdowns because we need to print out and copy things like team rules, parent letters, and all the massive amount of paperwork we hand out to our darlings on the first day. And when they showed up they weren't the techy people from District. Instead they were college kids hired as temps from the local University.

So what do you think happened?

Yup, you got it. They created a loopback.

*snort*

So this morning, while The Principal covered her ears and went "La, la, la, la", the Guidance Goober, who's also our techno dweeb, told us to just hook our stuff up if we knew what we were doing, and help those that didn't. So I got up and running, and got Mrs. Math up and running, and everyone was good to go.

At least the techy college kids did come by to see if I needed any help. Poor things, they tried, but trying to figure out our network is like eating spaghetti with a spoon!

As ready as I'm gonna be

I think I'm ready.

Well, sorta. I still need to make a zillion photocopies of the "first day of school and here's all your paperwork" stuff, but other than that, I think I'm ready.

I've got the word wall up, my posters up, file cabinet cleaned up and organized (we're talking two trash bags full of stuff I tossed), my rolling cabinets organized and cleaned out, tablecloths put out, student center organized, books on shelves, and so forth. I went to Office Depot, bought a new electric pencil sharpener (which will hopefully outlast the year), as well as colored paper for foldables and some Dixon Ticonderoga pencils. I've had it with crap pencils.

The School did give us these hard plastic monstrosities with felt on the bottom that we're supposed to put on the bottom of our chair legs so the new tile doesn't get destroyed. I did about eight chairs and decided it wasn't worth it. Putting these suckers on was hard (and included the use of a hammer), and besides, they won't fit on most of my chairs. So, I sat home and cut X's in a bunch of tennis balls and put those on the other chairs. (I knew we were supposed to get tile one of these days so the Guidance Goddess, who happens to be a tennis coach, saved some of her older tennis balls for me.) I still have nine chairs without felt or tennis balls so I'll probably pick up a can or two here and there until they're all covered.

So tomorrow we go in for the beginning of two days of meetings, and hopefully time where the team can meet and go over things. We have some changes this year. Ms. Reading has transferred to a new middle school here in town so we'll have a new Miss Reading. I've met her and she seems very bubbly and gung-ho. My original Mrs. Language, one of my dearest friends, has been moved to another team and appointed team leader. The Principal realized she needed to get someone over on that team (which will have 3 new people on it this year) with the right attitude and a heart for the kids, and she chose Mrs. Language. We're not happy about it, as our team was rock solid, but we understand the reasons behind the move. So, we have a new Mrs. Language who, like our new Miss Reading, is bubby and gung-ho and fairly young. The original Mrs. Language has a new name, along with a new team. I'll be calling her Mrs. Bunny, so hopefully we won't all get confused.

Oh boy!

Oh good gracious, it's hot.

The first day of school is August 9th.

The National Weather Service is forecasting a high of 102 degrees.

Oh boy.

Mint Juleps, anyone?

According to my super duper little weather gizmo thingie-bob that Daddy Bird gave me for Christmas a few years ago, it is 102 degrees Fahrenheit on my front porch. This, by the way, is in the shade.

Can you guess what the forecast is for the first day of school? Yup, 98 degrees. Isn't that lovely?

But it could be worse....at least this year we have air conditioning. For those of you who've been reading for a while, you may remember that last year the new air conditioning system didn't work until the first day of school. Of course, there's always the chance it will break by the 9th, isn't there?

Sigh.

The building was open this morning (we have a lot of new teachers who are going through the major "oh my gosh I need more time to get my room put together" drama) so Mrs. Eagle and I got in early and went through our file cabinets and managed to fill, between us, four big trash bags. We kept copies of a lot of stuff, but basically tossed a lot of old tests and things we don't use or that aren't on our standards anymore. It was pretty easy work, it was air conditioned, and we got a lot done.

And then we left at noon, walked outside, and about fainted.

I went home, and aside from a quick foray with Mr. Bluebird to our local Amish veggie stand (that's only open on Saturdays) where I got a great little watermelon for $2 and hubby bought his favorite chocolate chip cookies, we've hunkered down and are staying inside.

To make it even worse, it's still dry. Very dry. So dry that even crabgrass, which can survive anything, is dying. My yard is crunchy. The entire state has been declared an agricultural emergency due to the drought. We had a slight shower a few days ago, but that's about it.
The corn is haggard and brown, the soybeans are looking puny, and my flowers and veggies are only alive because we'll go out after dark and water.

I'm ready for a cold front. In the meantime, it's time for cold adult beverages.

The dangers of too much HGTV

I adore watching HGTV. I just love it. I'm not particularly dedicated to a certain show, although I really like House Hunters, Generation Renovation, and Landscapers' Challenge. I can simply flip to that channel and pretty much find something interesting the watch.

The problem is they make it look so darn easy.

My husband and I found this out about four years ago when we went to Daddy Bird's for Christmas. Daddy Bird was coming down with a cold and went to bed early; there wasn't a whole lot to watch on television outside of a marathon of some sort on HGTV, so we watched that. And went home and painted the stairwell and parts of the "bunker" (our word for the finished basement which houses most of our book collection as well as main computer).

So you would think we'd know better.

However, Daddy Bird was up visiting and when Daddy Bird visits we like to get home improvement and repair projects finished. It's either that or he spends too much time watching NASCAR and baseball, and he gets restless and bored. He's good at home repair, and I learn a lot from him which is why I'm really good at fixing toilets and sinks and stuff like that. It was so freaking hot and humid that we decided that anything that needed doing was going to be done inside where there was air conditioning.

I had this idea this past winter that I wanted to redecorate the guest bathroom. I had a red and white vision with blue accents and accessories. I wanted red walls, with white beadboard on one wall. I'd seen pictures of similar styles in Southern Living (the guidebook for all things decorating down here in My Beloved South), and I figured it would look okay. So I bought the paint when it was on sale in January.

That's right. Seven months ago.

We figured this would be a good project that would take, at most, a day.

Again, you would think we'd know better.

It took three hours just to get the bathroom ready to be painted. We had to caulk in places, then sand, and then apply painter's tape. And then we had to put two good coats of paint on. Then we had to cut the beadboard and chair rail. And then we had to glue it on, but ended up nailing it because our wall curves just enough to make the ends refuse to stick well. And then we had to caulk some more. And then we removed the tape, and had to fix places where it took off the paint (ARGH). And then we had to put the cupboard back in and hang up the new medicine cabinet.

But it looks great. It's not finished...I'm going to have to apply a special primer and then paint the vanity cabinet since I'm on a budget and really can't afford a new one right now, plus eventually I'm going to replace the faucets and the floor.

Any guesses on how long it's going to take me to tile that floor???

*snicker*

Vocaulary Hell

This year we're getting in-service credit for collaboration time with other teachers.

Mrs. Eagle and I find this to be extremely amusing because we collaborate all the time anyway and now we're getting credit for it. It's like getting paid to eat chocolate.

Which isn't a bad idea, come to think of it.

Anyhow. A few years ago we made laminated vocabulary cards, with one card with the word and another card with the definition. The idea is the kids would get a plastic baggie with these cards in them, lay them out on their desks, and sort and match them. We called this activity word splash, but I'm others out there have a different name for it. In any case, it took forever to make these cards; we copied them onto colored paper, laminated them, cut them out, and sorted them into the baggies.

And our students promptly made a huge mess of them.

Our idea was to spend some time on these cards this summer and get them put back into some semblance of organization. However, what with Mr. Eagle's accident, and Mrs. Eagle spending most of her summer with him at the hospital, this was the first chance we'd really had to work on them.

So today we took my plastic shoeboxes for of baggies and cards, Mrs. Eagle's plastic bags and baggies with cards, and the latest, greatest copy of our Scope and Sequence for the year and attempted to get these all organized.

Oh good gracious.

It would help if our scope and sequence unit numbers didn't change every year. It would also help if it didn't skip and hop around the book like a deranged hamster. For example, we have a unit that includes material from "chapter 3, section 1, chapter 3, section 3, and chapter 11, section 1". ARGH. Some units include information from 4 different chapters. It's maddening.

We did finally get them somewhat organized. Sort of. At least the boxes I keep them in are labeled, and we put aside in a "not tested" box all the words we aren't going to use this year because they aren't necessary. Every year we learn a bit more what's expected and every year we change and tweak. Of course rumors are abounding that they're going to be "reviewing" our standards at the state level so things will probably change yet again.

In the meantime, we're trying to come up with ways to help our kids on vocabulary, keeping in mind that we're losing ten minutes a period with our new schedule this year. A lot of the vocabulary techniques that many teachers in language arts and reading use with great success are a bit unwieldy and not as effective with science vocabulary which tends to be a bit technical. Try doing a Frayer model for "endoplasmic reticulum". So, we're leaning towards more vocab crosswords, word searches and word splashes. We'll just have to find the time.

In the meantime, if any of you fellow science teachers have any great ideas, let me know!

Prayers Needed for Daniel

Since ya'll are so good at this prayers thing - I honestly think all your prayers helped Mr. Eagle through his recovery. He is, after all, going to be able to get his first day pass and leave the rehab facility this weekend!

Anyhow, one of my dearest friends' son, Daniel, was hit in the head with a softball during a game and developed a blood clot and bleeding on the brain. He's in a drug-induced coma right now and they're trying to relieve the pressure on his brain. He could use your prayers. This is a wonderful young man, who was supposed to be starting at Purdue this fall. Use your power of prayer to help pull him and his family through this.

Many thanks, as always, from the bottom of my heart. Bloggers and readers are some of the greatest people on Earth.

Gearing up, or, "where the hell did I pack that?"

I went in to The Building and worked on my classroom today.

It amazes me how much time it takes every year for me to get my room together. I'm sure this is one of those things that non-teachers never think about - the time we spend just getting ready for school to open. It doesn't seem like it should take that long, but it does. At least this year I didn't have to change rooms, which is a complete pain in the rear. During my first 3 years at The School, I had 4 different classrooms.

However, I still had to pack and box stuff up because they finally tore out the ratty, older than dirt and not much cleaner carpeting that was in the original rooms and replaced it with bright white (with specks of aqua and orange) tile. (My room is in the original part of the 42-year-old building.) The carpeting in our rooms was so bad that some of us were going through rolls of duct tape just trying to hold the seams together, and the local paper featured photos of it on the front page accompanying an article about school maintenance and upgrades. No one could remember how old it was. It could be original to the building for all we knew.

Now I have a floor that's so bright I think I'll need sunglasses. We're talking seriously bright. The last time I saw something this bright I was on a mountain covered with snow with skis on my feet. It certainly makes the room seem cleaner and bigger.

So, I tackled most of the boxes, put all the books back on the bookshelves, moved some furniture around, (I'm messing with my table arrangement), and took Comet and water to my tables so they'll be clean at least at the beginning of the year. Amazing the ick that you can get off a school table.

I still need to go through all my cabinets and my desk and get them organized, but after that I should be good to go. Mrs. Eagle and I are going to meet on Monday and work on some curriculum stuff so we'll get that out of the way.

I did meet four of our new teachers (I think we have 12 or more starting this year) and helped another teacher give them a tour. This always freaks people out because our building is sort of on a hub and spoke design, with 4 different additions added on throughout the years. It is very easy to get lost. The four newbies seem to be fired up and ready to go. Interestingly enough, our entire 8th grade science department is all male, which think is a wonderful thing. We need more male teachers in middle school.

Looks like summer is pretty much over for me.

Carnival Time!

Hey ya'll, it's Carnival Time! Head on over to Mike in Texas and check it out!

The Final Harry Potter Read Until You Drop-A-Thon

I finished my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows last night at 11:06. Loved it, hated it, loved it. There's things I was definitely unhappy with (don't worry, I'm not going to spoil it for you) and things I loved about it. Overall, definitely worth ignoring housework for a few days while I plowed through it.

However, I hate the fact that it's over with. The anticipation of the next chapter in the saga of Harry and his friends was almost as good as finally getting the book in your hands and reading it. Now it's over and I'm kind of left a bit deflated. I honestly loved the world that J. K. Rowling created and truly will miss visiting there every book. Now what do we look forward to?

Sigh.

I'm Baaaaack!

I made it back from summer camp around 1:00 in the morning yesterday. So now I'm back, doing laundry, cleaning house, and generally getting back to normal before I have to worry about going back to school in a few weeks.

Camp was fun. The first week's group of kids seemed to be a bit more mature and seemed to "get it" a bit more, but overall they were a good group of kids. I did have one little guy who had already made a name for himself within the first two hours - this is rare in a camp for gifted kids. He was a terror. He did pretty good in my class until the last two days when he decided he wanted to play in the bathrooms (not a good thing to do at a University) and run in the halls. The last day he didn't want to go outside to fly the kites they'd made that week because he wanted his parents to bring a purchased kite from home. When they didn't, he got MAD. So, after I told him that he was coming with us regardless, he sat and screamed and threw rocks and generally pitched a fit because his "dad ruins everything" and "I don't want to fly a stupid homemade kite." The other kids gave him "what the hell is wrong with you" looks and proceeded to have a blast running around flying their kites and ignoring him. His folks showed up to pick him up and apologized up and down for his behavior, went on about how he has attitude problems, doesn't deal with disappointments well (really, you think?) and so forth and so on. Truth be told, after seeing how his dad got mad and lost patience with him I can see where the anger management issues come from. He was the first kid in eight years of camp that ever pitched a fit in my room, so that's saying something.

My favorite comment from him during the crying and rock throwing episode was, "I don't want to come stand by you because the other kids will think I'm a baby!". Well, hon, they already think that.

Mrs. Cardinal, who I stayed with, and I had a blast. We took her oldest daughter to Dayton, along with one of her teen friends, to see the Harry Potter movie and just loved it. Really dark, but a good film. I'm ready to see it again so perhaps Mrs. Eagle and I will do that before school starts. We did lots of walks with the baby Cardinal (going on 2) and just had a fun time. The baby is adorable, although she's getting into the terrible two's and can have her moments. One thing that staying with the Cardinals and the four kids does is make me appreciate how quiet my own home is. Let's just say the two oldest kids, 15 1/2 and 13, are masters at driving each other crazy and do it at every opportunity.

I did get to see a lot of my old college friends, and despite our 2001 graduations, at least three of them still can't find teaching jobs in Ohio. They just aren't there. People aren't retiring and when they do, they aren't replaced. This community is very family oriented, with large families, and many of these gals just can't bring themselves to leave and move somewhere to get a teaching job (like I did), especially if they have husbands who have decent jobs in the area. I can understand that, and am thankful that we didn't have the family ties and were able to leave like we did. My one friend's daughter ended up getting hired in Dodge City, Kansas, along with her fiance, so many of the best and brightest are leaving the state. It's sad, really.

So now I'm home, sleeping in my own bed, snuggling with my cats and just enjoying being home. Mr. Bluebird is out of town on business so he'll be home late tomorrow - can't wait as I miss him tons when we're apart. My new Harry Potter book arrived yesterday so I'm going to sit and try to get it read as soon as I can although part of me doesn't want the saga to end and I certainly don't want a favorite character to die.

On the down side, I have, for the first time in at least 20 years, had a reaction to some food or something. Woke up in the middle of the night and my upper lip felt swollen and this morning it's huge...so something I ate (perhaps the new flavored decaf coffee I tried for the first time last night?) caused an allergic reaction and I look like I've been in a fight, but without the bruising. It's not painful, just hideous and uncomfortable, so I'm laying low today. Hopefully it will be down by tomorrow as I have a two-day in-service to attend and I'd rather not go looking like this.

Sigh.

Heading to Camp

Tomorrow I head up north to Ohio for summer camp.

This is what I call my "paid vacation"....I get to go back up to where I used to live, hang out with my friends, teach a bit, and get paid. How cool is that?

The camp itself is a ton of fun (I've taught there 8 years now) as it is a day camp for gifted children. The classes are small, and you get time to actually do all that fun, hand's on stuff that I enjoy and the kids love. This year I'm teaching math art, kites, and a new one on pioneers. I always ask to teach the last two weeks because, one, it's the younger kids (going into 3rd and 4th grade) and two, the camp directors often have a lot of leftover school supplies they don't have the space to store every year and I gladly take them off their hands. Believe me, I'm the one teacher at The School who has a nearly unending supply of markers, colored pencils, crayons and glue. I enjoy teaching the younger kids for a few weeks because it's a nice change from what I'm used to, and it also, believe it or not, makes me appreciate my seventh graders a lot more!

I'll be staying, as usual, with one of my very best friends in the World, Mrs. Cardinal, along with her husband and her four kids. We went to school together and got our teaching licenses at the same time and she was one of the few who actually got a teaching job up in Ohio. Believe it or not, we still have classmates who graduated with us in 2001 who are still not in full-time teaching positions. I had to move South to get a job and every day I'm glad I did. Still, I miss my friends, especially Mrs. Cardinal, so it's always nice to get up there to visit.

Mrs. Cardinal has already set up our annual reunion dinner with the group of us that hung out and studied together during college, plus we'll be going to see the new Harry Potter movie when it comes out. That was always one of our traditions when I still lived up there. I'm looking forward to it all, except for the homesickness I always get when I'm away from Mr. Bluebird and The Four Kitties for any length of time.

So, I'm running around making sure the bills are paid, everything I need is packed (don't forget the electric pencil sharpener!) and getting ready to go. I have a zillion things to do but hopefully it will all get done before I have to head out to Mrs. Eagle's daughter's wedding this evening. I plan to leave early tomorrow morning as it's quite a long drive.

Don't know if I'll be blogging much, but I'll try...no guarantees however!

Carnival Time!

It's time for the Carnival of Education, hosted over at NYC Educator's place. And you know what that means? No transfats at this carnival so you can enjoy it all without harming your health!!!

Happy Birthday America!

Today is Independence Day, truly one of my favorite holidays, not because of the food and the fireworks, but because of what it means. As a history junkie, the American Revolution has always been one of my favorite eras to study and reflect upon and it astounds me, still, at the incredible talent we had in Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Abigail Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and many, many more. There are times when I wonder when we'll ever see such people with such character again.

And then Hubby and I ran into Solid Boy and his mother last night at Borders and I realize that the youth of today aren't all shallow, self-centered, videogame junkies.

I had Solid Boy in my second year of teaching, before I started this blog. He was in my homeroom, and this kid had, from the start, character. He was, and still is, extremely popular with his classmates (the girls adore him), and while he could have turned into a raving egomaniac with all the attention he received, he never has. I remember how considerate he was of everyone, even the decidedly unpopular students. If someone had a jammed locker, he was there to help. If someone was getting picked on, he was there to stop it. He was a friend to everyone and that is so rare to see in a seventh grader.

He wasn't the best of students, although he was certainly capable. That, thankfully, has changed, as he informed me last night. He's now a solid A student, is in the AVID program, is playing football, in ROTC, and looking at either West Point, VMI or the Citadel for college. Like his father, he wants to make the military his career, because, as he says, "this country has done so much for me and my family and I feel the need to serve."

Solid Boy is, as he puts it, "Half Korean and Half Hillbilly". His father was a special forces soldier, killed in Afghanistan, and his mother, now an American citizen, was a girl he met in Korea. I got to know his mom really well during football (we always sat together) and I was always impressed at what a great job she did with her two kids and how she held it all together after her husband was killed. The special forces community saw that she had whatever she needed. She had an internal strength that helped.

So last night, when I saw these two again, it made me realize how much I'm glad that we have Americans like them in our world.

Happy Birthday America!

And you go, Solid Boy!

Just some weird random things

Just some random musings and thoughts as I try to get a lot done before I leave for summer camp...

• I've added some new links based on blogs I've recently discovered. Please take a moment and check them out. Some blogs of note include Crazy Aunt Purl, Ms. M's Apples, Bump on the Blog, Ms Teacher, and Teaching in the Inner City. Wonderful writing and wonderful reading for us.

• Why is it that all the appliances in my house are starting to show their age all at the same time? Is there some kind of law that says things can only last 15 years and then they die? Our house is 15 years old (we bought it 4 years ago) and with original appliances. The hot water heater is on its last legs (we're planning on replacing it in the fall) and we had to put a new heating element in it. We both dream of a tankless water heater but there's no way on earth we can afford one. The refrigerator is also leaking and the ice maker quit. We were considering taking advantage of the 20% off Kenmore products sale this week to get a new one, but guess what? Both my Saturn and hubby's van need work. Sigh. Can't budget it all in on one month.

• My husband, bless his brilliant mind and warm heart, is not a handy man. I am the handy one in our household. This is skill I picked up from my father who is never too far from a tool or gadget. This is why I was discovered yesterday under the bathroom sink, working at unclogging a really icky clog. Hubby looks at me and says, "Beauty, brains and she can fix a sink." I'm pretty good at toilets too.

• I have had it up to here with petunias this summer. I usually love the goofy things because they're so easy to grow. However, out of the four plants I've purchased this year, three are succumbing to what I suspect (from my research on line) is a virus. Of course, can I find the receipts from Home Depot so I can get my money back? No. I can't tell you how it annoys me that I'm being defeated by a couple of petunias.

And Update on Mr. Eagle

Since so many of you have been keeping Mr. Eagle in your thoughts and prayers since his accident, I thought I'd give you an update - and it's a good one!

After spending the rest of May and most of June in the severe burn unit, undergoing 5 skin graft surgeries, a bout of pneumonia, and a broken nose (we suspect from trying to remove his glasses which ended up melting in the fire), he is now in a rehabilitation facility. He spent about three weeks pretty much in a drug-induced coma, but is now awake, walking, sitting up, and talking, and starting in on some extensive therapy. It's a very, very slow process - for example, just to be able to get out and walk, both of his legs have to be wrapped from the ankles to the thighs with ace bandages (to reduce swelling), which then have to be removed when he's finished. He is eating solid food, although it's a slow process as even the fingers on his mainly uninjured hand are stiff from inactivity.

He and Mrs. Eagle's daughter is getting married next week and they are hoping that he can get a day pass so he can attend the wedding, although they know it might not happen. There was some talk of postponing the wedding, but Mrs. Eagle and her daughter made the decision not to. For one thing, no one knew when he'd be able to get out and attend, and secondly, he'd probably be pretty irate if they put it off because of him. He's like that. So the wedding will happen, and hopefully he'll be there.

Mrs. Eagle, who basically has lived in the hospital for the past six weeks, is now at home most of the time as the rehab facility does not let family members stay overnight. So she goes down to visit in the afternoons, after his therapy, and comes back in the evenings. With the wedding happening next week, she's got alot on her plate, but her children (there's four, and they're all grown) are a huge help. The Eagles have some great kids.

Thanks to all of you who've kept Mr. Eagle in your thoughts and prayers. He's a fantastic person who's always put other people first, especially kids. We couldn't have come this far in his recovery without your support and prayers.