Holy Cow! Where'd The Time Go?

Yesterday Mrs. Eagle and I were working after school getting our lessons done when we looked at the calendar and realized that Fall Break was in TWO FREAKING WEEKS!

We were stunned.  Honestly, it seems as if we've been on a high speed treadmill since the beginning of school in August, and it hasn't let up yet.  With over 400 seventh graders this year, all the seventh grade teachers are exhausted.  Planning time has been chewed up by meetings, meetings, and more meetings, and if we don't have a meeting, we're doing interventions for kids who aren't doing well in school.

For those of us teaching science and math, STEM has been a real kick in the butt.  Don't get me wrong, I think the idea behind STEM is great and actually a better way to teach science and math, but it's a heck of a lot of work.  Basically everything we used to do, we're tweaking and changing.  Throw in the mandatory STEM challenges, and you have a lot of time being spent just prepping for units and grading projects.  And with about 30 more kids than normal, it just takes a lot more time.

So, my house hasn't been really cleaned since school started.  Truly.  And I'm a bit of a neat freak in some respects, so this is making me slightly crazy.  Knitting?  Only managing to get that out for knitting club and when I'm waiting for an allergy shot.  Walking/running?  Trying, trying, trying, to get a walk or a run in about 3 times a week and that's a real challenge.  The ankle I messed up in June is better, not 100%, but I'm thinking it never will be 100%.    And of course, just getting enough sleep isn't happening.

So my plans for Fall Break?  Sleep, knit, clean house, sleep.

And They Think I'll Never Call

It just cracks me up that my students honestly don't think I'll be calling their parents when they're missing, say, a 100 point writing prompt that we worked on in class for four days.

I graded 3rd period's Pet Rock Projects today (combining an assessment to see if they can explain rocks to me with one of our mandatory writing assignments for their portfolio).  We worked on this in class for four days.  That's FOUR.  So when I had eight kids who hadn't bothered to turn anything in, and it was due Friday, I got on the phone.

One dad was incredulous.

"He worked on this in class?"

"Yes," I replied.

"For four days?"

"Yes, from last Tuesday and it was due Friday."

"And you didn't get it turned in?"

"Nope, nothing as of this afternoon."

"That's ridiculous.  There's no reason he shouldn't have turned it in."

"Oh, I agree," I said.

"You'll have it tomorrow."

That one was fun.  However, it wasn't as fun as when I called one of my darlings, who answered the phone and politely asked who should he say was calling, and about choked when he found out it was me.  Mom got on the phone and I informed her of the missing assignment.

"Young man, where on earth is this assignment that you didn't turn in?" she asked.  Then a pause.  "He's holding up his finger asking me to wait a minute."....pause...."He's digging in his backpack."....pause...."He has it and he's turning it in tomorrow and if he doesn't You Call Me and we'll get things fixed."

I wish all my parents were this awesome.

The School of Misfit Toys

Last week Mrs. Eagle and I had our first fundraiser for our Knitting (and now Crochet) Club.  We needed some money to buy more yarn and needles, as well as crochet hooks for our new crocheters.  (One of our fabulous special ed teachers volunteered to teach them how to crochet, bless her, since neither one of us knows how.)

In any case, we were having a hat day which is The Easiest Fundraiser Ever because basically the kids give you a dollar (or in some cases, handfuls of coins) and you give them a sticker to wear on their hat which says that yes, they can wear a hat all day.  It's awesome.  Twenty minutes of work usually nets around $150 which is about all the money we'll need all year.  All we have to do is provide a bunch of stickers, a box to put the money in, and then set up a desk right outside guidance that All The Kids have to funnel through and that's it.

I love simple fundraisers.

In any case, The Enforcer was there right before the kids came in and we got to talking about some of the rather, well, unique, children we have this year.  It's weird, but it's like we have had a huge influx of kids with some serious issues with behavior and emotions and goodness knows what else.  A lot of these kids are coming from out of the area - many from out of state - and that was another thing we noticed.

The Enforcer, who has worked at a number of buildings in our town, commented that he thought it was as if word had got out that we do our best to help these types of kids.  "It's like we're the school of misfit toys," he said.  "We're getting all the kids the other schools don't want."

Are we ever.

Just Not Enough of Me to Go Around

Ah, dear reader, I really had much better intentions.

I truly was going to post at least several times a week.  I really was.  But, unfortunately, the beginning of the year reality has pretty much changed that.

With 151 students, a significant increase over previous years, I'm spending a lot more time grading papers.  Consider that it's like having an additional complete class of kids, it's taking way more time than it has in the past.

As for planning...what planning?  We've had this mandatory meeting and that mandatory meeting, and mandatory STEM meetings every Tuesday, and this IEP meeting, and that IEP meeting, and that means that we are doing work after school (or at the ungodly hour of 5:00 am) because that's the only time we have free.

And so, to be honest, I'm just beat.  At school at 6:30, home by 5:00, run or walk after I get home, cook supper, eat, clean up, grade papers, fall into bed by, we hope, 9:30...

I'm truly going to try to be better, I truly am...you're just going to have to be patient.

Piggies Beware!

Some of these new seventh graders are starting to show their true colors lately, and truth be told, some of them are pretty amusing kids.

For example, the second or third day of school the kids at the table in front of my teacher station were having a conversation about their favorite foods before the bell rang.  One of the girls, a thin, pretty little thing mentioned that her absolute favorite food in the world was pork chops.  Now, I've heard kids rhapsodize about pizza, and chocolate, and ice cream, and candy, but never pork chops.  And she doesn't just love pork chops...she LOVES pork chops. Absolutely adores them.  Would probably be happy if she ate them for every single meal, every single day.

Now, I wouldn't have thought much of it, but a few days later the topic of pork chops comes up again and she begins telling the kids at the table about the great dinner she had the other night with her momma's pork chops.  They are all seriously listening to her, which is funny in and of itself.

Okay, this is getting amusing now.  And it wouldn't be nearly so funny but she's not a big kid.  She doesn't look like she could manage one pork chop, let alone two, at a meal, but apparently she polishes them off quite handily.

Yesterday, she asked me how my weekend was after she walked into class.  (This kid, by the way, has apparently adopted me and considers me her school momma, and is checking in every morning to make sure I'm here and it's not a sub.  I'm not sure why this is, but every morning I get a bearhug from her - she's strong for such a tiny kid - and off she goes.)

"I had a pretty good weekend," I tell her.

"Did you have pork chops?" she asks.  Really.  I thought I was going to crack up laughing right then and there.

"No, but I think I'll have to have some this week," I told her.

So last night, I tell Mr. Bluebird this story about my Pork Chop Girl and he thought it was great.  However, he did have something to add.  "You need to ask her how her momma cooks her pork chops.  If they are that awesome, I want the recipe."

So I did.  I pulled her aside this afternoon, and asked her how her momma made her pork chops.

"Well, I honestly don't know," she said.  "Momma gets mad at me for wanting to eat them out of the pan and not waiting to sit at the table so I stay in my room until supper is ready."

Okay, by this point, I'm picturing this girl standing by the stove with a fork in hand reading to spear those chops from the pan into her mouth.  In one bite.

"Well, Mr. Bluebird would really like to know how your momma cooks them, so can you bring me her recipe tomorrow?" I asked.

"Okay," she said, "I'll ask her.  But you know, you're making me hungry."

We'd finished lunch only and hour earlier.

So, we'll see if she shows up with a recipe tomorrow.  Truth be told, I'm intrigued.  Maybe we'll do pork chops this weekend.

Really? A Week Already?

I'm not even remotely surprised that I have not posted this week.  I'm actually wondering just where the week went.  To say it flew by was putting it mildly.

The first full week of school is always like that but this year, in between STEM and the fact that we're bursting at the seams with kids, seems to make it a bit more chaotic.  It's one thing to learn 22 names for a class.  It's quite another to learn 34.  Now multiply that by five class periods and you get a clue how frazzled we all are this year.

Our numbers aren't going down.  The kids are showing up, very few are withdrawing and heading elsewhere and even more new kids are showing up.  If it keeps up like this we'll probably get another teacher or two, but where they'll put them is anybody's guess.  The PE classes are already so large that the gym can't hold all the kids so some of the kids are walking across the parking lot to the city-owned community center to use the gym there.  The electives teachers - music, band, art, PE, and so on - have classes inching up towards 40 in size. Seventh grade doesn't fit in the lunch room so a few groups of kids are eating in what we call the Large Group Instruction classroom right down the hall from the cafeteria.  The Head Janitor put in a request with downtown to provide us with 80 student desks from the warehouse because we'd ran out.

All of which makes me wonder...what were the people that got paid the big bucks thinking when they redrew the zoning maps and said we'd be down - way, way, way down - in enrollment this year?  Last year's sixth grade was big, and all you had to do was drive by our feeder elementaries and see all the portable classrooms they had to realize that there was a population bubble heading our way. I'm wondering if these people even got into the neighborhoods.

So the attendance secretary from the middle school that we rezoned with (we took, supposedly 85 of their kids, but the real number is over 100) is having a freak out because they may lose teachers because their numbers dropped and our attendance secretary is telling her to send them our way because we're about 200 over predictions.  (Some of us have suggested we just send the kids back to their old school, but that would really cause some community melt-downs.)

It's nuts.

The Honeymoon

That first day or so of school is sort of a honeymoon period where the kids, for the most part, act pretty well until they figure things out.  After that, it's anyone's guess how it will go.

The first full day went off pretty well.  One of the downsides was that PowerSchool was off line for repairs so we had to use a back up to get kids copies of their schedules because - surprise! - half of them had left them at home.  Yet, for the most part, it went fine.

For the first three days we have a two hour block in the morning where we do "getting the year started" stuff.  So, you get to keep your homeroom, and get to know them pretty well, for quite a bit of time during these days.  Part of that time is used to go over our SWPBS program (School Wide Positive Behavior Support) which isn't too bad because by now most of the kids know the drill and those that are new quickly get filled in my the old-timers.  It's also nice because we're given lessons that we can use to help them re-lean the program.  All in all, pretty easy.

The rest of the time is used to issue text books and do the "boy/girl" talk.  Friday was the seventh graders day for the "boy/girl" talk.

Actually it's a talk about what you can and can't do at The School, but we separate the boys and girls because there's some conversation in there about sexual harassment and dress code that wouldn't go over too well if the opposite sex was in the room.  So, I went with the boys to the theater, where The Enforcer was doing the presentation.  It includes things like bullying, lunch room expectations, write-ups, sagging, etc. and of course, cell phones.  The school board has a policy that the kids can have their phones but they must be off (not just silent) and away.  (Yeah, right).  This is one of the areas where the administrators have no leeway in consequences for being caught with a cell phone - the first offense is two days in ISS.

So any guess on what happened with cell phones in seventh grade on Friday?

First, Mr. Math managed to catch a kid with a cell phone out, googling away, right after The Enforcer finished his presentation (that included the whole "off and put away" message.)  We didn't even leave the room and he had his first cell phone violation of the year!  The second violation was a seventh grade girl later in the day who had her's out during a class.

You have to wonder...the grade level that had the talk about no cell phones was the grade level that got busted for the first two cell phone violations.

Makes you wonder.

And We're Off!

The first day is over and done with.  And here's the amazing part.

The computers worked.

PowerSchool worked.

The phones worked.

The kids were well-behaved.

They all got on the right bus and went home.

And if you don't work in a school, you don't know how amazing this is.  It went so well, so very well, that some of us were wondering if we'd entered some alternate universe or something.  Even the Goddesses in Guidance were freaking out because no one was there freaking out.

We have had years where the network went down, the phones went down, kids got on the wrong bus, there was no way to print schedules, and any number of minor crises.

But this year...smooth as silk. Kind of makes you nervous.

Enrollment is another story.  We have to count kids who don't show up for about 20 days before we officially drop them off our roll.  We figure if they haven't showed up by then, they probably weren't going to.  Other kids we can drop off because we get requests for records from another school, or the parents actually take the time to notify us.  So, we usually figure that out of every class on the first day we'll have a chunk of kids who aren't going to be here this year because they've moved.  Some years it's been as much as a third of my class.  The past few years, it's been a lot smaller.

Yesterday, out of 30 kids, 27 were there.  And most of us had this experience, so it appears that we have a lot of kids who aren't dropping off our enrollment but who are actually showing up.  And our numbers are a lot higher than forecast, so that's going to be a challenge.  Seventh grade has officially hit 396 last I heard, which is a lot bigger than any grade we've ever had before.  There were so many seventh graders that we ran out of seats for them in the theater on Wednesday morning (where they go to find out what homeroom they are in.)  We have lunch for the first time tomorrow and there are some concerns that we may not have enough room for them in the cafeteria.  It will be interesting to say the least.

As for my homeroom...seems like a fairly decent bunch of kids but we're still in the honeymoon phase.  They have big shoes to fill because last year's kids were absolutely the best homeroom I've ever had.  But they have potential.

And then there's poor Mrs. Eagle and her homeroom...21 boys and 3 girls.  She's considering seeing if she could trade those poor little girls for three more boys and just do an all-boy homeroom.  That might be interesting.

Regardless, it's seventh grade, it's bound to be, at least, entertaining.

Tomorrow - first full day.  Wish me luck!

On Your Marks, Get Set, Go!

Tomorrow will be the first day of school we have with the kids.

I've actually been back in my room, on and off, for about two weeks now, getting it set up, going through files on my homeroom, in-service on STEM, and so on.  We actually didn't have to report until yesterday, but I already feel like I've been there for a while.  It really does get easier after you've done it about ten times.

The big news is enrollment.  Remember the big sixth grade class we had last year?  Well, they've rolled into seventh grade.  And, as the Principal put it, it seems as if every seventh grader in town wants to enroll at the school.  Which means that as of this afternoon, we have 400 seventh graders.  So not only did the sixth grade roll up, they brought along a lot more kids with them.

Where we are going to put them all will be interesting.

My classes are all in the low 30's, which is tolerable.  Barely.  Depending on behavior.

But we'll see how many don't show because they've moved and didn't bother to let anyone know.  Could be a bunch, or it could be few.

Wish me luck!

At Last...Rain!

Yeah!  After four weeks we finally got some rain, 1.75" to date.  I can't believe the difference it already made in my yard.

The first storm rolled in on Sunday night.  We had a good two hours of thunder and lightning before it finally let loose and rained.  It had been so long since we'd had a gusher like this that we went out on the front porch to watch it rain - and noticed nearly every neighbor on the street was doing the same thing.

Let's hope this continues.  Not only for the farmers, but for Hubby.  It's killing him that we're under a burn ban and he can't use his grill (he refuses to get a gas one.)

Toasty, Toast, Nice and Roasty!

If the local news station is correct, we're heading into day ten of temperatures at 100 or above.

The good news is that it isn't humid.  The bad news is that it's not raining, at least on my little piece of heaven.  We've had pop up thunderstorms for the past few days, which have dropped some rain, but not in my neighborhood.  We had a sprinkle yesterday, but it didn't even make the rain gauge damp.  Some parts of town have had awful winds and damage from fallen trees and power lines (and no power), but I've been lucky.

This, however, is my lawn:

My friend mentioned that her lawn is now the same color as the siding of her house (her house is brown).  Considering that August is usually the hottest and driest month, and we're only in the beginning of July, I hate to imagine what it may look like by then.

Toasty?

We are here, in my Beloved South, and in particular, in The Volunteer State, suffering through some rather astonishing heat the past few days.  So just how hot is it?

Check out this link from one of the Nashville news stations about a mailbox - yes, a mailbox - that melted in the heat yesterday.

Our average temperatures for this time of year are, oh, 88-89 degrees.  It hit 109 in Nashville yesterday, and here in My Town, there were some reports of 111.  Really.

Hubby and I attended a birthday party for a delightful little two-year-old (granddaughter and daughter of some of our best friends, people we celebrate holidays with) yesterday.  The party was a cook out - at 2:00 pm, easily the hottest part of the day.  Truth be told, it wasn't too bad.  Lots of big umbrellas, one of those temporary canvas canopy things over the little kids' pool, fans, and misters.  As long as you were in the shade, with a cold beverage, and a mister, it was bearable.  The little ones didn't seem to mind as long as they were able to play in the pool.

The birthday cake, however, melted.  Even in the house.  But it still tasted wonderful.

We are also suffering through a drought.  We haven't had rain for several weeks now, the corn in the fields is starting to twist and suffer, the soybeans are limping along, and my lawn looks like it's been scorched.  The county I live in has declared a burn ban - no fireworks, no grills, no open fires, nothing, until further notice.  I'm actually good with this (although the no grill thing has Hubby in a snit), because all it takes is one moron with a firework to set our neighborhood on fire as dry as everyone's lawn is.

We are now on mandatory water restrictions.  I've never watered my lawn - it's just too big and I'm too cheap and lazy - but I do water my flowers and vegetables.  Hubby and I are doing most of our watering at night, and I'm sure the neighbors would be amused watching us water by flashlight if they weren't doing the same thing themselves!  Since I grew up in Southern California where there seems to be a perpetual water shortage, conserving water is something I do out of habit anyway, so the water restrictions at this point aren't an inconvenience for me at all.  I am a bit concerned about some of my trees as they're starting to lose leaves, and my apple tree has a huge crop of apples on it that I don't want to dry up, so I am watering those.

We've even had some brush fires in the area - but nothing like my home state of Colorado.  That is tragic beyond words.

About the only good thing in all of this is that our usual summer humidity is, well, gone.  Today, we only have 29% humidity which makes it feel a lot like out West.  Usually our humidity is up in the 80% and you feel like you're getting smacked by a wet wash cloth when you walk outside.  Granted as soon as we get rain, the humidity will most likely come roaring back, but in the meantime, it's really, really arid.

I'll have to remember this the next time we have a snow day.

Hobble, Hobble, Hobble

So, it's been an interesting couple of weeks.

First, right after school was out, I promptly went with Mr. Math to a nine-day in service on STEM at the local University.  It was, truth be told, better than most and I'm glad I went.  I didn't get much else accomplished during those two weeks however.  (Gardening?  Weeding?  Cleaning my house?  Nope...)

Then as soon as that was done, Hubby and I headed to Virginia to do some battlefield stomping and had a mini vacation - we did touristy things in the morning and he talked to Civil War groups in the evening.  We went to the new Museum of the Confederacy Museum at Appomattox, then on to Fredricksburg, Mannassas, and the Seven Days Battles around Richmond.  Malvern Hill is a gem.  I got my National Park Passport Book stamped quite a few times and saw some Civil War sites I hadn't seen before.

One of the highlights of our trip was a visit to the Marine Corps Museum at Quantico.  Go.  Whatever you do, just go.  Plan on at least 4 hours, 6 if you can.  It is stunning.  I've been to a lot - and I mean A LOT - of museums in my day (that's what we do - other folks go to theme parks, we go to museums) and this has got to be the BEST museum I've ever been to.  Period.

On the way home, we stopped at Daddy Bird's (just in time for him to get his #1 Dad Cubs t-shirt for Father's Day).  The only down side was I managed to slip somehow and fell off his front step, skinning my left knee and rolling my right ankle.  I did get to my doctor and had it x-rayed - nothing is broken, it's just a bad, bad sprain.  So it's ice, some anti-inflammatory meds, and an ankle wrap.  It hurts but I'm walking better.  The thing that aggravates me the most is I've been actually running (okay, it's more like plodding, but for me, it's running) since this spring with the goal of running a 5K during the year I turn 50.  Now that's obviously going to be on the backburner until this ankle heals and I can start training again.  And I was making huge progress!

Now Momma Bird is here from California so we're running here and there and having some fun.  The weather is better than expected and we're able to spend some time outside.  It's nice having her here.

But I still feel like actually haven't had much of a chance to just chill yet this summer.

The Myth of Summers Off

For those of you in the general public who believe that teachers "get three months off every summer!" I have this to say to you.

PHOOEY!

I have had, counting Memorial Day, three days "off" this summer (I'm not counting weekends).  Tomorrow starts week two of the two week intensive STEM training at the local University.  Now mind you, it's been worth it, but gosh, I haven't been able to catch up on my sleep yet.  I usually end up sleeping about the first week trying to catch up from all the sleep deprivation I've suffered over the past year.

I am tired.

Still.

The Class that Rocked

I usually make a point of going to graduation at the high school my kids end up going to, but this year, I HAD to go to graduation.  No way was I going to miss this.  Because this, dear friends, was the group of kids that we all fell in love with.  This was the Class that Rocked.

I don't care if you talk to their elementary teachers, their middle school teachers, or their high school teachers, you'll get the same response - "This was the best class I've had in years."  They were.  I think in nine years at The School, this class, easily, was my favorite.  In fact, if I look at the kids who've kept in touch with me through high school (and there are quite a few now that I actually sit down and count), most of them are from this class.  My house and cat sitter, after all, is in this class!

Oh sure they had their pests and troublemakers and thugs and goobers who wouldn't work (and the Third Period Class From the Very Depths of Hell Itself), but overall, they were a great group of kids.  They got along.  They liked each other.  They actually had some ambition.   And they were nice.  And a lot of fun.

Unlike previous years where we all had to find our own seats in the rafters of the University Gym where all the graduations are held, The Principal called Mr. High School Principal and asked if he could arrange for us to sit with the faculty on the floor.  No problem.  When Mrs. Cardinal (8th grade Social Studies) and I showed up on Saturday for the ceremony, Mr. High School Principal was so enthusiastic to see us, it was almost embarrassing.  All in all about six of us went to graduation although a few others were in the rafters with family members because they had kids of their own graduating.  It was fun being close to the action.

This class was impressive, earning over $2 million in scholarships.  Many are going into the military.  A number of mine are going into the sciences - at least two into nursing and one into wildlife biology.  I ran into one of mine and asked if he remembered telling me he was going to get a Nobel Prize for science one day.  He did, he said, and he was still planning on the Nobel.  He got a huge scholarship and is heading to Emory.

I love these kids.

People rarely tell teachers thanks.  But when we see those kids walk across that stage, especially the ones who barely scraped through 7th grade, it is it's own reward.

Bless them all.

And...They're Off!

Today was the last half day of school for the kids.  (We report tomorrow, then we're free for the summer, in-service season).

In nine years at The School, this has been, without a doubt, the best homeroom I've ever had.  They'll be a tough act to follow.  So, while part of me is glad it's summer, in-service season, another part of me was a bit sad to see my homeroom kids leave.

It's rare you get a bunch of kids who are, for the most part, nice, eager to please, and able to get along with each other.  I could leave the room to run an errand to the front office or guidance, and they'd behave perfectly, the entire time I was gone.  They were just that good.  (I always had someone keep on eye on them, just in case, but never was there an issue.)  I had other homerooms where it was risky to do hall duty.

I am really, really going to miss those kids.

Entering the Temperate Zone

The past few days the temperature in my room plummeted to a whopping 59 degrees.  It was cold.  I was dealing with it better than the kids because, after all, I knit and I have lots of cardigans to wear when it gets cold.  That is what they're for.  The kids, however, seeing as it is almost summer are wearing shorts, sandals, and t-shirts and are absolutely freezing (and whining) in my room.

So for the past two days I've had the kids come to class, we take attendance, and then we walk down to one of our large group instruction rooms (a room you can pull two classes in at once which is awesome) and we run class there.  The added benefit of this, aside from the lack of whining, is the threat that if they don't behave, we'll go back to my room and freeze to death.

They behaved.  For the most part.

Today John, the repair guy (yes, I know his name now) was back and he replaced the brand new sensor that he put in last week.  For some reason, this sensor was apparently defective from the factory, so he put in another one.  Within minutes the temperate started to climb.  He was finishing up when I had my last class of the day return all our computers and probes we'd used for our lab and they noticed right off.  I doubt that John ever received so much enthusiastic thanks from a bunch of kids before.

Let's hope it's a nice, normal 72 degrees tomorrow morning.

Give Them A Taste of Power

Ah.  Field Day.

For those of you, like me, that didn't have field days when you were a kid they are a day, usually towards the end of school, where the kids get to go outside and do events such as kickball, and tug of war, relay races and the like.  Ours includes a volleyball tournament and speed skating (skating across the gym floor on dust mops) in the gym while we wait for the grass to dry out in the morning, and then a pretty big variety of events outside for the rest of the day.  The PE Department really knocks themselves out with this every year.  The kids usually get a free piece of pizza and a bottle of water, courtesy of the PTO, and then they can spend money and buy snow cones, pixie sticks, more drinks, and other snacks. Beats sitting in a classroom no matter how you slice it.

The kids talk about field day all spring so you think it would be a piece of cake to get enough teams together so we could have a half-way decent competition.

Wrong.

These kids all want to sign up for volleyball, tug of war, and kickball and that's it.  Most of them won't even sign up for those three and simply want to spend the whole time just being outside doing nothing (can't say that I blame them, truth be told).  However, the whole point of field day is to compete against the other 7th grade team (it was more fun when we had three teams, rather than just two), to see who can claim bragging rights as Field Day Champions!  Every year it seems that we try to come up with a different plan in the hopes of generating more sign ups, and every year it's a battle.  It's also a battle, once we're outside, to try to round up kids who signed up for an event and then can't be found.  I absolutely detest trying to find and round up the kids.  I'm not alone.  Most of us can't stand field day for that very reason.

So this year Mrs. Eagle (who's the other 7th grade team leader) and I posted the event lists, with the spaces to sign up in our team hallways and told the kids to sign up.  What ensued was another nightmare.  Kids were crossing out each other's names (nice, aren't they), whiting out other kids' names, not signing up for some events, and then too many signing up for others.

Sigh.

On Monday afternoon Mrs. Eagle and I took the lists down and tried to come up with the team lists for each event.  We were comparing lists and moaning about the fact that the kids weren't signing up and wondering whether or not we could cancel the whole thing due to lack of interest (we actually had the PE coaches tell the kids that it was a possibility which did spur a few more sign ups), when I had an epiphany.

"I don't know about you, but I'm done trying to wrangle these kids into participating," I said.  "And I'm done, trying to round kids up for events once we're out there."

"Agreed," said Mrs. Eagle.

"So what do you think about turning it over to the kids?  Pick a team captain for each team, give them the list, and tell them that they have to fill out the rest of the team and it's their responsibility to get the kids there for the events."

"It's their field day," she said.  "Why not put them a little bit more in charge?"

So that's what we did.  We went through the lists for the various events, selected kids we could trust and who could get the job done, made them captains, and turned it over to them.  I sent out an email to all my teachers requesting to see those kids at the beginning of first period to tell them what was up.  I sat them down, gave them each a copy of their team, told them it was their responsibility to fill up their roster and to get their teammates there for the event.  I told them if they didn't have enough people to field a team, they were encouraged to grab spectators and draft them.

And off they went.

By the end of the day, they'd filled their rosters.  By Wednesday, which was field day, some of my captains reported a waiting list for kids who wanted to be on the teams.  And this for events that no one signed up for!

Field Day was Wednesday.  The weather was PERFECT.  Seriously.  The absolute best weather for a Field Day - ever.  (Some of you may remember the year we had the tornado warning and spent Field Day in a hallway.)  It wasn't too hot.  It wasn't humid.  It wasn't too cold.  It was sunny with fluffy white clouds and it was just perfect.    None of the teachers had to spend a second trying to round up kids for events.  The kids  did it themselves.  We actually got to enjoy the events as spectators for the first time!  Oh, granted, we had a couple of knuckleheads who got into trouble.  (Nothing like Mrs. Angora who confiscated a record nine cell phones during the 8th grade field day, however.)  But all in all, it was just a lot less stressful, and a lot more fun than any we've ever had in the past.

Oh my gosh, why oh why didn't we think of this before?

How About Some Ice Cubes Now?

So remember how my temperature in my room was just amazingly hot?

Well, as luck would have it, the repair guy showed up on Tuesday morning and figured out that somehow the sensor in my room disappeared (yeah, I'd like to know how that happened myself since I didn't even know there was a sensor in my room, let alone where it was or what it looked like).  What this means was that the temperature defaulted to heat.  And when he tested the temperature it was 86.5 degrees.  Fahrenheit.

Of course.

Well, he put in a new sensor, the temperature slowly started to drop and lo and behold we got down to just about normal again.

Except now it's 62 degrees and blasting cold air to the point that it almost sounds like an airplane engine going off below the floor.

So on Monday the kids were whining about the heat and today they had their hoodies up on their heads, arms tucked inside their shirts and were sitting there chattering and shivering.

If it's not one thing it's another.

I did another work order so hopefully they can get it back to a nice 72 degrees which is what it's been pretty much all year.

Wanna Roast a Turkey?

My classroom is in the original part of the building (built in 1966 if that gives you any idea as to the age).  What this means is that I have absolutely no control over the temperature of my classroom.  This just drives my kids nuts because they are usually complaining about how cold it is, and are dismayed when I simply tell them to put on a sweater.  I then explain that we are at the mercy of the air, usually cold, that comes up out of the vents in the floor.  On days when it's particularly cold in my room (and this can be in the winter when the heat is on), the kids will pile their books on the air vents in the hopes to keep it a bit warmer.

Until Friday.

On Friday when I got to my room I noticed it was unusually warm.  Really unusually warm.  I did an email to The Enforcer and the Head Custodian and then pretty much melted through the day.  It was brutally hot outside so I more or less attributed it to that.  The kids were grumpy, and I was grumpy, but hey, we only have about ten days left so EVERYONE is grumpy.

This morning, however, was a different story.

I noticed when I went to open my door that it felt, well, warm.  Warm like the outside of an oven door feels.  This was not good.

And then I opened the door.

And was nearly blasted off my feet by the hot air that blew out.  It was, really, amazing how hot it was.  It truly felt like it does when you open an oven door.  The air was freezing cold in the hall way, but my room felt, literally, like an oven.  The Bantam Rooster popped his head in and immediately stepped back.

"What's wrong with your room?" he asked.  "It's like an oven in here."

"Wish I knew," I told him.  "But for some reason the air conditioner is putting out hot air, in my room only."

The Head Custodian showed up and took a step back when he stepped into the room.  "Wow, this is the worst I've seen in a long time," he said.  We checked both rooms on either side of me and they were nice and cool.  The hallway was cool.  My room, on the other hand, was perfect for roasting a turkey.  Or a teacher.

My homeroom kids walked in an immediately started complaining.  I told them we'd put in a work order, they'd have to just be patient, and we'd deal with it.  I actually decided if I needed to, I could put the kids on the floor in the hallway and they could work on their projects (Element Superhero Comics) and if they acted up, I'd put them back in the room.  However, as luck would have it, we had 8th grade field day today so our kids didn't get their first and second period electives - the elective teachers were running field day.  So, we had reserved the theater and decided to show a movie for the entire 7th grade so they could still have some fun time today, and we could share the duties of watching them and getting some planning.  What that meant was that my room cooled off a bit with the door open for about two hours and by the time 3rd rolled around it was tolerable.  Not great, but bearable.

We made it through today without too much whining about the heat.  I also told my janitor to leave the door open so the heat didn't build up overnight.  Hopefully that will help.  In the meantime I hope someone figures out what's wrong.  With only 10 1/2 days left, I really don't want to spend them melting.

Rasping Along

There are times that things just work out PERFECT.

For example, my father visited last week, during the Very Big Deal Government Mandated Tests, and while he was here he had a bit of a relapse on the cold he had the week before.

My sore throat didn't start until the afternoon after our last test was done.  Seriously.  It is like it waited until all that garbage was over with and now it's here.  And lucky me, all my plans are done, all grades entered, I didn't bring home a single piece of school work to do (first time in MONTHS).  So, I'm going to sit here, be lazy, nap, drink lots of tea with lemon and honey and hope this doesn't get too bad.

This Time It Counts

The Volunteer State has put into action a number of education reforms over the past few years, some good, some bad, and some we're still trying to figure out.

This year, for the first time ever, the Very Big Deal Government Mandated Tests actually Count For a Grade.

Let me say that again in case you just bashed your head onto the keyboard in shock - This Year For The First Time Ever, The Very Big Deal Government Mandated Tests Actually Count for a Grade.

We're not exactly sure how this is all going to play out.  This year the score counts as 15% of the spring semester grade.  Our last test is Friday, and the last day of school is May 22, so that's not a lot of time for the tests to get processed and some scores sent back to us.  The Principal said to "be prepared for anything."  Our traditional promotion and retention meetings are pretty much out the window until the scores come because it probably will make the difference in passing and failing for some kids.  We've been asked to sort of have a list of kids "on the border" to keep an eye on should they either pass or fail once the scores have entered.

Now, we have been telling the kids this (and the parents) over and over and over all year.  No more just sitting there and bubbling in Christmas Tree designs on your form.  It counts.  No more finishing in ten minutes.  It counts.  No more napping during the test.  Because, you see, It Counts.

Amazingly enough, I still received a few parent emails from parents who either don't read the paper, listen to the news, pay attention to The School Newsletter, don't read my emails, or basically have their heads in the sand so deep that it just now dawned on them that their darling may not make it this year due to The Test.  These are, for the most part, parents I've been poking and prodding and cajoling and calling and basically trying to get them to PARENT FOR GOODNESS SAKE! but they just couldn't seem to get it together enough to make a parent meeting, sign an agenda, or return a phone call.

Really.  And now, they're worried?  They should have been worried when I made that first phone call last fall.

It. Is. Here.

We start the Very Big Deal Government Mandated Testing Extravaganza tomorrow.

Oh.  Yay.

Mind Your Manners!

At The School we've always had an open door policy when it comes to parents.  If they want to come sit in class and watch their cherub, we're cool with that.  In fact, we often welcome the visit even though the cherub in question often behaves differently when there's a parent in the room.  (My favorite is when they hide out in Guidance and watch their kid's behavior through the glass windows.  It's amazing what these kids will do when they don't think a grown up is watching.)  I've had a number of parents through the years, and even The Dude From the Hood, but the numbers aren't high - maybe a couple a year at most.

In any case, we got a letter in our box the other day outlining a new "Parent Visitation Policy" that parents had to read and sign before they could go sit in a classroom.  In a nutshell it says that they are not allowed to have a cell phone out and text or make calls while they are in their child's classroom and they are in no way allowed to interrupt or interfere with instruction.

My first thought, when I read this, was "Wow, someone must have been doing just this or The Principal wouldn't have come up with this in the first place."

And that just blew my mind.  The parents I've had in my classroom, including the Dude from The Hood, were awesome.  They sat in a seat I'd pointed out for them and were quiet the whole time.  I found out later that day that apparently I was lucky.  Most of our parents, lately, haven't been so quiet.

Mr. Math informed me about one parent he had who texted the whole time she was in his room (which, of course, got the kids more interested in the fact that she had a cell phone out and was using it than what was going on in math class).   Another teacher told me about a parent who would loudly stage whisper to her kid the entire time, to the point that she had to pointedly ask her to be quiet (it didn't work).  And that was just the tip of the iceberg, apparently.

It's sad, really, that this policy has to be put in place.  It just goes to show that manners, even in My Beloved South, are going the way of the dinosaur.  I mean, really?  Texting while you're supposed to be watching your kid?  What kind of message does that send.  (Let me make it easy for you - it means that whatever you're texting about is more important than your kid - and they figure this out really quick.)  Interrupting class because you can't be quiet?  (The apple doesn't fall far, apparently.)

Again, I think a class on manners would be a wonderful thing for kids in elementary and middle school.  And sadly, we need one for the parents as well.

Give Me a Little Space Here...

My sixth period has a total of 31 kids.  Now, that may not seem all that much to some of you, but if you saw how big - rather, how little - my room is, you can see that there may be a bit of a space issue.  I have seven round tables of four, which gives us 28 seats, plus some typical student desks ("Isolation Island"), so I can, barely, cram 33 in there.  That includes every single seat in the room, including one at the PowerSchool computer, occupied. And at that, the kids are practically on top of each other and there's not a whole lot of elbow room or space between seats. (And to make it more fun, there are six special ed kids, two gifted, one with some odd emotional issues, and a lot of just low achievers.  It's a real trip.)

People often walk into my room and go "How on earth do you fit 31 kids in here?"

I'm wondering that myself.

However, what's really odd about this class of 31 is that there are three boys who have decided that they need to Sit As Close To The Teacher As Possible.  This means that there are two boys sitting at my actual desk (one in my chair, another on a stool, they rotate every day), and another sitting on another stool by my computer.

I'm not sure what prompted this or brought it on.  Two of them Are Pains In the Neck (usually) who probably should be close to the teacher anyway.  The other just likes to be up there for some reason.  A few months ago, Bouncy Boy (a little thing wound up like a top with ADHD like you wouldn't believe) asked if he could sit at my desk.  I was at the point where I was willing to try ANYTHING to get him quiet, and to focus, and to get him away from some other low-achievers in the room, so I said that he could as long as he behaved.

He behaved. He did his work.  He handed me things I needed for instruction.  He was an angel.  I don't know if sitting up there has anything to do with it, but he's doing much better now.

Another one decided that he really, really wanted to help me run the computer when I do Brainpop and PowerPoints, and he really, really wanted to sit on my teacher stool (kind of like a barstool, a bit taller than a chair).  Well, it worked for Bouncy Boy so I gave it a try.  Same results.  He's doing better.

And then the third one, who's usually a pretty good kid wanted to sit on the stool by Bouncy Boy.  I was a little hesitant at first, but I said they could as long as they behaved, and they would have to switch back and forth and share the chair and stool, which they've done.  He's doing better now.

So, I'm a bit out of my comfort zone here as I've got one kid on one side of me, and two on the other.  I also tend to walk around the room a lot so now I'm having to squeeze by them every time I move from my document reader out to circulate around the classroom (which they don't seem to mind, we've got a routine down now.)   It must look incredibly odd to see these three kids working at my desk and teacher station, but honestly, as long as I get results out of them, I'm happy.

What has me wondering...why is it so important for these three to be so close to the teacher?  Are they that starved for attention and affection at home that this is the only way they get any?  I know some of them have rather, shall we say, testy relationships with their parents.  (Honestly, find me a parent of a seventh grade boy who isn't frustrated and exasperated...)  But really...does make me wonder.  Are we just raising a generation of kids starved for human contact and attention?

In the meantime, while I ponder these great things, I'll just learn to deal with feeling a little cramped and confined and appreciate that these three young men are finally doing better in science.  Even if it's something as silly as sitting at my desk that's doing it.

Whatever it takes...

When We're Doing a Lesson on Disruption and Disobedience, it's Not a Good Idea to be Disruptive or Disobedient

Really now.

After a week off for Spring Break (spent doing yard work, napping, taxes, napping, reading, napping, knitting and napping), we were back at it today.  We're at the point in the year where it's one big long countdown until the end of the year.  And the fact that it feels like the end of the year - with record-breaking temperatures in the 80's - doesn't help.

So The Principal had the idea, and it's really a good one, to go over and review with our kids the SWPBS expectations and see what we were doing and what needed to be improved upon.  She admitted we probably should have done this right after Christmas, but it sort of got dropped due to a whole number of things (namely, her surgery and a lot of flu, plus the fact that the new teacher evaluation system means you can't find an administrator with a search warrant as they're doing classroom observations every waking hour of the day.)

The lesson and activity were actually quite good, and quite interesting - I think it's important for the kids to see where we are doing well and where we aren't, and to brainstorm and discuss why.  However, doing this for 60 straight minutes was not a good idea.  It's hard to keep 7th graders involved in anything for more than about 20 minutes without having to mix things up.  The hour would perhaps have been better spent broken into three 20 minute blocks rather than one straight hour.

Anyway.

The data shows that the biggest number of discipline referrals, about 50% of our total, come from disruption and disobedience.  (One of the things I liked about this was we discussed what disruptions and disobedience mean when it comes to academics - the kids, some of them, figured out that this hurts everyone's learning when someone is disruptive or disobedient.).

Interestingly, when the seventh grade teachers were at lunch, we all commented on three things than ran through our homerooms this morning while we spent the hour teaching about How Bad Disruptions and Disobedience Are to All of Us.

First, when asked for an example of a disruption, nearly every class had at least several kids who called out - by name! - at least one little pill in each class that is, well, truthfully, a disruptive pain in the neck.  In my homeroom it's Arrogant Boy who thinks He's All It And A Bag of Chips, but who's really starting to annoy the bloody hell out of everyone.  He, however, thinks he's cute and adorable and doesn't see that everyone is starting to get annoyed with him.  At all.  He's completely clueless and thinks we're all just "picking on him".  Right.

Second, in every class there was at least one kid who asked, "why are we taking time to learn this?" and as luck would have it, there was always one little knucklehead doing something he/she wasn't supposed to be doing, and all we had to do was point and say, "Well, see knucklehead over there if you want any further explanations as to why we're doing this."  Oh.  They got that.

Third, the kids were wild.  Absolutely awful.  Here we are, trying to go over the plan, talk about expectations, blah, blah, blah, and they were doing exactly everything we said not to!  To be fair, it wasn't all of them, just a few.  I moved three of mine to isolation seats, and pulled them aside after the others left and asked them why they were moved. (One, of course, was Arrogant Boy.)

"Uh, because we were disruptive and disobedient?" said Arrogant Girl (a good friend of Arrogant Boy - what a pair.)

"Good answer," I said, "What do you think your parents are going to say when I tell them about you being disruptive and disobedient during a lesson on - surprise! - disruptions and disobedience?"

"They're going to be mad," said Arrogant Boy.  He's right his mother was NOT happy.  In fact, none of these parents were happy and all three apologized for their progeny's behavior.

It's going to be a long 34 1/2 days.  Really long.

When Your Teacher is a Body Snatcher...

We're currently working on our body systems unit which is one of my favorite ones to teach.  It's also kind of scary when you start finding out how little 7th graders know about their own bodies and how they work, but that's another post for another time.

In any case, a few years ago, someone in The Building got the bright idea of ordering some preserved pig lungs to illustrate the dangers of smoking.  However, for various reasons, they had never been used and were stored away in the science lab.  It's actually a real cool set-up - a rack made of tubes, with valves, and a place to attach the lungs (both at the same time even) so you can then attach the bellows and pump them to make the lungs inflate and deflate.  And these damaged lungs look incredibly disgusting, with a tumor or two on them, and they really don't pump well.  The healthy lungs are really nice and healthy and slightly bloody looking and they just pump up like a dream.

If you're a science geek like me, the set-up is really cool.  For some folks, however, it's a bloody mess.

So, Mrs. Angora remembered we had these so we decided to rotate them around and use them in a mini-review of the respiratory system.  Nothing like a little blood and gore to capture a seventh-graders attention.

First off, I had the rack in my room a day before I needed to use it, so I covered it with a sheet and put my "Do Not Touch" sign on it (fat lot of good that does), which prompted a lot of questions.  "What is that?" they'd ask and I'd say something vague like a demo we're going to do tomorrow, or something like that.   I may have even said "body parts" a few times, just to get them guessing and curious.

The next day, when I snapped on my rubber gloves and opened the plastic cases and hung the lungs up on the rack, was, well, priceless.  You can only imagine the comments.

"Gross!"

"That's so disgusting!"

"Is it real?"

"What do they feel like?"

And so on...one girl in my 5th period got a little green and asked to go get a drink of water, which may give you some idea of the reaction.  When I started pumping the lungs up, the comments and noise level got even higher.

What's even funnier is that we were a bit vague on exactly what type of lungs they were.  Mrs. Angora had told her kids that they were real lungs so of course, that's what my kids thought.   They kept asking if they were real (they were) but not what species.  I didn't bother to tell them they weren't human, but were pig instead.   Neither did Mrs. Eagle who's kids had the same reaction.  As Mrs. Angora said, "It probably didn't hurt them to think we go around gathering body parts in our spare time.  Keeps them on their toes."

I wonder if they think we're gathering up more body parts over Spring Break?

Her rotors are off a bit...

The Team has a kid this year who is a pretty average student - when he wants to be - and can, at times, actually be a pretty good student - again, when he wants to be.  The problem is his mother is more interested in his school work than he is (and, I suspect, does a bit of it.)

However, Helicopter Mom has a few things just out of whack, or as Mr. Bantam Rooster said, "Her rotors are off a bit."

Instead of making sure that he actually does his assignments, she has him do reams of extra credit.  I only allow 100 points of extra credit a grading period, and she was not happy with that.  (She's lucky I allow any.)  She'll send voluminous emails checking on his grades, questioning this, questioning that, but what she's not questioning is why her kid has zeros for assignments he hasn't turned in.  She also expects us to take any assignment late, and to give full credit for late work.

But what really kills me is her obsession with National Junior Honor Society.

Apparently, as a sixth grader (where, I swear, a kid has to be nearly comatose to fail sixth grade apparently), Helicopter Boy made it into National Junior Honor Society.  This is a very big deal for mom as she reminds us about this fact in Every Freaking Email.  However, Helicopter Boy Could Care Less.

A few weeks ago many of our seventh graders had a letter go home that basically says they were in danger of getting kicked out of NJHS due to either poor grades or behavior.  Now, seventh grade is usually the year that Kids Absolutely Fall Apart, so this wasn't unusual.  We get a lot of kids who were A and AB students in sixth grade who can barely manage a passing grade in seventh.  (I think the hormones hit them right smack between the eyes and knock every lick of sense out of them.)  However, Helicopter Mom nearly lost her mind over this.

The daily emails began - "Can he do more extra credit?" (No).  "How come he only got a 56 on his test, that's so unlike him!" (Because he didn't study and he's tested that low before). "Can you check his extra credit amount again?" (Of course.  For the Fifteenth time he has earned the maximum 100 points).  And so on.  I was not alone.  Every teacher on the team has been receiving these.

He did, miraculously, earn a 93% (A) in my class so, blissfully, I haven't heard from Helicopter Mom since he hit that magic number.

However.

The end of the grading period was Friday.  Today, Mr. Bantam Roster and Mr. Math both get emails from Helicopter Mom wanting to know what she can do to bring his grade up for the past grading period to an A.  Notice it wasn't what he could do, but what she could do. (Hum, need some new school supplies?  Here's your chance.  A mom wanting to give a bribe.)

Mr. Math was aghast.  "This woman actually wants me to change his grade to a 93% so he can stay in National Junior Honor Society!"  

Mr. Bantam Rooster was nearly as horrified.  "There's no way I'm changing his grade.  He had assignments that were not turned in and were incomplete, and he earned the grade he's getting."

Exactly.  He earned the grade he's getting.  And even though Mom is apparently wanting to do something - anything - to convince these two teachers to change grades, it's not going to happen.  As Mr. Math said, "We're getting into a moral issue here and it's not right to do what she's asking."

The fact that she even asked, is what I find the most appalling.

The Difference the Weather Makes

The other day The Principal observed that a cool, rainy winter keeps the kids much calmer than a warmer, dryer winter.  As she put it, there's something about the warmer weather that makes them lose their minds.  Considering that she has two middle schooler's of her own at home, as well as the years she's been at our building, she knows what she's talking about.

The last few years we had cold, long, snowy, rainy winters.  Dreadful winters (for My Beloved South, don't get all snarky, those of you in the Great White North.)  And, I think we got a bit spoiled because the kids didn't act really crazy until mid-April.  Of course after that it was absolute madness, but we were braced for it.

This year has been completely crazy.

Aside from having no measurable snow (and having just used one of our three snow days), it has been a rather warm, dry winter.  And this warm, dry winter, has morphed into a very, very early spring.  I have plants blooming about 4-6 weeks early if that gives you any idea of how early.

And the kids are blooming early as well.

The kids began losing their minds towards the end of January, a full two months early, and it hasn't let up since.  Whereas last year we didn't have any fights until April, we've already had quite a few and it's only the first week in March.  We've had kids expelled (and that's rare, even for my building), and so many stupid things happen that I'm starting to think these kids really are possessed.   Some of the fights are just stupid boy things where the kids are horsing around, "having fun", until someone gets annoyed and it gets serious.  And then there are the stupid girl fights that usually begin because girls can't shut up about each other and there's almost always some boy involved.

It's just plain stupid.

And I'm looking forward to the rain tomorrow in the hopes it will calm them down.

Well Why Don't You Do Something!!!?

During the past two weeks I've had some interesting emails from parents regarding the fact that their darling chooses not to do homework.  One parents insisted to know WHY I didn't place her daughter in after school detention because ANYONE KNOWS that if you take something fun away from a kid, they may actually get the message.  The other parent expressed a concern that since he and his wife are both working in the afternoon, and his son chooses to do everything BUT homework, was there anyway I could put him in after school detention so he'll get his homework done?

Well, as I explained, at The School, we only have after school detention for kids with behavior problems, not lazy problems.  Neither of these kids is a trouble maker so they don't qualify for that.  The Administrators decide who's going into after school detention based on the classroom discipline referrals.  I also explained that we are allowed to pull kids from their elective classes on Mondays and Fridays and that serves sort of as a detention where they can get their work done.

However, what I really wanted to say was "Isn't that really YOUR job as a parent?"  We have these kids for about eight hours a day, and then they go home and then, in theory, it's the parent who should check their planner, see what the homework is, and see that it gets done.  My parents even get an email letting them know what the homework is, so they have that to rely on.  But apparently these parents what us to keep their kids even longer, see that their homework is done, and then send them home.  Shouldn't they be the ones "taking away something fun" from the kid because they didn't get their homework done?  Shouldn't they be the parent?

Some of my fondest memories of my childhood were of my parents and I sitting down to go over homework.  It was our time together - no television, no computer (well duh, they didn't exist back then), no interruptions.  These parents apparently don't want to spend time dealing with their kids' academic issues and at the same time are missing out on a really vital part of the parent/child relationship.  

Do you think if we asked these parents to pay more taxes so we can get paid to stay later and parent their kids, they'd go for it? 

Really, I'm getting sick of parents wanting to be pals, not parents.

P.S. Update 3/2/2012

One of these parents requested a form for an after school program we have called homework hour which works with our tutoring program and is funded with a grant.  I sent the form.  The comment he made back was that his son couldn't participate because no one would be able to pick him up.  What?  Who was going to pick him up from after school detention then?  The Tooth Fairy?  Or did he think we ran buses to drop kids that stay late off at their doorsteps?

Sorry to Interrupt your Saturday

It's been a busy weekend down here in My Beloved South (the Civil War Sesquicentennial, dontcha know?) but I did manage to squeeze in some grading on Friday night and Saturday night.  The rest of it will have to wait until Sunday afternoon.

Anyway, we've been doing our Dragon Project in class, which is an exercise in genetics, heredity and a whole lot of Punnet squares.  This is, from the comments I get from former students, one of their favorite things we do all year and the kids really enjoy it.  It's a four day, in-class project, worth 200 points, so it can really boost a kid's grade if he or she actually puts forth some effort. 

So, I'm grading the projects yesterday and I come to Goober Boy's.  He has done half of the first page of an 8 page assignment (a lot of which is coloring dragons to represent their phenotypes).

That is all.

25 points out of 200.

In four days.

Of class work.

Really.

Well, ordinarily, I wouldn't pick up my home phone on a Saturday and call a parent (I'd usually email, and I do a lot of that on the weekend, even though, as the mythology goes, teachers don't work after 2:30 on a weekday afternoon).  However, I know this parent pretty well.  I've had Goober Boy's cousins and his Aunt was one of those parents I'd like to keep forever.  She was that good.  And his parents are cut from the same cloth.

So I picked up the phone and called and got Mom on the line.

She was (a) shocked I'd call on a Saturday, (b) beyond annoyed that Goober Boy did nothing, and (c) promised that if I'd give him a second chance he would get that assignment done and turned in.  I mentioned to her that this nine weeks has pretty much been an exercise in goofing off, giggling, and not doing work and she mentioned my email from the week before about low grades.  She stated that Goober Boy said that "reproduction is really hard" and I had to bite my tongue at that one.  (The possibilities of snarky and sarcastic comments are nearly mind-blowing with a statement such as that.)  I did mention that never once did he raise his hand to ask for help, and that I've talked with him about that as well.  She agreed that she thinks it's simply a matter of not wanting to do the work (honestly, the kid should be a solid B student), rather than not understanding the work.  

He will be removed from his lab group and will have a new seat when we return on Tuesday.  He also will be making up all his missing work and knowing this mom, she'll see that it gets done.

However, I really would have enjoyed hearing her conversation when Goober Boy after we ended our call on Saturday.  From her tone, it would not have been fun for him in the slightest.

Balance? What Balance? Part II

There has been, yet again, some shifting of positions at The School.  A newer sixth grade math teacher wasn't cutting it, so they moved her to P.E. and moved The Coach from PE, into 6th grade math which is not making him happy.  He was the math teacher on my team when he first moved here and he's fantastic, but he's one of those guys who really got into teaching so he can coach.  (And he coaches two high school sports, plus one middle school sport, so he's busy).

What this meant is that the one math class he did have before this move, an inclusion math class, no longer exists, and they gave most of those kids to Mr. Math on my team.

Which meant he had an inclusion class, with no aide or other teacher, with 33 kids in it.

Yeah, like THAT's going to work.

Especially when his fifth period had a total of 14 kids in it.  Really.

So, guidance decided to flip four kids that had me for fifth period, into my sixth period, and then they went from math sixth period to fifth.

Which meant that now my fifth period is down to 22 kids and sixth is up to 30.  With six special ed students (who have resource math) in it.  I only have ten special ed kids over all, so most of them are bunched into what is now my biggest class.

Which also has 28 seats.

So, I've got more kids sitting out in the isolation seats than usual, and when we do labs, these "spare" kids, have to find a chair (I'm still hunting an extra one down) so they can sit at the tables (which are made for four kids) and work with a group of five.

Not ideal.  I actually wouldn't mind if I had more square footage in my room because it's more a matter of too many kids in too small of a space.  If I could punch the walls out and spread them out a bit, it would be a lot easier.  As it is, they're nearly on top of each other and fussing and whining and TALKING CONSTANTLY, so it's hard to get anything done.

So, after a week of this, after explaining that they are now the largest class, that we have a lot of kids who need to focus more, and how they can be good for 45 minutes out of the entire day, the gloves come off.  Half the class is telling the other half to shut up.  Tomorrow, I'll just start writing the talkers up as They Have Been Warned.  Maybe that will get the message across.

Scrawny Boy Update

It's been nearly a week since my phone call and email exchanges with Scrawny Boy's father regarding the hideously low grade (40%) in my class as well as all the missing work.

To date, he has turned in one assignment and half of an assignment.

Not exactly a stellar performance.

I have emailed Dad to let him know that I've only seen 1.5 assignments and to ask if he needed me to re-send any of the assignments I emailed last week.

Silence.  So far.

I'm not really surprised.  Dad has cancelled meetings with us before, and according to Scrawny Boy, is "too busy" to bother with him or his education.  He's probably not stretching the truth too much there.  I believe Dad was saying what needed to be said but probably didn't really enjoy the difficult part of parenting - making a recalcitrant and argumentative child sit down and get his assignments finished over the weekend.

After all, the Super Bowl was on.

Scan, scan, scan away

I love the fact that our big huge monster copier scans and emails documents.

And that I can email these documents to myself.

And email them to a parent.

And hope that they come back, complete, on Monday.

I'm thinking in particular of one kid in my fourth period (which is rapidly turning into one of my worst classes).  Scrawny Boy is failing spectacularly with a whopping 40% in my class.  He hasn't turned in one thing since the beginning of the semester and had a score of 20% on his unit test.

Really.

He always has excuses about why he can't do things - his parents give him too many chores, he forgot his book, he did it but left it at home, someone stole it - blah, blah, blah, blah.  Granted, I know his parents do have animals (horses for one) and he may be responsible for chores, but honestly, he's no dummy and can do a lot better.

So I called Dad.  Dad admitted that he doesn't check PowerSchool much (surprise) and was not really surprised that his progeny had been doing no work and scoring so low.  As he said, "It's always someone else's fault."  In any case, he asked if I could email the work to him (done), and send him a progress report (done), and if possible, information about how to access an online version of the book, if there was such a thing (done.)  He also asked me to tell Scrawny Boy that we'd talked and that he needed to bring his book home on Friday.  "We have a whole lot of weekend to sit down and get this work done," he said.

Scrawny Boy was not happy when he left school on Friday.  With his book.

Oh well.

Didn't Like You Then, But I Love You Now

Middle Schoolers are just plain strange.

As part of our school-wide positive behavior support program (I'm not writing that again, so you'll have to deal with SWPBS), we've developed a "check-in/check-out" program with our kids that had the dubious honor of being the 15% that were always in trouble.  We started SWPBS last year, tracked a lot of data, and realized that 15% of the kids were getting about 60% of the discipline referrals.  Interesting.  So, we came up with a 2nd tier of intervention (the first tier being the school store and the money you can earn to go shopping).

This involved matching these kids up with an adult mentor (not always a teacher, but support staff as well) that the kid checked in with in the morning, and checked out with in the afternoon.  In the meantime, the kid carries around a slip that they hand to each teacher who scores them on their behavior for the day; they have a certain individual goal of points, and there's a system of rewards in place. The goal is to get them behaving like they should, to have a grown up advocate in the building, and to eventually have them learn to self-monitor their behavior.

Teachers and staff could volunteer to be a mentor and we were given a list of kids and could select ones we thought we could work with.  The student then got to look at the list of available mentors and choose whom they wanted to work with.

Well.  That was interesting.

I ended up picking Mouthy Girl who was a member of last years' Notorious Seventh Period Class From the Very Depths of Hell Itself, and then Last Word Boy who was also a member of this stellar class of children.

Mouthy Girl gave me absolute fits last year - she was a handful - always into fights, always into drama, never doing work, and just the rudest and most disrespectful little blonde fireball there ever was.  (The fact that she has a homelife from hell is part of the reason for her behavior).  However.  She hadn't been in much trouble so far in eighth grade when we got the list, and she'd even come by several times to talk, was nice, sweet, and pleasant so I thought, "What the heck?" and selected her.  Kids change.

Oh boy do they.

Apparently Mouthy Girl was ecstatic that I had selected her as a possible mentee.  (Surprised me, truth be told.)  Her enthusiasm has not waned and we've been doing this program since Thanksgiving.  She is a regular fixture in my room, comes by several times a day (in between classes, on the way to lunch, any chance she can) to get a hug, whine about something she's upset about, to get a pencil, and basically to have someone to mother her since her mother is too busy to do it herself.  The good thing is that she'll give me a head's up on a problem, I can email her teachers to let them know, and they'll keep an eye out and keep a lid on things.  In the meantime I have a kid whom my entire homeroom thinks is my real daughter as she calls me "momma" and constantly borrowing pencils, paper, etc. (which is fine, that's part of the job.)

It's paid off.  She has not had one discipline referral this year.  She's walking away from the drama.  She's not getting into fights.  And she's learned that she can be successful in academics as well (All B's and C's this nine weeks - yes!!)

Wow.  What a change.

Now to see if we can work magic with Last Word Boy.  He's new to the program.  He started before Christmas but made it only one day before he got a write-up and had enough points to earn his way back to alternative school.  He's back now, and so far, he's met his goal every day but one.  I did insist that he have a schedule change to get him away from a teacher whom he obviously had issues with, and I think that helped.  So far, so good.  His new teachers seem to like him, which is a plus.  He's a smart kid, but can be very argumentative and just hates to be corrected.  (He will admit this.)   If he can grow up, and get it together, he'll do okay.

Helping them out, one day at a time...

Be Careful How You Land

It's amazing how life can just up and turn your world upside down.

Take, for example, the case of Mrs. Chicken.  One minute she was sitting on her stool in her classroom (most of us use barstools as chairs since our computer teacher stations are so high - I usually stand most of the time). The next minute she had landed on the floor which is tile on concrete.  Apparently when she went to stand up, one of her feet got tangled in the rungs towards the bottom of the stool, and she fell.

Right onto her hip, managing to crush her pelvis and break the top of her femur.

Good thing?  The kids were NOT in the room but were at their elective classes.

Bad thing?  Well duh.  It's a pretty serious injury, especially for someone who's old enough to have been teaching for over 30 years.

This happened the first week back in January and we currently have no idea when we'll see her back at The School.  The kids aren't happy - they love her.  She's a great teacher and one of those teachers that you'll be somewhere with, a restaurant or something, and people will come up and tell her they they had her so many years ago and how she was such a great teacher, and they just loved her class.  Everyone in town knows her.

And so now she's home, spending most of her time flat on her back, trying to heal up.  We're pitching in to send meals out to her place as cooking isn't really on her list of things to do right now.  She can stand or sit for about 45 minutes and that's about all she can do.  According to her Doctor, she's in a great deal of pain and it could be over a year and a half before she's back to her old self.

However, The District, was hoping she could come back to do "light duty" this past week.

Really.

She had a doctor's appointment on Wednesday and were expecting her to come back, hence they didn't request a substitute for her class.  Because this is considered an on-the-job-injury, The District is watching her progress very closely.

But really?  A broken pelvis and leg and they though she could do light duty in less than a month?

We're all trying to figure out what light duty is, anyway.  Perhaps they'll retrofit her room so she can teach from a hospital bed?

The Insanity of Tearing Down a Role Model

I've been a fan of sports nearly all my life.  Daddy had one child - me - and even though I was a girl, that didn't stop him from teaching me about sports and learning to enjoy them.  We spent a lot of my childhood at the ballpark in Anaheim watching the California Angels.  My grandmother was a dedicated and devoted Denver Bronco fan.  And my cousin, even at 5' 2" but with amazing skills, played college basketball on a scholarship.  I follow hockey, SEC football, baseball, and about the only sport I could care less about is basketball.  Even today, a lot of my conversations with Daddy are about sports - he's a Cubs fan - and it's something we enjoy together.

That being said...I haven't followed the NFL for quite a while.  I love college football - especially SEC football - but the NFL just didn't have it for me anymore.  For one thing, John Elway retired and I tended to work a lot on Sundays helping my husband with his business a number of years ago.  Not much of a chance to watch games.

And, let's be honest, I got tired of hearing about the thugs.  

Players hanging out - constantly, it seems - in strip clubs.  Players getting shot.  Players doing the shooting.  Players driving drunk, beating their wives, engaged in dog-fighting, gambling, you name it.  It turned me completely off to the NFL and I stopped watching.  Just didn't care.  

And then along came Tim Tebow.

As a Georgia fan, I absolutely HATE THE GATORS, but I still enjoyed watching Tim Tebow play.  Granted, he wasn't the best quarterback, technically, but that kid had that something that inspired people to rise about their limitations and do their very best.  He could rise above his own limitations and do amazing things.  SEC football fans saw it time and again as he motivated his team to win after win.  And the fact that he's a good kid, a Christian, someone who sees football as a platform to do greater things and help people, well, that just made it better.  

So, he got drafted by my beloved Denver Broncos (Grandma would be thrilled) and I decided to watch the NFL again to see Tebow play.  I wondered if he could bring that same magic he had during his college days.

And he did.  And believe me, my family in Denver went nuts over him.  He made this team believe in themselves again, which is something we haven't seen in a while.

So we finally get a good role model - a football player who isn't all about himself.  One who takes a city and helps it believe in greatness again, even if it's in an arena such as sports.  One who helps others.  One who sees the big picture and it isn't all about himself.  And what does the media do?  They tear him apart.  

All because he bends down on his knee and prays.

Honestly folks.  We whine and moan and cry and complain - "Where are the role models?" - and we finally get one that is a good and true role model and what happens?  They rip him up.  They deride him.  They make fun of him.  And it's absolutely ridiculous that it's happening.

So, for all those media snots who are having fun ripping up Tebow, let me tell you one thing.  I wouldn't be watching the NFL if it wasn't for Tebow.  Granted, that's one person...but I suspect there are a few others out there who may have given up on the sport, perhaps for some of the same reasons I have, who are now a bit more interested.  Who've come back to the fold, and who are actually following the NFL now.  

And it's because a truly good, inspirational player is out there, trying to create magic with his team.  Give me that any day.  

Because, truly, character does count for a lot.  And Tebow, he has character.

  

A Little Unbalanced, I'd Say.

In the past week, eight new 7th graders have enrolled in The School.  I got five of them.  Mrs. Eagle got one and Mrs. Angora got two.  This is not to be unexpected, because we usually get a lot of kids moving in and out over the holidays.  The Guidance Diva also noticed that many of these kids had the address belonging to the cheap but gang-infested brick apartment buildings down the road, so apparently some units have opened up.  Two of my kids are sort of homeless - Mom has an RV and parks it wherever someone will let her.  Another one is living in a church with his family.

Sad.

In any case, our numbers are going up because, for what seems like the first time in forever, we didn't have any kids move off the team.  No one left.  So now I have 28 in my homeroom and most of my classes are in the high twenties.  Mrs. Eagle and all the other seventh grade teachers are in the same boat.

So on Tuesday of last week, Mrs. Eagle and I are walking down to the science lab to grab some graduated cylinders, droppers, and beakers to use in a lab on Wednesday.  The science lab is at the very end of the eighth grade hallway so we had a chance to walk by the eighth grade classrooms who were in session.

As we're walking along, Mrs. Eagle says, "Hey, take a moment to check out those class sizes as we walk by."

We walk, and glance in through the doors and glass frames (which give you a pretty good view of the rooms) and realize that these rooms are practically empty!  They have class sizes in their teens!  One of the last rooms we go by belongs to Mrs. Hummingbird's science class.  (Mrs. Hummingbird taught with us a few years ago and we miss her and love her).  She sees us, comes to the door to wave and say hi and we realize that she has 16 kids in her room!  SIXTEEN KIDS!

OH. MY. GOSH.

My first thought was, man, are they going to be in for a surprise next year when we dump the huge group of seventh graders we have on them.  My second thought was that they better find a way to get another seventh grade team next year because the sixth grade currently has about 50 more kids than we do!

Wow.  I wouldn't even know how to deal with a class of 16....

Snow, well, Ice Day, #1

For those of you who use your precious time to actually read this (including my mother!), you may recall that for the last two years The District had pretty much used up all of our THREE snow days for the year and we were going over our limit by this time in the season.  This was NOT fun because it meant that we had to use up holidays as well as add an additional 30 minutes to the school day to make up for the time missed.  That 30 minutes may not seem like a lot, but if you do after school activities it meant that you didn't get home until after dark, and it seemed that all you had time to do was fix supper, clean up, and go to bed to just get up and do it over again.

So this year has seemed a bit odd because it's been so mild.  We haven't had a lot of really cold, below 32 degree days, and for precipitation we've had quite a bit of rain.  Last year it seemed like day after day after day it was below freezing and snowing or trying to snow.

So yesterday we went from a high of 46 in the morning when I left for school, to about 42 degrees at lunch to 29 degrees by the time we left for the day.  They were calling for snow showers but not a lot of accumulation.

These are the days where I wish there wasn't a single window in the building.

It started to snow in between 5th and 6th periods.  I know this because every single kid was walking in the halls and coming into the room screaming, "IT'S SNOWING!" as if they'd never seen snow before in their entire lives.  IT'S SNOWING!  IT'S SNOWING!  IT'S SNOWING!

Yes.  We know.  Now try to settle down and let's get on with some learning.

Then of course they wanted to know if they'd go home early.  "Probably not because it's not sticking and we only have an hour and a half of school left," I told them, but to no avail.  Because, after all, IT'S SNOWING!

Sigh.

Then came the announcement that all after school activities, including the much-anticipated basketball game, were cancelled.  Chaos.  IT'S SNOWING!  IT'S SNOWING!  IT'S SNOWING!

The only thing that got them calmed down and interested in science was the fact that I was bouncing eggs around on my document reader.

The kids went home, and we were asked to have the building cleared by 5:00 which was no problem.  Then the announcement came over the loud speaker that we might want to go out to our vehicles and make sure we could open them as many of them had doors frozen shut.  All the rain that we had earlier in the day had frozen.  So, many of us spent some time in the parking lot prying open vehicles, then letting them warm up to get all the ice off the windshield.  (I was getting a brake job on my car so had hitched a ride with Mrs. Eagle.  $800 in two weeks between my vehicle and hubby's.  I need another job to pay for the vehicles.)

I picked up my car, and got home with no problem, although I did notice a lack of salt trucks on the roads.  The snow was starting to stick, but you could still see grass and it wasn't very heavy.  Mr. Bluebird got home from his meeting, and was surprised at how good the roads were.

However.  The temperature kept dropping, and dropping, and dropping.  About two hours after we'd been home, and Mr. Math had come over to help Mr. Bluebird with a computer problem, our driveway was a sheet of ice.  Mr. Math, who lives a half mile away, reported after he got home that it was one slick, nasty trip home.    School Districts around us started cancelling based on the ice, not the snow.

We cancelled around 4:30 this morning, not because of snow, but because of the ice underneath the snow.  All that rain we've been receiving, when it was in the 50's and 40's, turned to ice when the temps rocketed downward.

So, we have our first snow day, ice day, of the year, and it conveniently happened on the Friday before a Monday holiday.  Yeah!

Still, I'm a bit concerned.  My celery-food-coloring-salt-water osmosis demonstration will be a bit, well, ugly come Tuesday.  And as for the bouncy eggs?  Well, I don't want to even think about those.

P.S. Because I know ya'll want to know what a bouncy egg is...you soak raw eggs in vinegar for a few days to remove the shell.  What you get is the inner membrane holding the egg together and it will, truly, bounce (try it, it's fun).  What we're doing with these eggs is putting them in a cup of syrup to predict what will happen to them in 24 hours.  (We're studying osmosis and diffusion and there's your clue).  I have no idea what will happen after 5 days.  We will see.

Now Let's Enjoy the Rest of the Year

In My State, teachers on a professional license get observed four times a year.  One of the disadvantages of being at the beginning of the alphabet is that I was one of the first, if not the very first, person observed at the beginning of the year.  This was the second week of school and I hadn't even learned all my kids' names yet - mainly because we were still fixing schedules, assigning books, and all that fun beginning of the year stuff.  And, truth be told, it takes a bit of time to learn 130 names.

And now that we're into our second semester, the cycle begins again and I am supposed to have my two unannounced observations some time this week.

Ugh.

For those of you not in the teaching profession, I'm not going to bore you with all that goes into lesson plans, and observations, and teaching to reach multiple learning styles, and being sure to assess at least three times during the course of the lesson, and of course, keeping the kids in check and hoping that they actually learn anything, and of course, making it relevant, sticking to standards, and oh, all that fun stuff.

You can thank me.

For those of you in the profession - you know what I'm talking about.

In any case, I got lucky and The Enforcer did my two observations on Monday and now I am FREAKING DONE with my observations for this year.

So I guess...one of the advantages of being at the beginning of the alphabet is that I get done with these nasty observations before the others and can actually enjoy teaching for the rest of the year without these things hanging over my head.

Until next year.  When it starts all over again.

Slacker

Yes, I know I've been slacking on this.

Honestly, I've been sick with either a cold or bronchitis or something since the middle of November.  Not sick enough to miss school, but just sick enough to not want to do anything except sleep once I got home.

Feeling better and nearly normal now and so totally looking forward to our Christmas break.

Just a few random observations...

We had three days of Government Mandated Really Big Deal Testing for our seventh graders.  Three days of constructed response writing tests.  So, for the first three periods of the day, the kids were testing and writing.  Except they finished in 20-30 minutes and then had nearly two hours to just sit there and BE SILENT.  I'm convinced that whomever comes up with these ideas for these tests has never been in a seventh grade classroom (at least not recently) and has no clue about 12 and 13-year-olds.  A big block of time, doing the same thing, for these kids is maybe twenty minutes.  Thirty max.  No standardized test should last longer than a typical classroom period.

So, the result of making these seventh graders be ABSOLUTELY SILENT AND STILL for nearly three class periods is that they lost their minds.  We had a dance that Friday and had not one, not two, not three, but FOUR fights break out.  It's rare we even get one, let alone four.  All of a sudden kids who were normally well behaved were acting like fools and teachers were writing referrals and sending kids to the office left and right.  Kids were starting fights in PE, in lunch, in the halls, you name it.  It's nuts.

We all need a break from each other.

Another result, I believe of the testing exhaustion and the upcoming holidays, is that my kids stopped working.  They just up and quit.  Homework turn in dropped to below 50% and kids who had never missed an assignment had zeroes.  In-class work - not turned in.  Project - not turned in.  All these things we're doing in class, and they aren't turning them in.  They woke up a bit this week and managed to turn in a bunch of late assignments (when some of them realized that they were pretty close to failing or dropping a few letter grades), but it was almost bizarre how the entire grade just up and stopped doing school.  Mrs. Eagle's and Mrs. Angora's kids weren't any better.

On the positive side, my homeroom still rocks.  It's bigger now - we got some new kids and I now have 27 in there so I'm nearly out of seats, but still most of them are pretty good kids and they get along with each other.  We're having a canned food drive for our Angel Tree program and they've been wanting to win the pizza party - but even more than that, they Want to Beat the Sixth Grade.  Every year a sixth grade class wins and we're trying to change that trend.  My kids claim that one particular sixth grade teach bribes her kids as well as brings in a lot on her own, but I told them we were playing fair and not going down that road.  We ended up with over 350 cans, which is huge, but I'm not sure it's enough to beat the Dreaded Sixth Grade.  We'll find out on Monday.

We have a day and a half left and then some time off.  Plans?  Sleeping, reading, knitting, spending time with hubby.  Perfect.