Flu

Thankfully, my bout with the flu lasted about a week and I was back in school on the Tuesday after our President's Day holiday. I didn't feel 100% until about Thursday, but I certainly wasn't bad enough to stay home. Besides, I was getting cabin fever.

It turns out that I had the Very Best Sub Ever while I was gone. This gal is going on my speed dial. Not only is she highly qualified in science but she graded all my tests. Did you get that? She graded all my tests. There was a huge weight lifted off my shoulders, and I can't thank her enough for that. This means progress reports were only one day late, which was pretty amazing considering I'd been out, between snow day, sick days and a holiday, for a week.

However, we're hearing on the news and reading in the paper about the flu here in our area and how the epidemic is, perhaps, hitting its peak and things are improving. Every county around us has been closed for at least two days due to the flu. We have not. Quite frankly, we haven't seen a huge increase in absences.

I remember when I was teaching up in Ohio watching the flu sweep through our district and our building. It usually started with the elementary schools, then middle, and finally high schools. You could see it go through a classroom simply by looking out at the rows of desks...one section of the class would be absent, then another, then another, until it finally made its way through the whole class. We had days where the kids were literally lined up along the hallway by the office, heads resting on their backbacks, waiting for a parent to come pick them up. We had run out of room in the nurse's room, and the office, and they were spilling out into the hallway. Absent lists were running to three pages.

But this past week, at The School, our absence list was no bigger than normal. We did have a bit of a spike on Thursday but that was probably due more to the one hour delay due to sleet and ice than it was due to the flu. On Friday, we were back to one full page of absences, plus a few on a second page. Still, nothing really alarming. When it gets to a full two pages we start to be a bit concerned.

So..it's curious. Either we have a pretty healthy population of kids (doubtful), the kids are coming in sick and just gutting it out (doubtful again), or it just hasn't hit our area as hard as others (more probable). In the meantime I did the "If you sneeze or cough you better cover your mouth and nose with a tissue!" talk to all my classes. Last year I ran out of tissues during the second semester and offered extra credit for everyone who brought in a box. I had so many boxes brought in that I'm still using these boxes a year later. Good thing, too. I put a box on each lab table and the kids are using them. In fact, when someone sneezes you hear kids yelling "Get a tissue!", "Throw the tissue away!" and "Put gel on your hands!" At least they're learning some healthier habits. For now.

We'll see what this week holds.

Down for the Count

On Wednesday night Mr. Bluebird and I had tickets to a show and made it our Valentines Date Night. All went well until about 10:30, on our way home, when it became quite apparent to both of us that I was the victim of the stomach flu that has been going around.

By 11:00 pm I could barely lift my head up off the bathroom floor long enough to get on line to request a sub and to send Mrs. Eagle a note asking her to help the sub with lesson plans.

I'll save you all the gory details, but suffice it to say that I couldn't even keep Sprite down. Mr. Bluebird was about ready to toss me back in the car and take me to the ER, but I talked him out of it. Instead, I went to bed in the guest room with a bowl of ice chips to suck on as I was so dehydrated and I could actually keep those down.

This bug has knocked me flat. So flat that I ended up getting a sub for today as well, especially as I still was running a temp last night. I feel like death warmed over, have a headache, and seem to fall asleep every two hours or so. I feel so bad I don't even feel like knitting (and that's rare).

However, one of the joys of one, getting all your copies done the week before, and two, collaborating with other teachers, is that I don't need to worry too much about having lessons for my sub. Mrs. Eagle was able to show her all the materials and explain the lessons to her so all, from what I've heard, went well. Bless her heart. Where would we be without friends.

In the meantime, I'm going back to bed.

Carnival Time!

Instructify is hosting this week's Carnival of Education. Be sure to check it out!

Here, There and Everywhere

Last week we had an in-service where we learned, very, very briefly, that The State has made some new changes in the law regarding special education. The information is still filtering down to The District, and it looks like our administrators will be going to a number of workshops in the near future to help roll out the new system. So right now, no one really knows a whole lot. What we were told was that in the future, it isn't going to be as easy to designate a kid as special ed, or even qualify a kid for a 504. The Principal said that the it appears that this will affect the elementary school teachers more than us because, in theory, if a kid is a candidate for special education it should be caught during the elementary years.

Right.

In any case, we were asked to get with our teams and pick 3-4 kids that we considered to be at risk and do an "Academic 360" form on them. Basically we were to pull their academic records, their discipline file, and go through them in detail to see if we could pull together a better picture of the student. It's interesting what you find out about kids when you actually sit down as a team and do this.

Our team chose four students that were pretty much failing every single class this year. One thing that we noticed as we were filling out the forms on these kids is that every single one of them had been to at least five different schools before they'd landed in our classrooms in seventh grade. Three of these students had lived in at least three different states. One, although he was born and had lived in our county for his entire life, had managed to make it through seven different elementary schools, oftentimes changing schools in mid-year. One student had no biological parent in the picture and had lived with grandparents, and a parade of other relatives throughout her life.

All of this brings up the question...how on earth are these kids going to learn anything, let along be identified as a possible candidate for special education testing, if they don't stay in any one place longer than a year, or in some cases, a few months?

Our district has a serious problem with what we call "rent-jumpers", parents who are one step ahead of the landlord and the bill collector and who bounce around from school zone to school zone. We get kids that start out the year in our school, move, go to another school, move again, and end up back with us. This is one of the reasons that the core subject areas tried to go with a pacing guide that basically tells us what standard to teach when - the idea was that a kid could bounce from school to school - within the district - and not miss out on any instruction.

However, if a kid is moving in and out of The District and in and out of The State, this doesn't do a bit of good. The kid gets, at best, a spotty education. At worst, the kid lands in seventh grade, reading at a 2nd or 3rd grade level, without any grasp of math basics, and, usually, without any desire to connect with classmates or teachers because, after all, it won't be long until the next move.

And these kids are just dropping through the cracks.

A good example is California Girl. She arrived before Thanksgiving from California. She left on Monday to go back to California. While she was with us, she'd managed to fail every class, mainly because she didn't do homework and was too busy, by her own admission, with keeping up with her friends on myspace. Her mother, although good at responding to emails, had her hands full with her own life (she was all of 26 years old herself), and quite honestly had given up on dealing with her daughter's lack of academic success. So now she's on her way back out West to yet another school, another set of standards, another set of teachers and friends.

Makes me want to scream.

Hack! Hack! Harumph!

I haven't posted much because, quite frankly, I haven't felt like doing much of anything outside of crawling into bed and sleeping.

I have a cold.

It's that dreary, wet, cold, gray time of year when everyone seems to be run down and cranky and the germs and viruses have a field day. Most of my students have either had a cold, strep, or a stomach thing, and I suppose it was just a matter of time before I'd get something. You try to keep healthy by eating right, sucking down Airborne, and getting enough sleep but honestly, some of these nasty little viruses have mutated to the point that even teachers - with that marvelous trait of semi-immunity that we've earned by living with sick kids all winter long - get sick.

The problem is, it isn't one of those colds that's bad enough to really justify staying home, let alone the work it takes to get ready for a sub. And it's weird in that it hasn't really developed into a head cold with the stuffy nose and all that, but promptly went right to my chest where I developed a resounding cough. So, although my voice sounded like I should be working for a 900 number, and my throat hurt, and I sounded like I was going to yack up a hair ball, I managed to make it through the week. I even made it through the Friday dance where Mrs. Eagle, Mrs. Robin and I charged kids a dollar for the pleasure of having us put gel or weird colored hair spray in their hair (and we made $175 for our seventh grade science reward party, thankyouverymuch).

But by Saturday I was out for the count and spent the bulk of the weekend in my sweats, watching A&E television, knitting, reading, and taking lots of naps.

It was lovely.

Why I Love My Basement

If you haven't been living under a rock, you may have heard that we've had some pretty nasty weather down here in my beloved South. It has been, in a word, wild.

Due to Super Tuesday, the schools in our district were closed for students, but faculty and staff reported for an in-service. As far as in-service days go, this one was actually quite worthwhile as we had a very detailed presentation on gang awareness as well as some information on new special education laws. However, many of us were heard to mutter "Glad the kids aren't here as the weather will probably get nasty." We will remember our earlier run-in with bad weather in January, and I don't think any of us wanted to get stuck at school with our kids during a tornado. The fact of the matter was that it's just been too warm for February. We hit a record high of 72 degrees on Tuesday, and when it's that high this time of year, you know that cold weather is just around the corner. And when cold fronts and warm air hit, you get bad weather.

And man, did we get bad weather.

I was trying to watch the hockey game that evening when it started up. First, lots of wind. Lots and lots of wind. Then lightning, thunder, and heavy, heavy rain. I have a NOAA weather radio and it was beeping alerts every few minutes. The hockey game I was trying to watch had lost the audio and was intoning that computerized voice that told all of us that bad weather was on the way. (By the way, watching a hockey game without audio is a bit weird.) Around 8:30 I started moving some valuables down to the basement because it was making even me nervous. A few minutes later the sirens went off, so I tucked two cats under my arms and took them downstairs, ran up and got another cat, and then headed down there myself, closing the door behind me.

As an aside, when I had to buy a house down here Mr. Bluebird wasn't able to come down and help. His only request was I get a house with a finished basement because he thought this area had too many tornadoes. That I did, thank goodness.

I spent about 45 minutes down there before the warning expired and I was able to let the cats, who were really annoyed, back upstairs. I didn't, however, move anything else up as I had a feeling we weren't done.

We weren't.

Around midnight the second wave of storms woke me up. It was pounding and the lightning was flashing like a strobe light. I looked out the window and thought, for a moment, that it was foggy outside as I couldn't see the houses across the street clearly. It took me a minute to realize that it wasn't fog, it was just really heavy, heavy rain. I went out to the living room to turn on the news to see if we were under a warning when the sirens went off again. (I also managed to buy a house that has a tornado siren at the end of the street - when these things go off, we hear them.)
Grabbed cats and hustled everyone downstairs where I stayed until about one in the morning.

This last round was really bad. The hail was bouncing all over my deck before I headed to the basement and the sirens went on and on and on. Usually they'll sound off about 4 times before they stop, but this time I could hear them going on for a significantly longer time.

Of course, by the time it had all passed I was wide awake. I tried to go back to sleep but I was still awake an hour later when Mr. Bluebird arrived home from his trip back from Ohio. He'd dodged supercells the whole way home, hunkering down in gas stations and truck stops when it got so bad he couldn't drive.

The next day at school the kids were dragging. Many of them told me they'd spent the night sleeping in basements, their closets, or bathrooms. Shreck Boy was exhausted. He'd spent the night in the basement after the roof of their house began to lose shingles and the rain started to come in. Some kids told me about huge trees coming down in their yards, trampolines slinging through the neighborhood and ending up blocks away, and barns crashing down. The western edge of our county got hit really hard by a thunderstorm that destroyed one house and damaged at least 13 more. The tornadoes that ripped through the state, amazingly, rose back up in the air before they got very far within the county and we were spared a lot of the damage other counties are facing.

Last year, during the height of the drought, we didn't have one single tornado warning. This year, so far, we've had the sirens go off three times.

And it's February. Tornado season doesn't really begin until March.

Kind of makes me appreciate the basement.

So close, yet so very far

The annual county middle school basketball tournament began tonight. Since the only official sport we have for the middle schools happens to be basketball, this is a pretty big deal and it's the final send off for the year.

So, after treating ourselves to supper at Ruby Tuesday's, Mrs. Eagle and I headed over to the tournament which was held at the newly opened middle school here in town (right down the road from my subdivision). It was neat getting a chance to see what a new school looks like, as opposed to our 41 year old building. Plus, the boys were playing at 6:00 and we figured we could catch the game and still be home at a decent time, to say, record the Sarah Connor Chronicles for Hubby. (No, we don't have TIVO or any of that.)

Anyhow.

We haven't had the greatest year this year in terms of basketball. We have, truth be told, a really little team. I remember the first game that we went to this year, and the boys thundered onto the court, and Mrs. Eagle and I both looked at each other and shook our heads. Our team looks like they came from an elementary school. I stand a whopping 5'3" and I know for a fact (because I'm teaching most of these kids) that I'm as tall as they are...or taller. And believe me, being taller than someone takes some doing for me. These kids are little. (They are, however, smart....of the three players I currently teach, all are A/B students and were before basketball started and most likely will continue to be good with the academics.)

So, we begin the game and amazingly enough, they do okay. It's not a major blow out like we've seen in the past, and by the half time we're only down about 8 points. That's pretty good. I was impressed. They were playing their hearts out, and although they didn't always make the shots, they kept at it and were being really scrappy and tough.

And then as we got to the final minutes they started to get closer and closer and closer to the other team. The other team had players who all stood at about six feet tall. They had two kids who were so tall and skinny that I thought they'd disappear if they'd turn sideways. (And these two could also hit three pointers like nobody's business.)

At the last possible second, they tie the game.

We go into a three minute over time. The parents and fans are screaming their lungs out.

It goes down to the very last second.

We lost by two points.

But man, they played their hearts out and acted like gentlemen. And that makes them winners in my book.

Carnival Time!

Mathew over at Creating Lifelong Learners is hosting another great Carnival, so be sure to check it out (beats grading papers after all!). Be sure to see how Mr. Teacher spends his lunch, even when he's out of ice cream, check out Carol's crazy day and what the kids say, and Mark's take on recess.

Just When You Least Expect It

It's 5:15 am. I've been up for about half an hour, my hair is wet, and I'm watching the local news and waiting for my steel cut oatmeal to cook. My cell rings. It's Mrs. Eagle.

"Have you heard anything about us closing?" she asks.

"No, there's nothing on the news, but I checked The National Weather Service and it said we had a chance of snow and sleet. I didn't think that was forecast until late tonight."

"It wasn't, but it's snowing like mad here," she replies. She lives in the western part of the county.

I look out on my back deck. Nothing.

"Nothing here, but that just means you're at the beginning of the storm," I reply. I check the scroll at the bottom of the news and see that a few school districts west of us are closing. "I don't see us on the news yet," I tell her.

"Well," she huffs and I can tell she's outside, "I need to chase down the dogs, so call me if you hear anything."

So I watch the news for a bit and more schools start closing. I look outside and start to notice a few flakes falling down onto the deck. I check the news station again. And finally, there it was...

We're closed! We have our snow day!!!

And the funny thing is that after two near misses in snow days, where my students obsessed over the weather reports, this one snuck up and caught us all by surprise.

I hope my kids have a great day off. Me? I will too.

P.S. And for those of you up in the Great White North, I know you don't think snow days are a big deal...but for those of us in The South, they're rare and treasured like jewels!

Wishing, Hoping, Praying

My students have taken to our weather unit with a passion I rarely see out of them except when they're talking about video games, the opposite sex, or the latest movie they've seen. They are obsessed with weather reports.

"Mrs. Bluebird, can you show us that weather service site?" they ask nearly every period. So I indulge them and show the National Weather Service page for our town on my big screen. We've spent a lot of time reading weather maps and station models and they can work their way through this page like pros.

"Ah, man, look at that dewpoint. It's not high enough," I can hear one of them exclaim.

"Yeah, the air isn't saturated," someone pipes up. "And if it's not saturated, there's no precipitation."

"And the temperature. It's going to start falling in a few days," another chimes in.

"Yeah, but not too far," another adds.

They discuss cloud cover, air temperature, and dewpoints. They look at high pressure areas and low pressure areas and ponder what, exactly, we can expect in a few days.

It has absolutely nothing to do with my teaching, the quality of my lessons, or the material being presented.

Pure and simple...they are praying for a snow day.

Whoo-hoo! It's Carnival Time!

Forget that it's January! Forget that it's supposed to 9 degrees tomorrow morning! Warm up with some hot news over at The Median Sib, who's hosting this week's Education Carnival.

P.S. I hear there's hot chocolate involved, so hurry!

Banging Our Heads Against the Wall

I've had a student in my homeroom the past year who I'll call Sharpie Boy because, among other things, he is constantly giving himself tattoos with Sharpie markers. He's fairly bright, reads well, and although he's identified as special ed with a severe case of ADHD, he tested proficient on all his Big Deal Government Mandated Tests, so he was put out into science and social studies this year. He does not have an ideal home life. His mother, while agreeable enough on the telephone, has never graced us with her presence. There is little money. He has some older brothers who aren't exactly living squeaky clean lives and are definitely not a good influence on Sharpie Boy.

That being said, I've never had a behavior problem with Sharpie Boy. He's a little chatty at times, but I have many who are worse. He does have a problem with organization (which is typical of most of my special ed kids), and rarely has a pencil. Out of all the pencils I've handed out this year, over half of them probably went to him. Academically he started out great with a passing grade of 72% the first nine weeks of school. Granted, he gets modified tests and they're read to him, but that isn't bad. However, the second nine weeks he earned a whopping 17%. He pretty much decided to do absolutely nothing, and that's exactly what I got out of him - nothing. I'd talk to him privately about it, ask if he needed help, ask what the problem was, and I'd get a happy little answer that things were fine and he'd really try to do better. Mom was understanding but nothing changed. Mr. Social Studies had similar results.

However, apparently Sharpie Boy had behavior issues outside of my room and Mr. Social Studies' room. If a class was slightly unstructured, such as Art, he'd lose it, get in a fight, or do something else to get in trouble, and wind up in In School Suspension. While up there he'd mouth off, sleep, and generally get into more trouble which would earn him an Out of School Suspension. He was up there for the two weeks prior to Christmas and did not do one assignment that I'd sent up for him. He'd ditch school (and get caught, he isn't very good at being sneaky), talk back to other teachers, and generally act like a pill. He was racking up the discipline points with abandon and was a candidate for alternative school.

On Thursday Mr. Social Studies and I, along with Mrs. Tropical (one of the special ed teachers who knows Sharpie Boy very well as she had him last year for two classes and this year for two classes), Mrs. Squirrel and Mrs. Saint, had a meeting to come up with a behavior plan for Sharpie Boy. He'd just gotten two referrals from ISS, and was most likely going to wind up in alternative school. One of the referrals was for writing a note to another boy up in ISS discussing the various sexual positions his (older) girlfriend and he had tried over the past weekend. According to Mrs. Tropical, Sharpie Boy, who is all over 13 years old, has always been a little more wise in sexual matters than a kid that age probably should be. He's also very wise to the world of drug use (see older brothers). We had to discuss whether or not his behavior was the result of his learning disability.

It was an interesting meeting. Mr. Social Studies stated his belief (which I agree with) that Sharpie Boy does not like being out in the general school population because he's not the big fish in that pond like he is in the special ed classes. Consequently, his refusal to do any work so he'll fail. Mrs. Tropical furnished the log of the 18 phone calls she'd made to mom, and the 6 different meetings she'd attempted to set up to discuss the problems with Sharpie Boy. She also filled us in on habit of inflicting pain on himself, as well as his deep dark depressions he would have at times. The kid has some mental issues but mom doesn't want to see it so therefore we have no diagnosis of anything. Although he really should be going to alternative school, we decided that isn't the best place for him because we seriously doubted his mother could get him there and he'd end up running the streets. (The District does not provide transportation for the little darlings who earn a slot at the Alternative School.) The decision was made to but him in the behavior modification class with Mrs. Saint, because he probably does have some undiagnosed emotional issues, and that way he would at least be in school. Mrs. Tropical calls mom, mom loves the idea as she thought alternative school would be a problem. All is well.

So, Friday he cleaned out his locker outside my room and headed off to Mrs. Saint's class. He seemed happy about it. We all thought we'd made the right decision for this kid because at least this way he'd get some attention and some help with his issues.

Four hours later he's being picked up by his step-father (first any of us had heard about a step-father) because he'd showed another kid the 4" switchblade he'd brought to school and as a result earned himself a 90 day stint at the alternative school.

So much for trying to do the best thing for this kid.

Throwing Down the Gauntlet

One of the big topics of conversation a few weeks ago at our in-service was ways to motivate our kids. A lot of our students come from families where education is not a priority. Many of my parents are high school drop outs themselves. A lot of these kids (and parents) just don't see the point of doing well in school so, consequently, they don't. They're more interested in becoming football players, hip hop artists, or rock stars. (Or drug dealers...)

Some of the better, and more successful, ideas that were presented had an element of competition involved. I love this idea because real life is, after all, competitive. I spent fifteen years in the corporate sector and I saw competition that makes reality TV seem downright tame. I worry when I see educational experts (and teachers) doing their very best to remove competition from kids' lives because that's going to ensure that they won't have the skills to deal with competition and failure. Both of which are very, very real.

So Mrs. Eagle, Mrs. Robin and I were knocking around some ideas the other day to come up with ways to motivate our kids and we realized that, for the first time, our class periods were all very similar. Usually one team was designated as the inclusion team so they got a lot of the spec ed kids, one team got all the band kids (which tend to be better students), and another team got the trouble makers. This year, however, with all the seventh graders on the same schedule, things were more evenly distributed. And even stranger, all our first period classes were very similar, all our second periods were very similar, and so forth and so on.

And we got to thinking...why not let each of the three seventh grade class periods compete against each other to see which of them ends up with the highest grade point average at the end of the grading period?

I presented the idea to the kids and they absolutely loved the idea. They weren't even all that concerned about what the prize would be, although they suggested a pizza party to the winning classes. (Which was kind of what we were thinking although we'll need to find a way to pay for it...fundraiser anyone?) They just loved the idea of beating the other teams and having bragging rights. Adding pizza to the mix just made it better.

So we put together some charts to track the weekly class averages and I posted the current week's results on my whiteboard.

And my fifth period class has an average grade of 68%.

70% is passing.

My fifth period, which has my biggest group of behavior problems and which is my loudest and most talkative class, was stunned.

"We suck," they said.

"I'm not going to disagree," I responded. "Although I might have phrased that a bit differently."

"That's embarrassing," they said.

"This is stupid," Sickly Girl said. "I'm getting an A this nine weeks. I got an A all year in sixth grade and the only reason I'm not getting an A now is I'm not doing anything and I got an F!"

Many heads nod in agreement. "Yeah, we can do better," a few others said. "We just need to study and do our work, and it's really not that hard."

"And shut up!" Hip Hop Boy declared. A stunning declaration considering that this child speaks at a yell most of the time.

"Well," I told them. "It's up to you. You decide where you want to be on this board. Winning or Losing."

"We want to win!" they scream. "We want pizza!"

The result? Kids who have never, ever turned in a single homework assignment all year....turned it in early this week. Even Shrek Boy.

Perhaps a little competition is all they needed...

Update!!!! This week's class average has risen!!! They are now at 70.2%!!!

Teachable Moment

We started in on our weather unit yesterday.

This is one of my favorite units to teach because I'm a weather junkie. Part of this stems from growing up in Southern California where the weather doesn't change much at all and can put you into a stupor. I fell in love with weather when I lived in the Midwest and realized that it can do some pretty amazing things beside be hazy and mid-70's with a touch of fog in the morning. This is also a unit that the kids have background information on so they can easily relate to the content. They can tell stories about the big hail storm they were in, or the tornado they saw when they were five, or the time they went sledding in the snow.

And find me a seventh grader that won't stare entranced at a video on tornadoes and hurricanes and massive destruction. They love this stuff.

So it's a real shame that I won't be able to teach this after next year because they've changed our standards and are moving this unit to the sixth grade.

In any case, we were only on our second day of the unit and had spent most of the period working on some of the terms we needed to know such as dew point, humidity, relative humidity, weather, and so on. We had five minutes left so I had them pack up while I showed them my favorite weather site, the one put out by The National Weather Service. I love it because it doesn't have ads and you can spend all day clicking on links and finding cool weather information. It's fast and it's accurate. It had been raining pretty much all day, so there were cool radar images to look at as well which the kids really like. And amazingly enough, nearly all our vocabulary words are used in context on the page - how's that for relevance?

So, I pull up the page for our town, and was going to show them how to read it and I notice that we are under a tornado warning.

I look over at Mr. Title, and say, "Wow, we're under a tornado warning!"

And at that instant the tornado alarm goes off in The School.

The kids stand up and look at me, probably wondering how I fixed it so we had a tornado drill during our weather unit. I bark at them to get down in the tornado position against the interior walls, go to shut my door, grab a kid from my first period who is at his locker and send him in the room. Mr. Social Studies is at his door, pulling it shut. "Not a drill, is it?" he asks. "Nope. Not a drill".

By this time Mr. Title has all the kids down on the floor and he looks over at me. I point down to the floor and we both get down.

This kids are kind of giggly and squirming for a minute or two and then it dawns on them, when the annoying beeping didn't stop, that this really isn't a drill. This is real. After a few minutes we could hear the sirens going off in the neighborhood, and then the rain got really loud and the thunder a lot more intense.

I can't believe we didn't lose power.

After about ten minutes the annoying beeping stops and The Principal comes over the loudspeaker and tells us that we're still under the warning but she wanted to give us a break from the alarm (bless her!) and we are to stay put in the tornado position until further notice. The kids are getting restless so I take the remote to my LCD projector, which gets cable television, and was able to get the local news station that does great weather reports onto the screen so they could at least hear what was going on.

After a total of 30 minutes the all clear sounded and we were able to get up off the floor and back into our seats. The Principal asked us to all stay in our 5th period classes until further notice, so Mr. Social Studies and I kept the local news so the kids could watch the storm's progress. By the time it was all over, and the 8th graders were able to finish their lunch that was interrupted by the warning, it was nearly seventh period. We dismissed at our normal time which was a relief because I had visions of being stuck at school with these kids until the storm system passed. Fortunately it wasn't too wide and it moved fast.

I hope this isn't a sign of things to come this spring when tornado season really begins in earnest.

However, how often can you be in front of your class talking about weather and watches and warnings and actually have one happen??? Amazing!

It's over

As of 8 o'clock this morning, Christmas break was over.

Because we had to go in for an in-service.

You can only imagine the whining, complaining, and groaning that this caused. The kids come back on Monday, after having two full weeks off, but we had to go in today.

However...it wasn't all that bad. We had a presentation on rigor and relevance, new initiatives by The District, and some other stuff that was actually worth the time. Thank goodness because if it had been one of those workshops that we've all sat through where you think a needle in the eye would be an improvement, the staff may have actually revolted.

The best part, however, was that Mrs. Eagle, Mrs. Robin and I did not have to attend the afternoon sessions because we had made other plans, with the full blessing and approval of The Prinicpal, of course.

A month or so ago, Mrs. Eagle and I were at one of the monthly science teacher gatherings at the local university, something Mrs. Standard puts on so we can all get together and talk about fun new things like our standards changing, when we met up with some of our friends who also teach seventh grade science at two other middle schools in The District. We all began commiserating about how much we hate in-services and how much we'd rather just have time to meet and brainstorm and share good ideas. You know, collaborate? Not one of those forced collaboration meetings that they've tried before which end up being a complete waste of time because everyone has to be there and some people, no matter how much you push them, just will not work well with others. You can't force people to collaborate. Part of the secret to good collaboration is having people who trust each other enough to share ideas and who actually enjoy each other.

And we got to thinking. And Mrs. Eagle and I went to The Principal and asked her if we could have our other seventh grade science friends come over and we'd do some top-notch collaboration - sharing our Big Deal State Test review activities, share some of our good labs and activities that work, and so forth and so on.

And, because The Principal is a visionary and actually believes in the whole idea of collaboration, she said, "go for it".

So while everyone else was doing who knows what, we had three other teachers in my room and we worked together to come up with some good ideas for the next semester. It was awesome. We all walked away with great ideas that are proven in the classroom and that we can use to help our kids.

And we all agreed that we'd like to get together at least once again this semester to touch base and share any new information that we've picked up.

Now that, my friends, is a good in-service!

Seven Lords A Leaping...Actually Just a Meme

I've been tagged by Ms. Whatsit, to write down seven random things about me. Considering that my train of thought has been pretty random, this should be easy!

1. I collect scottish terrier items. I had two scotties as a kid, Angus and McDuff, and began the collecting when I was five. I still collect, although I've gotten pickier over the items as I've gotten older. My favorites are items from the 1930's and 1940's when FDR had Fala, the first scottie in the White House.
   
2. I was a tall flag twirler in High School (back here they call them color guard) and actually marched in the Rose Parade one year. The two things I remember the most about it was how bloody long the parade was and the absolutely horrible food they feed us afterwards.
   
3. I love to knit. My grandmother taught me when I was five, I did it a little as a kid and picked it up again in my 30's. I don't like knitting sweaters, however, because I get bored by the time I'm half way through.
   
4. I absolutely love W.E.B. Griffin novels. I read and re-read at least one series a year. I think my favorite is The Corps.
   
5. I have absolutely no music talent whatsoever. None. Can't sing. Took piano lessons so long ago that I can't even read music anymore. I do appreciate it however, and would love to learn to play the violin or guitar one day. I listen to lots of music however, and I'm probably the only person in America who doesn't own an MP3 player or an iPod.
   
6. I may teach science but I'm also a huge fan of history of well. I think hubby and I own well over 2000 books on various eras of history. I've been reading a lot of Rev War and WWII lately.
   
7. I've lost 20 pounds since school started this year. The holidays are kicking my butt, but hopefully I'll get back on track when the new year starts. Going down two sizes was wonderful.

Hum, who should I tag now??? How about Elementary History Teacher, Princess Lionhead, Ms. Cornelius (check out her post on that dip Jamie Lynn Spears), Mrs. T., Darren, Teacher Girl, and Ms. M. Enjoy!

Gifts for Angels, Hot Cocoa, and Horns!

It's actually been, amazingly, a pretty good week. Perhaps it was because the kids, for whatever reason, lost their minds last week. When The Principal tells you that it's been the sort of week where she wanted to toss her purse up on her arm and walk out the building, you know it's a bad week. In between the 13 eighth grade girls who got busted with slam books (the contents of which were described as "disgusting beyond belief"), the bipolar student who threatened suicide and attempted to run away, and the chaos of the holidays and basketball season, it was a doozy. Which is why this week, which was oddly calm, was so nice.

A few weeks ago my third period (which is also my advisory class), decided that they wanted to adopt one of our angel families. Angel families are the families that we help out at the holidays with Christmas gifts and food; they all have at least one member of the family that attends our school. Every year the student council, various clubs, the PTO, the faculty and staff, local churches and other groups put together Christmas for well over 100 families. It is quite an undertaking, but the amount of good that it does for the community is beyond measure. In any case, I was talking up the canned food drive when some of the kids said they wanted to bring in cans but they really wanted to have a family to shop for. We had a pretty serious discussion about commitment, (I wasn't going to get stuck holding the bag, in other words), and they voted and decided they really wanted to do it.

To say I was impressed with these kids is an understatement.

I went to guidance and got our family, which had three boys, ages 7, 10 and 14. We knew their first names, sizes, and wishes. I sent out a letter to the parents to let them know what the kids were doing, and stressing that even a single dollar would be welcome. (I had noticed that at least two of my students in that class were actually members of Angel Families themselves.) The toys, clothes, and gift cards began to arrive and this week we spent two days wrapping them all up. I couldn't believe it! We had over 30 packages for our family! It was amazing! The kids, who can't wrap much better than I can, had a blast, and we all trooped over to guidance to deliver our packages. It was nice to hear the kids' conversations this week as they talked about buying presents for other people, and not just conversations about what they wanted. We had a fun discussion on how good it feels to do something for other people, and many of them agreed that they tended to be a bit selfish. They did good.

We had pizza and a movie for the Military Support Group this week where, in addition to pizza, we offered a shoulder to one girl whose boyfriend had broken up with her that day. I loved seeing these kids, who all have a parent deployed, rally around her and help boost her up and get over the sobbing. Halfway through the afternoon she was giggling, eating pizza, and playing with a Rubik's cube. Mamma's Girl was there, and was beaming as she'd heard from mom earlier that week. Another girl got a wake up call that morning and it was her Daddy who she hadn't heard from in three months. She said it was the best day ever and the pizza was just icing on the cake!

The Christmas Store was open again this year although it may be the last year. Our very active PTO mothers are moving on to High School this next fall and there doesn't appear to be any go-getters to fill their shoes. Stocking the Christmas Store is a lot of work and requires a lot of manpower (to go to the clearance sales and buy the stuff at dirt low prices, wrap it up so it looks nice, and to man the store), plus storage. It's such a great thing for the kids, however, and many of them would come up to me with a dollar in their hand and ask permission to go to the Christmas store. Talk about empowering.

Today was a half day which can be hell on earth. It was, however, the nicest day before break we've ever had. For one, we had a lot of kids absent. I think because Christmas is during the beginning of the week, rather than the end, that many people headed out of town early. Usually we have a few absent, but today we had a lot. I think maybe ten kids showed up in my homeroom (then again, I have one suspended, one in alternative school, and one in the hospital).

After a locker clean out, the annual student/teacher volleyball game was held and I had volunteered to watch the kids who didn't get to go (admission is two canned food items for the canned food drive). I had color pages, suduko puzzles, and crosswords ready to go. They came in, sat down, colored, listened to Christmas music and were so well-behaved (surprising considering some of the characters that were there) that I was able to get all their tests graded from the day before (and they did well!)

Earlier in the week we had the kids sign up for what they wanted to do during the half day - they had a choice of game room, or three movies. The kids fixed a plate of food (many had brought in bags of chips and cookies) and went to their assigned room. They did great. They were well behaved, didn't spill anything, and weren't running around being pills. I had bought hot chocolate mix the other night (on sale for a dollar!) and made some using the microwave in my room (we had some team money to use up or lose so we bought a frig and microwave; it's in my room so we can use the excuse that I need it for science labs). The kids loved the hot chocolate and sat and watched Shrek 2 (they sang along to the songs and actually recited all the dialog which was a bit cute and freaky at the same time).

Then at the magic hour, 10:45, the bus riders were dismissed and those of us who had walkers in our rooms headed out to wave the buses goodbye. Waving the buses goodbye takes place two times a year - before Christmas break and the last day of school. It is one of my favorite traditions, and we got to introduce it to our new teachers this year. Mrs. Language loved it - she had never seen anything like it. It really is something...as the buses start to roll out (pretty impressive anyway, considering how many roll by), the drivers lay on the horns and the kids wave at those of us along the sidewalk who are waving back at them and yelling! It's a great way to end the first semester.

And now...two weeks of rest and relaxation!

The Trials and Tribulations of Technology

One of the first things I learned when I stumbled into the world of education (after a stint in the world of corporations) was that when you have a 42 year old building and 21st century technology, things don't always work.

And that's being nice.

The District is building a lot of new buildings, due to our regional population explosion, and all these new buildings come with what they term Model Classrooms. They're awesome. They have document readers, sound systems, DVD players, big fancy screens, you name it. These work wonderfully in the new buildings because the buildings are designed to handle this equipment. Last year I was one of ten teachers in our building to get a Model Classroom (because I happen to be one of the ten teachers that was considered a "tech head" by the administration). This meant that they had to fit all this fancy technology in a room that not only wasn't really wired well, but wasn't even square.

When I came back to my room that August, I discovered that all the wires and hook-ups for the Model Classroom were on one wall, and all my network wires and hubs were on another wall. This is not an ideal situation. No one has ever been able to tell me why this was done this way and everyone that walks into the room, and sees this comments on how "this doesn't make any sense." This meant that my phone and printer were on one side of the room, but my computer and document reader were on another side of the room. In addition, the only way I could get my computer hooked up to the network, was via an airport.

I put in a work order to have a network cord run through the ceiling and dropped down next to the Model Classroom wiring so I could hard wire my computer. I was told by our tech person (who shared us with 3 other buildings so you saw her maybe once a week) that "there' s no way I'm messing with that Model Classroom stuff because I don't know anything about it." Not the answer I needed. I would put in a work order every month or so and was always told that "we don't mess with that Model Classroom stuff, we'll have to contact the vendor." And it never happened.

I ran all of last year on an airport which worked okay (not great, but okay) because I had a Mac computer. It was an Apple airport. They seemed to communicate fairly well. The lab I tended to use was all Macs, so there wasn't any huge problem. Mild problems, yes, but major, no.

And then we got a new Big Wig in Technology and it was decided that we needed to be weened off of Macs and go to Windows systems and all of a sudden there were Dell computers everywhere. Our team got a lab assigned to us (which means one lab for 6 people as we share it with a special ed teacher) and it was a Dell, so when some of us with old computers were issued new ones, we could go with Dells or Macs, our choice. Mr. Social Studies and I, who were both used to Windows systems, went with the Dells. We quickly learned that most of our technology staff knew nothing about Windows operating systems or Dell computers, so we were left hanging quite a bit of the time. Not a good situation. About the only good thing I noticed was that our former tech rep apparently refused to work on Dells as well and was no longer with the District.

Keep in mind this is the same technology department who told us not to plug anything in at the beginning of the year because they'd send around "experts" to help us...and they screwed up the network.

It rapidly became apparent that running these Dell computers off of an Apple airport didn't work very well at all. Getting an internet connection was tricky in the first place, and then it tended to drop off several times during a basic 45-minute class period. This drives the kids absolutely nuts. They'd be working on something like Study Island (which is an awesome program) and they'd be in the middle of a game and they'd lose their connections. When you only have 45 minutes to do something, and you spend well over half of that trouble-shooting technology, even the kids tend to not want to use the computers. We were told by the Tech Department that we needed Cisco routers and they were on order and they were coming.

In the meantime, I was having major computer issues with my Dell. Because I was still running off an airport I was losing connections every period. My email wouldn't work. I couldn't use some of my favorite websites that I teach with, like Brainpop because the connection would be so weak, even though the airport was in my room. In order to get anything to work, I had to reboot my computer at least once a period, sometimes twice. And, yet again, I was putting in work orders to get a network cable run through the ceiling and dropped down to where I have to have my computer station because of the Model Classroom wiring. This time I actually had new tech reps who said it could be done, but it had to be done by an outside vendor and they'd put me on the list.

And then they'd close my work order saying the work was completed.

And no one ever came and fixed the problem.

So, I did another work order. And they'd close it. And another, and they'd close it. (See the pattern here?). One of them finally told me to stop doing the work orders because I was "on the list." I found out from Mrs. Talladega, who teaches our technology kids (groups of students who do some computer repairs and maintenance in the building and who, in my opinion, know quite a bit more than the tech reps actually hired by the District) that the reason they kept closing my work order was because they get in trouble when there's one there for more than 5 days. Considering I've been issuing work orders on this same problem since August of 06, I'm sure they weren't happy. Mrs. Talladega had seen all my work orders (she reviews them to see if we can solve it in-house or bump it up to District) and she was as frustrated with the situation as I was.

Finally, last week, I lost it. I couldn't show a Brainpop video for a review, I couldn't get my emails (was expecting one from a parent that was pretty important), and I had just had it. I sent Mrs. Talladega an email telling her to find a 40 foot network cord and I'd wire the damn thing myself.

The next morning I arrive at 6:15 to find the Guidance Goober (the biggest computer geek head I know) in my room, running an network cable through the ceiling for me.

"I got sick and tired of waiting for the Technology Department to do this, so I'm doing it myself, even though we aren't supposed to," he said. He had me hooked up and running by the time the kids rolled in that morning, and now I even have a phone on my desk (and not across the room). I have a good connection. I haven't had to reboot my computer a single time. I can show a Brainpop.

The Guidance Goober is a treasure. I know he's frustrated by the limitations we currently have with technology as we've both discussed blogging and wikis for the kids which is something we'd like to do in the future once we have the capability. He's actually testing out some things along these lines (on his own, mind you) and hopefully we'll be able to get something in place soon. Of course, my kids, as long as we don't have the Cisco routers which are supposed to solve all the world's problems, will still have the same connection issues I had with the airports, so I guess it's all a moot point until we can actually connect. It's frustrating.

Mrs. Talladega, The Guidance Goober, and I, however, have a little game going. We're placing bets on when the District tech people get to their "list" and actually come out to wire my room. I'm guessing April.

Just How Many Points is Breathing Worth?

Up until last year Mrs. Eagle, Mrs. Robin and I had the kids do a model during our cell unit. This involved making a model of a plant or animal cell out of any material the kid desired, doing a presentation, and getting a grade. For most students this was an easy 100 point assignment as they didn't have to memorize anything for a test, and they could display their creativity. We had some fantastic projects over the years and the kids, for the most part, looked forward to it.

However, there were some problems. Storage of the projects was an issue. There just isn't room in my room, or any other room, to store 100-plus projects. Kids who road the bus often had trouble getting projects to school (although I've had some creative kids actually use a tennis ball as the basis of their model and they simply tucked them into their backpacks). Many of my low-income kids used the lack of money as an excuse not to do the project since they couldn't buy supplies. I didn't consider this a valid excuse as I had such a student do his out of things he scrounged out of the wastepaper baskets at school - paper clips, a paper plate, and foil - and it was one of the best projects I ever saw. However, when we noticed that more and more parents were actually doing the projects, and not the kids, we decided we'd had enough.

It's amazing how annoyed parents get when they don't get an A on an assignment they obviously did for their kid. My favorite comment from a kid regarding this was "I told my mom the cell didn't have two nuclei, but she wouldn't listen to me." Mom didn't get an A, obviously.

We have since modified our out-of-class project assignment to an in-class project assignment. This way no one can use the "we don't have money" excuse to avoid it, the parents aren't doing it, and we can get a better idea of what our students actually know regarding cells. We feel that it's just a much better way to assess. We have them put together a four-part booklet on cells which includes a cover page and title, colored and labeled drawings of a plant cell and an animal cell, a vocabulary page which lists the organelles, their definition, their function, and an analogy for each organelle ("A mitochondria is like a power plant"), and then they go through magazines and find pictures of things that represent the organelles (a picture of a fireplace for the mitochondria, for example). We provide the construction paper, the drawing paper, the crayons, the glue, the magazines, the scissors. We also gave them three full class periods to complete their project and turn it in. Those that didn't finish in the three days had the option to finish at home and turn it in the next day.

Out of 110 kids, I had 28 that did not turn in a single thing.

Nothing. At. All.

According to the rubric, if they had turned in a scrap of paper with their name, class period, and date on it, they would have received points.

I didn't even get that from these 28 kids.

This absolutely freaking blows my mind. How in the world can you sit in a class for three solid days and have absolutely nothing, nothing at all, to show for it?

By the time I had finished grading the projects I was incensed. On Monday I printed out a progress report for a typical C student (removing all identifying information of course) and showed the kids the overall grade if this student had earned an 85 on the project. It was a respectable 82%. I then showed the same progress report if the student had turned in nothing and earned a zero. The grade dropped to a 62% which is quite a bit below our passing grade of 70%. They were silent. Some actually seemed surprised that choosing not to do a 100 point project would affect their grade. (What in the hell did they think it would do?) I told them that I could not believe that they sat in that room for three days and managed to do absolutely nothing. I had been in the room, as was Mr. T the student teacher, and witnessed them all working on their projects but obviously 28 of them didn't feel it was worth the effort to turn them in.

I asked them point blank (very quietly which scares the hell out of them because when I'm quiet, I'm usually pretty mad) what in the world they did for three days that they had nothing to show for it. At this point most of the students were staring intently at their desks to avoid eye contact. Only one student in five periods had the guts to raise his hand to answer my question.

"We were probably goofing off and not doing what we were supposed to do," he said.

Ya think?

I gave them until tomorrow to turn in their project for half credit. Grades are due and I'm cutting them off.

As of today, Thursday, not one has managed to turn in their project. If Santa brings these kids anything, let it be a work ethic.

Post script - Mrs. Eagle and I did a brief check of project turn-in percentages when we did the outside "do a model anyway you want" project, and the do it in class project. Despite the 28 that chose not to turn anything in, we have a higher turn in percentage than we did previously. Sad. On some of our other projects, where the kids get choices as some people mentioned, the turn in isn't any better. We do a lot of projects where kids get a chance to present the information in a format of their choice, and most of them chose to do a poster or, at the most, a PowerPoint. Despite giving them the option of doing a video or a website, none of us have ever had a student chose these options. Perhaps if we had video equipment at school (heck, I don't even own my own video camera) and a computer lab they could use on their own time, it might change. Hard to say. Regardless, even when given choices they are choosing not to do the work, perhaps because they know, in the end, it doesn't matter. They'll all get socially promoted anyway.

For the Scientist in all of us.

Mrs. Eagle and I attended our first NSTA (National Science Teacher Association) convention this past week. We had been planning this since August, but still were a bit surprised when we realized that it was this past week because things have been so busy and crazy at school. Sort of like Christmas creeping up on me (I still have pumpkins on my porch.) Mr. T is done with his student teaching so I was thrilled to be back in the classroom with my kids, but disappointed that I only had three days and then I was off again to the conference in Birmingham.

In any case, we got up way early on Thursday and drove down, registered, and started hitting the sessions we'd checked off as being of interest. We had two goals for this conference - 1) get more ideas on literacy and science and 2) get ideas on the new standards we'll be teaching in two years. The state has dramatically changed our standards so we'll be losing matter and weather and gaining genetics, rocks, minerals and some earth science, and simple machines. We'll also be looking at a new textbook beginning next year so we wanted to see what was out there currently.

The sessions were, for the most part, exactly what we needed. I can honestly say that we brought away at least one good idea (often more) from each session we attended with the exception of one that was geared a lot more towards high school teachers. Some of the vendor sponsored sessions were exactly what we needed as they highlighted products we weren't currently familiar with.

And of course all the free stuff was pretty cool too.

Mrs. Eagle won a $50 forensic lab kit. I didn't win anything but we were given copies of new textbooks, t-shirts, rock sets, cotton seeds, and more. In fact, there are about 3 huge bags in the trunk of my car with all the goodies that were given out to the folks at the conference. Of course we also shopped quite a bit (who can resist a stuffed Einstein doll?) and picked up some books on simple machines, minerals, famous scientists, and more.

We noticed that one of the trends many of the book publishers were featuring were modules, rather than textbooks. We actually liked this idea because most textbooks are geared towards a single branch of science. For example, most states consider seventh grade the year that life science is taught so there's lots of life science books geared towards this grade. However, as you probably figured out, we teach a little of this, a little of that, and finding a book that is a perfect fit is a pain. However, these modules would work out really well. Each grade level could use the books in the set that works for them. We'll have to see if this idea flies when we actually go through the textbook adoption process next year.

In any case, we arrived back home on Saturday afternoon. I have a ton of laundry to do, I haven't read blogs in a week, Christmas gifts to wrap and get ready to mail out, plus cell projects to grade.

And I can't wait to see the note from my sub!