On Aging

I don't often think myself old... even when my daughter was getting married, or both older daughters graduating from college / grad school in the same month, but occasionally it hits me in the face, like the other day.

I meet weekly with a small group of teachers who have many of the same students I have, to talk about issues we may be having with those students, and whether any of us have found good methods of dealing with those issues. The leader of this group is a history teacher who I've come to respect for her good insights and wise perspective. She mentioned her birthday was coming up. Someone asked which one. She answered she'd be 25. "My god," I realized. "I have a daughter older than you."

Makin' Copies.

New rule, starting Jan 4: we've hired someone to make the copies for us - we're no longer allowed to make our own - and we have to submit the request 48 hours in advance. And we're limited to 1,000 copies per month. Of course, given that I have yet to have a worksheet ready for one of my courses more than about 6 hours in advance of the course, I'm unlikely to need the 1,000 copies.

I'm pretty sure this rule will go away very quickly, given that virtually every teacher in the school is going to go nuts the first time they need a worksheet or an article or whatever copied for their class the next day. That said, it's going to be a right regular pain in the class between now and then.

The 1,000 copies per month thing sounds like kind of a lot, but keep in mind -- I don't have textbooks. So if I want to assign homework, particularly on something like polyhedra (which no one can draw freehand), I have to produce a worksheet. That's 80 copies each day I assign homework. If I give a quiz or test, it's another 160 copies over 2 days. Which means I can give 12 homework / quiz / test pages per month, or about 1 per week, since I only meet with the same kids every other day. God forbid I should give a 2 page test or homework assignment.

Interesting Stuff

I gotta get to bed, so this is going to be short, but with any luck, I'll come back and edit it after the state visit on Wednesday.

I prepared extensively for a geometry lesson, with multiple handouts and lots of thought put into how to step the kids through a multi-step process that was going to be important for them to be able to get through.

First period is a disaster. (It starts with a kid who won't surrender her phone, forcing me to call security to escort her to the administrator's office). Virtually no one is paying attention, and the ones who are, are grousing about not understanding, my going too fast, etc. I can't get anyone in the room to focus on the work and get through the step-by-step process.

Second period... same process, same preamble regarding the work, etc. It goes incredibly well, the group all gets it, and we whip through several examples and extra problems with time to spare.

Third period was in between, but generally positive.

Why? The 1st period class has a personality, driven by a few students but contributed to by many. And that personality is not good for their education or my sanity. More than half the students are flunking, and one reason I prepared the lesson I did today was to give them a chance for an easy, good grade based on attempting the classwork. All it actually did was further separate the ones who are flunking (none of whom even attempted to complete the work) from the ones who are not (virtually all of whom completed the work).

Apropos of Nothing

Because I'm a new teacher, my principal is supposed to, in the first 45 days, have a pre-observation interview with me, observe me in the classroom, and have a post-observation interview, after which I generate a plan for what I'm going to work on. He sent a note out a couple of weeks ago to me and a few other teachers to stop by his office THAT DAY, as early in the day as possible, to have the first meeting. I stopped him in the hall and we scheduled the meeting for the following day at 1 PM. I sat alone in his office until 1:10, at which time he walked in, asked "Are we supposed to have a meeting?" and told me he had a 1 PM observation of someone else he had to do. I left, saying that he should call me when he wants to reschedule. I haven't heard from him. Of note, we're now approximately 60 days into the year.

Meanwhile, he actually did an observation of me when the state poobahs were in town (don't know why), but I've gotten no feedback from him about it, and no paperwork of any kind regarding it.

My father

My father died yesterday.

Most of the traits I believe myself to have that I like are inheritances from him, including his facility for math, his quick wit and his sharp sense of humor. Every time I come up with some elaborate hoax to perpetrate on a co-worker or create some very personalized toy or trinket to give to a friend, I think of the similar things he did in the years I was growing up. I claimed never to have forgiven him for taking my "Gulf No-Knocks" horseshoes (a gas station giveaway back in the days they fought for your business with promotional items) when I was eight, promising to replace them the next time he bought gas, not realizing the promotion had ended. Secretly, though, I thought it was kind of cool he'd used the horseshoes as part of some gag on a friend at the office.

We weren't as close as I would like for a father and child to be. I don't know when, exactly, we stopped trying, but we did. I know he was disappointed with many of the choices I made throughout my adult life, and I was disappointed he wasn't more accepting of them, or at least more accepting of me despite the choices. I will undoubtedly err in the opposite direction with my own children, and their remembrances of me will be colored by their disappointment I didn't provide more guidance in their lives. I can live with that.

A minister came into his room at the hospice yesterday while my mother and I were there and asked us what we would like to pray for, for him. I chose peace. I don't believe he found much peace during his life, and it would be good if he could find some in death.

So, my father is dead. May he rest in peace.

Mea Culpa

So I'm getting irritated with my friends and family who haven't been posting to their blogs (what am I supposed to do when I should be doing lesson plans if you haven't updated your blog recently?) and I'm at least as guilty as they are. So here's a blog post.

Topics I should cover soon...

The state visit to each of the turnaround schools.
New teacher hired, and some kids moved from everyone's geometry classes into his.
"Unpacking" our data to differentiate our instruction.
The note sent to all new teachers, plus all teachers who are on double secret probation.
Parents wanting grade recovery.

we'll see...

First Quarter Score

Well, the home team's losing, but they looked better as the quarter went on, and there's hope they'll survive to the end of the game.

The state poobahs are coming in next week to do a full-school review, and they will presumably be spending time in each classroom. This has me a little concerned, but my concern is nothing compared to the hysteria this has caused with the administration. Which of course has trickled (more like "gushed," really) down to all the teachers. We have been given marching orders on at least a dozen things, all of which are "non-negotiable," and been told in no uncertain terms that we're all replacable, and that if we don't feel like meeting some of these demands, or we feel as if we don't have time, then we should find a new job where the demands won't be so heavy. Gee, I don't know if I could find another job that pays this well, in such a nuturing environment, where the physical space was so inviting and I was so well appreciated by both my bosses and my subordinates.

(It occurs to me I haven't talked about the physical space... the high school itself... with the exception of a brief mention of my portable classroom. Turns out I'm in the lap of luxury out in the boondocks. The classrooms in the main school are, frankly, abysmal. Mine smells kind of moldy, but at least it's big enough so that it doesn't feel like a prison cell with 35 people in it.)

So anyway, all of the teachers are at the breaking point -- at least 4 of them have been at meetings or received memos that left them in tears. We got a new set of ludicrous demands today, adding to an already ridiculously over-filled workload. Personally, my plan is to do what I can in the 10 or so hours per day I'm willing to devote to work, and deal with the wrath that will befall me when not enough of the "non-negotiables" are completed. For me, it's the only way to stay sane, and not be angry all the time. I expend enough energy trying to figure out how to teach without spending all of the rest of it trying to achieve the impossible. I imagine the rhetoric will be toned down some after the state leaves, although if (when, really) we get a bad report, we'll undoubtedly get a new round of "non-negotiables."