New Adventures this past week

Well, I’ve had a lot of developments since I last posted to this blog.

1. The school accreditation team came to visit my school. And of course my school put on the dog and pony show. I was really prepared for them to come and watch my classes and somewhat excited about it. They asked us not to give tests and quizzes as planned, but to have a “best practices” lesson going on. My law class was conducting a mock trial—3rd period’s blew up in my face. And World History had a short lecture, followed by a game of bingo and Q & A on white boards. I am really disappointed that they didn’t come to my World History class. They would have gotten a kick out of it. I asked one of my students if they had come to any of their classes. I was told “the lady came in walked around, look around and was only there for about 2 minutes.” So now I am asking myself what was the purpose of the dog and pony show. I feel like we were asked to wear black, over prepare and do all of this other non sense that had no effect on what the school accreditation team was doing. They spent most of their time meeting with parents, the primary team and students and simply walked around the school to get a gist of what the school was like. Next time I’ll know better.

My classroom was completely redecorated and organized for this thing. The janitors even commented on how much trash I had thrown out and how clean it actually was. They said that I had cleaned off my desk so well. It no longer even looked like a teacher’s desk. I guess I’ll have to take pictures to show you how it all came out. I even decorated the outside halls with student quality work. My students like it. One of my students said “ I have two projects up.” I laughed at that. She was excited to have her work up. I asked about it, “don’t I put student’s work up all the time?” She agreed that I did, but not all of it up at once. I guess high school students still enjoy having their work on the wall. Another student commented that my classroom was the best looking. They stated that my classroom was so colorful--made me think I’d over did it. But what really excited me was that I had that another teacher commented on my work. I hung up the children’s “magazine cover project” on the front door of the classroom. The teacher commented that it was really nice and it looked good. I thanked her for the compliment. She’s a veteran teacher of more than 20 years.


2. I was told that I’d be teaching African American history next year. I am really excited about this. They are sending me to a week long (paid) training. . . YIPEEE. And its with Darlene Clark Hines. She is an AWESOME historian, I read some of her work when I was in undergrad—and I didn’t sell the books back as I normally would have. (secretly, I hope she will autograph them) However, that means I’ll have to do 3 lesson plans next year. I did that my first year of teaching and it was really difficult AND I was NOT an effective teacher. She told me that other teachers would have the same problem b/c our staffing was cut. I will do my best to work with whatever they give me, but I will not be doing a good job, unless they let me know what the third subject is before school is out, so I can prepare for it—b/c there is no way it can happen during the school term.

3. I’ve started drinking. One of my dearest friends pointed out that its slowly becoming a habit. I notice that some of the teachers at my school are alcoholics and its sooo easy to do when the kids drive you crazy every day. I just needed a way to decompress and go to sleep at night. So a LARGE glass of wine has helped that to happen. I’ve only done this on the weekend. No wine tonight b/c it’s a school night and its also upsetting my stomach.

4. The kids have gotten bold. They are getting the summer is almost here itchies. They say what they want, when they want. The are forgetting procedures and rules easily or have little regard for them. I guess they figure nothing can happen to them now and its true. I had 3 of them leave the same class without permission and when I wrote them up and talked with the discipline principal—he asked me “did you call the parents.” Why should I have to call their parents about this? Leaving the classroom without permission is “the forbidden act” b/c you are no longer under the supervision of an adult. Seniors have become disrespectful—urrrggghhhh working with them is such a chore sometime. They have the attitude of “I’m grown” Okay, I’ve said enough today. I’ll pick up on more of this later.