What a ride!

Wow! This year teaching went by faster than the first. Maybe it’s because I knew more about what I was doing than during my rookie year. A lot certainly has changed. One thing that hasn’t though is the last six weeks of school. Most seniors don’t care any more, and the breaks in the schedule (Spring Break, EOCT, AP testing, etc.) make it harder to keep the students focused and get things accomplished. It’s also the end of NTI, and while I won’t miss the coursework, I will miss getting together every week. I learned something from everyone, and I hope that we all stay in touch.

Teaching Schedule

Next week I’ll probably be notified what my teaching schedule will be next year. I already have a pretty good idea that I’ll probably have one combined class with mixed subjects (not different levels of the same subject). I’ve already been told that since my numbers are down that I will probably have to teach two Computer Applications classes so that I can get paid for full time. My complaint is this… we have a six period day, and regular full time teachers teach five periods and have a planning period. It looks like next year I’ll be teaching five periods, but I’ll have to prepare for six classes, since two of the classes are in the same room during the same period. Am I the only one who thinks that’s unfair? I’ve expressed this concern to the powers that be, but it falls on deaf ears. It’s all about how many periods you teach, and that’s it.

Spring Break is supposed to be about relaxing

This week is Spring Break for us, and that’s a good thing because it gives me some time to recuperate. I was enjoying a relaxing week, and then on Wednesday morning my lower back went completely out, and I’ve spent every day since trying to find a comfortable position to sit down or lay in (standing and walking is painful and very difficult). It’s a little better, but it’s also extremely frustrating, and Monday is right around the corner. Assuming that I’m in the classroom on Monday it will be interesting to see how the students react to my limited mobility. I’m hoping that they won’t try to take advantage of me, but one never really knows. At least I can monitor their computer behavior from my workstation. Anyway, I hope everyone else who had their break this week had a fantastic time.

The easy way out?

What do I write about this week? It’s been tough coming up with a topic because the week was for the most part uneventful. Considering that Spring Break is next week the students behaved themselves fairly well (although as the weather gets warmer the dress code takes quite a beating). I must admit that I gave myself a little bit of a head start though. I thought back to last year and remembered that the kids were pretty much done paying attention by mid-week, so I showed a movie this week on Thursday and Friday. One teacher made a comment to me that showing a movie was “cheating” and taking the easy way out. I started to feel a little guilty, but later I overheard that same teacher complaining that his students were “out of control” and being disruptive in class. I didn’t feel so bad after I heard that.

I know that the kids in our school are not unique in this regard. Did any of you try something different or unusual this week to get the kids attention? I’m always on the lookout for new and interesting ideas.

Lesson learned

I had an interesting experience this week that reminded me just how much trouble teachers can get into if they’re not careful. At our school, teachers that don’t have a 4th period class have to do lunch duty. My job is to keep watch over the kids who have been assigned to lunch detention, which is called the “Penalty Box” and is held in a large furniture storage room next to the cafeteria. Most students have to serve five days, and there is a list of rules that they must follow. We’ve had some repeat offenders, but usually once they get done with their week I don’t see them again.

On Wednesday I had just one female student, and it was her first day. She was polite and quiet, but not what I would call shy. We went into the detention room and I told her to pick a seat. I asked her what her name was and if she knew what the rules were. She gave me her name, told me that she had a sheet of paper with the rules on it and that she had been assigned three days. She took out her lunch and some study materials and the rest of the lunch period passed in silence (students are not allowed to talk). When the bell rang at the end of lunch she gathered her things and left.

The next day I received an email from the assistant principal who had assigned the student to the Penalty Box. She wrote that I needed to switch lunch duty assignments on Thursday and Friday with another teacher, who happened to be female. I thought it was a little odd but said ok, fine with me. After lunch on Thursday I caught up with the AP and asked her what was going on and also asked if she had saved me from a possibly bad situation. She said yes and then told me the story.

It turns out that after school on Wednesday the student went home and told her mom that she had been forced to spend lunch in a smelly storage room alone with a man. Of course, the mother called the school to complain. I certainly didn’t like the sound of that, but the AP told me that the situation had been handled and the teacher switch was all that was needed.
I was relieved that it was over but also realized again that we need to be careful and keep ourselves out of trouble.

Rules? What rules?

Tuesday afternoon near the end of my 5th period class, one of my seniors stood up and told me that he needed the hall pass. I asked him why, and he said that he needed to get a drink of water so that he could take his prescription medicine. I saw him holding a prescription bottle and reminded him that he wasn’t allowed to be carrying medication around with him. He replied by saying that it was time to take his medicine and walked out the door. He returned in a matter of moments, and then the bell rang. Since I don’t have a 6th period class I walked down to the clinic to talk to the nurse. I told her what happened and she immediately picked up the phone and called the assistant principal that the student was assigned to. After telling him what had transpired, he then called the student out of 6th period up to the office.

When I saw the student the next day, he gave me very angry looks and would not speak to me. I spoke to the assistant principal and he said that the student told him that I was picking on him. When I ran what happened by a couple of other teachers, they indicated that they probably would have let it go and not referred the student to the office. WHAT???? We’re not talking about breaking a food rule or something trivial. This is state law.

It’s frustrating; students don’t like the rules or think they’re stupid so they thumb their noses at them and ignore them. For whatever reason, many teachers don’t want to enforce the school rules and just look the other way. Then when I enforce the rules, all I hear is, “all my other teachers let me do it.” I never used to believe that, but now I’m starting to. Maybe teachers just don’t want to “be the bad guy” or be perceived as un-cool. Maybe some of them just don’t care anymore. For my part, I’ve tried to teach the kids about taking responsibility for themselves and their actions, but I feel like I’m fighting a losing battle.

Long week

I’m not sure how this entry will turn out, because my brain is fried. I picked up a stomach bug early in the week, had training on Thursday for something that I had been volunteered for, and Friday was spent just trying to recover from the sub who stood in for me while I was downtown. On a scale of 1 to 10 I give this last week a 5 (probably too generous).

Speaking of substitutes, I have to say that I was spoiled last year. There was a guy I was introduced to who was new to subbing. He was available to sub for me most of the times I was absent for duty leave. He was fantastic. He kept the kids in line without being overbearing, and he left copious notes and fantastic feedback no matter what I had left him for lesson plans. I would come back after my absence and have a very good idea what had transpired in my classes while I was gone.

Unfortunately for me (and everyone else he substituted for), he found a permanent teaching position and is no longer available, so I’ve had to dip into the pool. I’ve had a number of different people substitute for me this year, but the result is always the same. I leave personal notes for the sub requesting feedback (having a pretty good idea that certain behavior will occur while I’m gone) but receive almost nothing. At the most I get comments like “everyone was good,” or “I had a good day.” My favorite was one from a couple of weeks ago. There was one “sentence” written across my substitute teacher feedback form that said, “your kids were awesome!” From that I should have been able to conclude that things couldn’t have gone better.

The day I come back I usually query some of my students about how things went. It turned out that in this particular case, the kids weren't what I would have called "aswsome." Some students were sleeping; some had food, and there were a couple of other things. But no mention of any of these things by the sub. It’s very frustrating. I’ve asked around to get names of subs who leave good feedback, but I’m finding out that the sub I had last year who was so good is the exception rather than the norm.

I know that substitutes don’t have the easiest job, but by not telling the whole truth to the absent teacher I wonder who they’re trying to score points with (me or the students). I’ve never been a substitute teacher, so I can’t really answer that question.

What a way to end the week...

I had a frustrating situation happen in my 5th period class this afternoon. It gave me a chance to exercise some of the classroom management techniques that I learned in NTI, but I still wish it hadn’t of happened. Not long after class started, I noticed that one of my students seemed to be eating something. I went over, and he admitted that he was eating a cookie. When I asked him for the rest of it, he didn’t say anything and continued on with his work. I asked him for it again, and he put the cookie in his pocket and said “no” he would not throw it away. At that point I asked him to step out into the hallway with me. I couldn’t believe that he was making such a big deal out of this, but I obviously couldn’t let it go. Every time this has happened before with other students they just throw whatever it is away and it’s over with. Out in the hallway he would not look at me. When I asked him what was going on he told me that he was hungry, that he paid for the cookie and again insisted that he wouldn’t throw it away. I asked him if it was worth it over a cookie, he said he didn’t care if he got detention. At that point I knew we were at a stalemate, so I told him I wasn’t going to argue with him, but that there would be consequences. We went back into the classroom, and he went back to his station. The rest of the period passed uneventfully.

As the students were leaving I told him that on Monday we would talk about what happened. Here’s the tough part. He’s an average student who admittedly doesn’t want to do the work in my class. It wasn’t what he thought it was going to be. Despite that, he’s been doing well lately and we’ve had a reasonably good rapport after a somewhat rocky start. I don’t want him to go back to being the student he was by overdoing the punishment, but I can’t do too little and risk having more problems in the class.

I talked to one of my teacher friends here, and I told him I thought that two private detentions would suffice (one for food and one for disrespect), along with his class ethics grade taking a hit. He suggested three private detentions. The student rides the bus, so it would inconvenience his parents no matter what. I would rather handle this myself and not involve the administration, but am throwing this out to you all. Any suggestions? I need help with this one.

p.s. I have not contacted the parents yet and am not sure whether I should do so now or wait until after I talk to the student on Monday. I have no idea what reaction I will get from the parents.

Fixing old exams

I was giving a test this week in one of my classes, and when I pulled out the test to make copies I looked over it and realized that it needed major reconstructive surgery. I thought back to the things we’ve been learning in class and began the task of fixing the problems, which were numerous:
· Multiple blanks in the stem of some completion questions
· Blanks in the middle of the stem of completion questions
· Not using capital letters for multiple choice alternatives
· Varying length in the multiple choice alternatives
· Using simple True/False instead of modified
· Inconsistent use of columns for multiple choice questions
· Unbalanced coverage of material

It took a while to fix everything, and when I was finished I compared the old with the new and wanted to apologize to the students who had to take the original exam. I proceeded to administer the new test to my students the next day, and after grading them all I got some interesting results:
· Reduction in high missed questions
· A higher class average on the test than previous classes
· Overall, students took less time to complete the exam
· Students were marking questions False for the wrong reasons, which tells me that I need to revisit and clarify some material

Now I need to start fixing the rest of my exams, but the students will probably appreciate it.

Promoting CTE

Our CTE department did an interesting thing this morning. We invited all the teachers, counselors and administrators to participate in a Scavenger Hunt and Breakfast. Participants were given a list of room numbers and questions. The idea was to go to each room and find the answer for the question associated with that room. Each CTE teacher created some sort of display and clues that would help participants answer the question for their room. At the end of it all, everyone gathered in the Family & Consumer Science room for breakfast.

It was fun, and we all thought it was a neat way to help promote CTE with the staff and bring visibility to our programs. I set up a computer with the side panels removed, and different computer components on the table next to it. I also prepared a display that explained the purpose of each of the IT courses and gave a clue for the answer to my question.

Although the turnout wasn’t as high as we had hoped for, I think it clarified for those that participated what it is that CTE teachers do. One administrator came in and said, “the kids get to do all this stuff? Cool.”

All in all I think it was a success, and hopefully it will become a yearly tradition. On Monday we’re having an Elective Fair for the students to promote the different electives available from all departments. That should be interesting.

Your mother doesn't work here

This morning I was thinking about what I was going to write in my blog entry this week. I needed something hot to drink, and when I ventured down to the teacher lounge in the cafeteria this morning and looked at the trash left by the students during breakfast I knew what my subject needed to be.

We have a beautiful school, but unfortunately there are many students who couldn’t care less about the mess they make and then leave behind. Every day at breakfast and lunch the students leave their trash behind for the custodians to clean up. When the bell rings they just get up and walk away. It’s disgusting. And that attitude extends out into the hallways, where at any given time you might find candy wrappers, paper, food, and beverage bottles just lying on the floor. Teachers pick the trash up but students just walk on by like it’s not even there. It’s disappointing that the students don’t have more pride and respect for their campus.

I also see it in my classroom. I have trained my students to keep the classroom neat and orderly, but when I was out sick a couple of weeks ago, I returned to find my classroom in disarray. It wasn’t completely trashed, but I was disappointed.

Our administration has tried a number of things to get the students to clean up after themselves, but nothing seems to work effectively. One person I was talking to recently (who travels around to all the schools in the county) said that we have possibly the messiest lunchroom in the county.
No one at our school seems to have the answer. Anyone have any good suggestions?

Anyone have extra time to sell? (you could make a fortune)

Let me say first that I can identify with something in each of the previous posts. There never is enough time to do what you need to do, let alone accomplish the things that you want to. I have lots of ideas in my head but they all take time to plan and implement, but there just aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done.

There are a lot of frustrating things that go along with teaching (along with a lot of good things), but there is one thing in particular that I have to deal with every day in my second period class. This class is a multi-subject class (networking, web design & programming), and because of that I’m obviously not able to teach the class in a traditional way. While this situation presents lots of hurdles to jump over, the one that gets me every day is the flow of my web design class.

Since I have three subjects in the room at the same time, the students have to step up and take more responsibility for their learning than they are used to. They need to take the material that I give them; read and understand it, and implement it in their assignments. While they all have been good about doing that, the problem is that they all move at a different pace. Some of the students are very familiar with the material and move quickly, while the students at the other end move much more slowly and have a harder time grasping the material. Truth be told I could probably spend all day just working with these students, but obviously that’s not fair to the rest of the class. Unfortunately, it’s difficult for most of the students to do any of the work at home because they don’t have the proper software.

I struggle with keeping the students somewhat together. In class we talked about using enrichment activities with the faster moving students while the others catch up. I thought about it and tried floating that out there with some of my students. Most of them were not very interested (unless it meant extra credit). Most of them just want free time to do what they want.

It seems like every day I see the slower progressing students slipping further and further behind. I thought about just reducing the complexity and workload for those students, but finding the time to do that is hard (unless I don’t care about spending time with my family). I guess it’ll work itself out (it usually does).

Rules we all should remember:
Don’t sweat the small stuff
Everything is small stuff