Principals know your students?

I work in a small school, grades 5-8 with about 120 kids average in each grade. The principal of the school must be in his mid 60's while our VP is in his 40's with kids of his own. I would be hard pressed to think that COMBINED they could identify and name a dozen kids in our school. I find this very unfortunate as I work my way towards my masters degree to be a VP. Of course the VP knows the trouble kids and sometimes develops a rapport with them, and the principal probably knows the kids whose parents complain a lot or are on the BOE. It's the nice, quiet, middle of the road kids that are never noticed. I always felt that the accelerated ACE students get special treatment and special trips. All the special ed, classified students get help and special, smaller classes. Where is the B student factor in all this....and what is their name!?

How do you throw away a garbage can?!

Okay, this might be the most random post ever made but it's something that is blowing my mind. I have this old broken garbage can that I want to throw away. It's so broken there are 3 holes in it one long slit and the handle is hanging off the side. Every garbage day I come home from work to see it left on my curb still!! One day I went ahead and left it upside down, nope, still there. Okay, fine, I spray painted GARBAGE on it...big white letters. Well what do you know? They probably think I was just labeling my belongings!! Still here! You dont see me spray painting JEEP on my s.u.v do you? My last resort, I turned the garbage can to the other side and spray painted "TAKE ME" on it. I know it sounds borderline inappropriate but it's all I could fit. Guess what....yup, I still own it. Do you have to leave a note I asked myself. So I wrote a note to the wonderful garbage men, apparently they dont read notes, they just dump whatever is in your can (EVEN IF IT'S AIR) and throw it back on your lawn. HAHA, I laugh out loud, this is becomming comical when I see this thing staring at me from the street when I get home every week. My last resort, I must get violent, NO, not with the garbagemen, with the garbage CAN...I step on it, i kick it, i jump on it, I crush the thing into a small enough piece that I can stick it in ANOTHER GARBAGE CAN....well that'll do it folks, it has been taken away from me, and unforunately the game is over...true story, but THE END!

Interim, Nice work if you can get it

We had a faculty meeting the other day to meet the interim of special services. A man that has held several high ranking positions in our district. He was just approved to work in this capacity for a pay rate of $550 a DAY! I take offense to the idea of interim when there are many young men and women like ourselves with the certification and the desire to work and get our feet wet. How can our district pay these people these salaries when the budget just went down and they cut ALL the Freshmen sports programs. How much does it cost to run those programs...isn't everything we do "for the kids?!?!" Our school building has yet to hire a Media Specialist. Keep in mind i'm in a fairly new school building and the media center is beautiful, and it should be utilized by students everyday, but instead it sits empty except for a few music classes because they've assigned that teacher WAY to many students. Who is accountable for spending when my phys ed department just chipped in $20 each to buy more ink for our printer just so we can make dittos and tests for health class. Awful.

Is curriculum writing REALLY volunteer work

I apoligize for not "blogging" earlier but I guess I was waiting for motivation. Today, I was approached by my vice principal who said that the k-2 cirriculum was in what they call phase 3 which is the writing phase. The two teachers in their respective elementary schools have refused to write and/or volunteer due to their age and their general hatred of helping out anyone. Therefore, here comes the VP coming to see me (26 years old) and my non tenured co-worker in the Phys Ed health dept. He said "well, there's no one to write this so I told the super that you guys would be team players and help us out" My question is, who's job is it really to write curriculum. What if I have no plans to ever teach at that low level. Is volunteer work really optional. All these questions weigh on my mind as I dread the rest of the school year knowing that I have to re-vamp a whole curriculum before June. Health included. During phase 1 and 2 we're just looking at the overall status of the curriculum and in phase 3 we start writing. Phase 3 does earn you the pay rate of writing but what does that come down to per hour. Are we just bailing them out by doing their job? Does the strong arm come down because you're non-tenured? Is volunteer work mandatory!?

CURR Week 3 Curric Action Plan

I've just been pouring thoughts on paper about our rough draft. My district is in the midst of a 5 year curriculum plan...Many believe, however, it's just to save the job of the higher up administration for the next couple years. We've met a couple times as a department but nothing has really come of it. It's unfortunate that they want you to VOLUNTEER to be on these curriculum committees without paying us...faculty meetings are one thing but meeting after school for an hour or two for just some free professional hours, not everyone is jumping at the chance. They (admin) try to make it seem that it should be us that writes it because we'll be the ones teaching it, but many feel that it's us doing their work while they reap the benefits of looking good under a revised curriculum plan.

Just like Fullan has been saying it's tough to deal with the thoughts of change, and you see that with many older faculty members that have their plans set from sept to june. These teachers fear change and it's up to us to know how to accomadate change and make it an easier transition with them. We'll see how my rough draft finishes up, see ya Wed.

CURR 534 Week 2

Week 2's class session dealt a lot with todays society and our perception of it. Many felt to get attention, a child didn't have to be good or have talent, but get in trouble and make a name for him/herself. We felt they didn't care whether or not this "name" or reputation was negative, they just wanted attention any way they could get it. We all agreed that as teachers today we need to be entertaining and hold onto the shortening attention spans of todays youth.

I personally agreed with the fact that justice seems minimal and society as a whole is affraid to hand down a punishment that fits the crime. Speaking of justice, I think back of the article week 1 of class of the poor substitute woman who is going through legal battles because of a small incident that could've been dealt with quickly, quietly and internally. Is what this woman is going through really justice, with all the problems in the world and in this country, this is the person we're going after? It falls under the bureaucracy ideal, nobody wants to be accountable on top so let's blame this woman who gives her time to help us out by watching over children in our school.

Someone also added the quote "I feel betrayed". I can sympathize with this feeling because I feel leadership is at an all time low in administration, atleast in my eyes. I think discipline is huge with kids, but few have the nerve to enforce it, quicker turn an eye than speak a word of correction. What happened to "the buck stops here"...we all need to be accountable for our surroundings and our profession.

What Did I Learn

In third grade I remember learning how to write in cursive. Here I thought that anything cursive at 8 years old got me a time-out and my mouth washed out with soap, who knew the difference. I remember the old strips of letters that used to hang ominously over the chalkboard showing you how to create a certain letter in uppercase and lowercase. It always amazed me how different a letter could look transforming from big to small. One of the first things we needed to practice was how to write our name in cursive. The teacher couldn't be more correct when she said we'd use this skill almost everyday of our adult lives. Even though they are both done in cursive, there is just that huge difference between a signature and an autograph. I haven't found anyone who hasn't practiced their "autograph" in hopes they would someday hand it to an adoring fan. What a fantasy sitting in 3rd grade @ 10:30am on a Tuesday!

I have to say that I wish we were forced to practice cursive writing because I haven't used it in over 15 years. It was supposed to be this great way to cut down on printing time, but I couldn't even go through the alphabet correctly now!