not a team player

right now our teacher teams are working on personalized education plans for each student.

we use our 2 hour PD block in the afternoon for appointments to meet with students and help them set goals for the year. however, many students aren't showing up for their appointment because there is no incentive for them to stay late.

when i threw the question out during monday's meeting as to what we can do to entice the kids to come in, a few teachers had the suggestion of holding their appointments during advisory time instead, and that the teachers who don't have an advisory would surely not mind covering each other's classes so that the appropriate teachers can hold their meetings with the students.

we're talking voluntary, unpaid coverages, every day, for about 2 weeks in a row. HAHAHAHAHA.

the teachers (mostly first and second years) were going on and on about what a great idea this was to get all our student meetings finished in a short time.

i spoke up and said: #1, we were given 2 hours every wednesday for four weeks to do this. if we don't do it during this time, our principal will just pile more work on us to do during this time. so let's figure out how to get these kids in the door and forget about using advisory time. and #2, even if i was paid for every coverage, there is honestly no way i would do it.

one teacher was stunned i said that and started to get on my case. i told him as the dean, i cannot commit to taking on another class every day. the staff members seem to think my "free" periods are for me to frolic around when in fact they are professional periods and i have a ton of work. and truthfully most days i have NO free time to myself. i am pulled into meetings left and right, have to deal with student issues, and have have a ton of paperwork.

i redirected the group towards brainstorming ideas to get the students in. that lasted for 5 minutes when the vocal teachers decided there was no way. they gave up. then one rookie insisted he was going to speak to the principal about paying us for doing it in the morning, like that is going to happen!!!

at which point, a second year teacher muttered under his breath next to me well that's not going to work anyway, as long as *some people* are not going to be team players.

hot damn so i'm not a team player!

i do everything for this job. i'm the dean and the inquiry specialist of the school. i spend every period i'm not teaching working to make everyone else's life easier. i prepare for and run meeting for the staff 2-3 times a week and no, i don't get paid any extra for this. the teachers come to me for everything they need. i'm lucky if between everything i do for the school, i get 20 minutes of downtime a day. so why in the world would i take on an extra period? it's not possible for me at this time.

secondly, the teacher who backhandedly accused me of not being a team player lives a typical brooklyn life. he's in his 30s, single, lives with a roommate, just goes home or chills after work.

my personal life looks like this: i work until 4 or 4:30pm at school. then with my kids in the car i drive my husband to work and then drive home. i get home around 5pm. then at 5:30pm twice a week i go to college. i get home about 10pm. i eat dinner. i lesson plan and grade (since i can barely use my preps for this.) i do laundry for my family and clean. i try to relax a bit. i'm lucky if i get to bed by 1am.

in the morning i need to get my kids ready and out the door. i walk in at 8:00am on the dot. if my paperwork isn't completely overwhelming from the day before, i try to use 20 minutes to get my classroom together and finish up any lesson preparations. then i start my rounds to the different advisories to check for uniform infractions, make announcements, print up necessary detentions, and then rush to my second period class. I CANNOT GIVE UP THIS TIME. the other teachers think it's just fun free time for me. this really pissed me off.

my personal life, i believe, is a lot more stressful than most of the other teachers at my school. but it never stops me from doing my job. and i hands down have more responsibilities at the school than any other teacher. some of them are purely for personal gain (think teaching credit recovery for extra $$$ and advising the music club) but everything else i do, even though i do it for $$$, has a direct benefit for every teacher and is completely a part of me working for the team.

but whatever. maybe i should level with the teacher that pissed me off. i barely have room to breath during the day. i really envy every other teacher, who i see relaxing, sitting at their desks grading, and having lunch when they want. i don't know what more they could expect of me.

oh and i did offer to stop in and help conduct some student appointments but told them i could not be tied down to covering a class. but that wasn't good enough.

it's all about the benjamins

I thought I was insane last year with my per session activities, but this year I'm even more nutso.

I'm definitely feeling it and I'm getting home at 5pm every day as opposed to 3:15 like my first year or 4pm like last year, but I don't mind it. And even the nights I have school at 6pm, I feel just fine. I actually enjoy grad school this year!

I thought I might be burned out from working the summer, but the new freshmen are pretty great as a whole, so I'm managing.

A breakdown of my per session activities is as follows, in hours per week:

Math tutoring class: 2
Algebra credit recovery: 2
Geometry credit recovery: 3
Inquiry specialist: 2
Detention: 2 - 4
Music club supervisor: 1

That's a minimum of 24 hours per paycheck. Plus miscellaneous weekend activities come up from time to time.

Sick money, and good for my resume. But I wonder how long will I last this way...

I had to suspend a freshman today and her mother screamed at me over the phone, defending her daughter. The girl racked up 2 detentions in 2 days (stellar for a first year student) and then stole work from my desk during detention to copy the work and pass off as her own, thereby getting out of detention earlier. Uh academic dishonesty anyone? I didn't even nail her for that; I cut her slack as a first year student and only gave her a level 3 suspension.

But the mother called me worthless and basically pulled a "la la la i'm not listening to you" over the phone and tried to go over my head. i swear i thank god every day for my job and my supportive administration. they always tell me to do what i think is right and back me up on everything.

in other news, my music students learned how to play notes with their left hand today. they just love to show off when the faculty and administrators pop in to listen. and we get visitors every day! everyone who stops in is amazed that these kids, who never have read a note of music in their life, are playing songs after just a week. for the past two years the music classes were never this successful. no one even tried to teach them how to read music; they were told to play by ear. and they never got past mary had a little lamb.

i guess the other music teachers never took the time to teach them the language of music; maybe they didn't believe the kids could learn. but heck yeah they can! and they're awesome! a couple of them want to perform at the end of the year already!

whatever, i can go on and on about how proud i am of these kids. i like teaching math, but music is so interesting and so much more gratifying! for now at least, while it's still new to me:)

A Breath of Fresh Air

WOW I can already tell this will be a much better year than last year.

Firstly I had to jump through some hoops and ask favors of a couple of people, but everything worked out with my college. One of my professors changed my failing grade to a B+ and I am able to retake and replace the grades for the other two courses. I feel so refreshed and motivated.

Secondly, my students seem so different this year. Of course I recognize we're still in the "honeymoon" phase, however I just can tell these students are a totally different crop than last year. They seem more intrinsically motivated and more respectful in general.

Also, I only teach two or three classes every day. I have 2 periods a day off for dean work this year. Plus, there's a second dean now, so the workload is lessened.

And best of all, I only teach two algebra classes, and one MUSIC class!!! i'm teaching the kids how to read music and play piano and they are loving it. i'm loving it, too.

i still have a lot of dean work and per session activities that add stress, but my program is so manageable and my students so wonderful this year, that i just know it's going to be much easier this time around.

recap and moving forward

i ended the year with 56% of my students passing. that's pretty pathetic but I did my best. over 25% of my kids were SPED and the rest were downright low functioning nearly 80% 1s and 2s) so i'm ok with the results.

i just finished up a successful summer school class so I think my stats will go to about 65% passing but i've accepted my low scores either way and am looking forward to meeting the new freshmen in september.

i have a new, interesting schedule for this upcoming year. they reduced my teaching load by another period to do dean work so now i only teach 3 classes. i'm teaching two algebra, and then one music class which i've never done before. it will be a piano lab which i'm nervous about, but it's nice for a change of pace.

but i'm extremely stressed right now. i might lose my license and be kicked out of grad school. i was stupid and didn't follow through with things and got 3 ABS grades. One of them I never resolved, but I handed in the work to the other 2 professors. However both professors never changed my grade and now it's too late. One professor, who still is teaching at the school, has downright refused to return any emails or phone calls and my GPA is horrendous. I also took a class last semester where the professor visited me at my school and he told me I got an A, but it's not on my transcript. Apparently I was on academic probation, so they didn't register me (although the teacher was visiting me so I had no clue this was an issue!) and now I basically wasted the entire semester with that class because I have to retake it.

so i'm on academic probation with 2 semesters left. 2 semesters to take my pre-thesis class, my thesis class, plus retake the 3 ABS classes that turned into Fs and the observation class. There is no way in hell they're going to let me do this and I just don't know what to do! I got a letter in July telling me to speak to the department chairperson, but after calling, emailing, and then visiting in person, I found out she will not be in until the first week of school. The school secretary that was in when I visited told me she thinks they will kick me out.

This is not looking good.

I am really good at what I do, but really bad at school.

I am just going to go down as soon as the chairperson gets back, give it my best shot, and hope for the best. This is really stressing me majorly. I fucked up so badly.

ZOMG 31%

I administered a practice Regent's this past week. It was an actual 3 hour run through that 22 students stayed until 5:30pm to take. The group was a perfect cross section of my school: 3 level 3's, the rest 2's and 1's. 5 student's with IEP's and 2 ELL's. A few repeaters, too. This was not planned, but that's the group that chose to stay after I announced the run through to my students the day before.

I graded the exams on Friday and a whopping 31% passed! And yes, this was with the Regent's curve.

I'm hoping to double this score with 4 instructional days to go.

ZOMG not happening.

I will administer another Regent's this coming week. I hope for 40% passing this time...

i will be teaching geometry

for 2 short weeks, that is.

i filled out my preference sheet and chose to teach algebra again. the current geometry teacher who has seniority chose to teach algebra II, and then geometry as her second choice because she's that sweet and feels comfortable teaching anything. so i will be teaching the same subject for the third time in a row.

however, she opted out of teaching summer school so i've been asked to teach both algebra and geometry in july. we do a super short summer school for two weeks of two hour classes a day. it's good for review, but hardly anything else.

i'm excited to foray into geometry without a year-long commitment. i'm looking forward to wetting my feet a bit and maybe in another year, i'll feel like changing subjects.

My class is now in "Regent's Institute." If they are not there to work hard, I kick them out of my class and then have them come in for 7:15am detention to make up what they missed. So far this has been keeping my students very much in line. I guess having dean power is very helpful, but technically any teacher can adopt this policy. Before I was dean though, I would have never thought of doing anything like that.

I'm a firm believer of NOT kicking kids out and working with each kid to learn, however, at this point in the year we are moving very quickly and working intensely and I feel that no student has the right to take away from an entire class' chance of passing the Regent's.

Along with the assistant principal, I have also put 4 kids on permanent suspension for the rest of the school year. I love the no tolerance attitude. Our 9th graders are taking 3 Regent's, and our 10th graders at least 2 Regent's each so we want to make sure individual classrooms run as smoothly as possible right now.

ok it's 4am, another one of my insomniac nights. must go to sleep.

hit me (with a pie) baby, one more time

the students are making a carnival in june. as part of the fundraising, they're having a pie throwing contest. students will pay $5 to throw a pie at teachers' faces. when surveyed which teachers the students at my school were most willing to pay to throw a pie at, i overwhelmingly came in as #1. yesssssssssssssssss. i hope to raise a ton of money for the school!

in other news i gave a test this week and my students overwhelmingly aced it. 20% of them scored above a 90, up from about 5%. 3 more special ed students passed for their first time ever, too. it's very exciting. my CTT class is trying so hard, it's fantastic. my bad-ass class was still bad ass today, but they learned really well.

i'm just about racing through the curriculum right now since i'm soooo behind, but the kids are going with it. unfortunately, i seem to be out of school more than in school lately, so i've been falling even more behind. the one thing about taking on more responsibility at work is that i have more professional duties to pull me away. this month alone i flew across the country to speak at an international conference, and i also had a network meeting in the city. i know of 3 more days that i will be out in the next 2 weeks, and i'm getting nervous. i'm fairly certain i will not even come close to last year's regent's passing rate, but i'm trying my best.

for the record, i still am a per session whore. i picked up even more hours by running an extra math class so now i'm up to 12 hours a week.

and now for the joke of the day... how many students does it take to make tables from a classroom set of desks? no one knows for sure, but apparently more than 27!