I'm going to be so bad at this...

I've realized I'm better at storytelling than story writing. But I will keep trying to document the insanity. We've had the first two days. I'm not in the trenches of the insanity like I was last year, but I'm still getting some. First of all, I share 12 desks with the neighboring teacher. My 4th period has to go over and get them from him, and then my last period returns them.
We have a huge overload of teachers (I guess anticipating all the teachers that will be quitting.) But the administrators are totally retarded about the schedule. They made out a schedule without ever seeing some of the teachers. So there are three teachers on the schedule (who have full class loads) that never showed up.
But instead of fixing all that, they just let it go (maybe it will fix itself?) So while some classess have 2 teachers, others have none. Teachers will walk their class to the next one, only to spend the next 20 minutes out in the hallway looking for someone to "cover" that class. They force subs to go all day without a break, mid-level administrators to cover classes, new teachers to give up their planning period...meanwhile, up to 10 teachers are "co-teaching."
One of the new teachers is in the hospital and she has the worst homeroom. I found one of her students roaming the hallway halfway through 1st period, and he told me they were up there by themselves, fighting. I told the principal, and she said, "oh yeah, I forgot." FORGOT? my ass would be chewed out if I made a mistake half that big. The worst class in the school, left to their own devices.
Our principal has implemented a ridiculous new discipline code, where basically you have to get approval from Congress to send a kid to the office. Meanwhile, she suspends kids for looking at her the wrong way. One of my best students got 3 weeks detention for having his shirt untucked in the lunchroom. However, if somebody stands up and throws a chair across the room and calls another kid an effin' N*****, then you better make sure you have documentation showing the interventions you used to prevent that type of behavior before you even think about writing them up.

oh, I guess once I get started, I DO have something to say. :)

When Failing Isn't Failure

Well, we went over our class lists today. The students are grouped homogenously by test scores, which is absolutely ridiculous. Now the quiet low performers aren't going to get any help at all because the loud ahole low performers are going to take over the class.
But I'm here to complain about a whole other issue. The retention policy in this city is a disgrace. Apparently, if a child has failed before, EVER, they can't be held back again. So if Deonte failed 1st grade, but does no work all of 6th grade, he still gets passed on. For example, I have a student that came sporadically during September and October, and then I never saw him again. Well, he had failed 4th grade, so he was promoted to 7th grade, despite missing more than 140 straight days of school.
We also have students that failed every single class, but were promoted by our principal. What does that do to the authority of the classroom teacher? makes it nonexistent.

On another note, we had our first new teacher quit. She got into an argument with our principal about being late, then later about something else random, then she stormed out and said she's not coming back. Its all very dramatic, but I don't have all the details. But this doesn't bode well for the year. 1 down, 23 to go.

Let's get this angry started.

Today I had to go to the hugest high school I have ever seen (and which I wandered around a good 30 minutes) to go to a professional development for the new 7th grade geography book. This seems reasonable, except I am being given no time to actually set up my room because I have to go to this training. During this training, two adults teach us lessons like we are 7th graders. They use the same "get your attention" strategies and cooperative grouping. This is more than mildly insulting. I am an adult with a masters degree, but instead of giving me the literature to read myself, they've decided I "learn by doing." Okay, that's all good and well, but I don't need to learn latitude and longitude, I need to teach it.. 16 hours of these lessons seems rather excessive.
My other favorite part was the general ridiculousness of the lessons. Yet another examples of how sad this city is. Our "instructors" were from a suburban school in Florida. We did an activity where you're supposed to put half the class in the hallway with instructions while the other half stays in the room to draw maps. YEAH RIGHT. There would be fights, fires, general mayhem with a group of students left unattended.
Oh, and when they kept talking about using our powerpoints, overhead projectors, laminating machines, and everything else I would never see in my classroom.
I don't understand how people pretending that my kids are just like everyone else. It gets us nowhere.

Welcome Back, It's All Your Fault

Hey Hey. It was the first day back for all us teachers today. We had a meeting from 8am to 330pm. What, you say? We need time to get our rooms ready? Ah! Who cares about that! We have to spend 7 1/2 telling you how we're not gonna take your shit this year, you better get your act together, you better do a good job.
Some highlights:
-if you miss more than 3 days for the entire year, you have to meet with the principal, more than 5 you get a "letter" and more than 7 you can be fired. glad i get 15 sick days.
-our new vice principal is a self-proclaimed computer illiterate, so if you do your grades online, you better have a hard copy too for her to look at. because that make sense.
-you have to go through ELEVEN steps before a student can be sent to the office. These include but are not limited to: meeting with student, meeting with parent and student, meeting with other teachers and student, meeting with counselor and student, meeting with social worker and student. When confronted about an "extreme" situation like a kid cussing you out, our other vice principal says, "sometimes you have to grin and bear it. You guys overreact sometimes." ummmmkay. which is a weird statement because, he "grins and bears it" and gets cussed out everyday and the kids hate him. I, on the other hand, lack the smackdown if somebody wants to act a fool, and therefore my amount of acting a fool is relatively low. hmmm.

I'm sure theres hundreds more that I can't think of right now because my brain has been turned to mush from seven hours of sitting and getting lectured.

First Professional Development Day Eve

Well, I went in today to try and put a few things together in my room. I spent most of the day searching for desks (I have 14 and two of my classes have 30+ students...) Last year I made do with about 15 elementary-size desks (those with the storage space underneath.) It wasn't fun, or attractive (they were super old) but I made it. Well, the kids will be bigger this year, and I don't think its right to ask 7th graders to sit in old crappy elementary size desks. So I was told (by my principal) to search around and steal desks from the rooms of the new teachers. I tried, but there aren't many new desks available for procurement.
I now have 24 desks.
I also spent a lot of time today listening to one of the Assistant Principals bitch and moan about the other one. It was awkward.
Tomorrow is the first day that all the teachers will be required to be there. There will be a whole lot of sitting around listening to "THIS year..." lectures, while wishing I could be putting my room together. Yaaay!

Disclaimer

I teach in an "inner-city" school. I LOVE my kids with all my heart.
But I'm going to be documenting the ridiculousness of bureaucracy and general insanity, not necessarily my teaching skills or how I've "changed their lives for the better."

Basically, this blog is not going to be turned into an inspirational movie, but it should make for some interesting stories.

Getting Started...

Well, This will be my third year teaching. Last year was pretty much a big ol' mess of insanity, so I've decided I should blog about this one. You know, start from the beginning and get it all down.

I went up to the school today to check in. The students will be coming a week from today. I found out I'm teaching Social Studies and they've totally changed the structure of the day, (I think I'll like the new way better.)

I'm not going to go into a whole lot of detail about last year (it will all come out soon enough) but today I met some of the new teachers....but not all 17 of them. 17.new.teachers. All of the 7 we had last year were gone by march, most by december. It should be interesting.