Faculty Meeting

Oh, how I loathe the faculty meeting.
Whenever we have an issue, it gets pushed aside and are told to, "bring it up at the faculty meeting." However, when we have them (once a month), we actually get lectured to for about an hour. By that time, everyone is antsy to get out of the building, and then principal breezes out after "thanking" us. As posted here on this blog, our school has a multitude of problems. These are the things covered in the faculty meeting:

• Teachers should clean up their rooms.
• If you see paper in the hallway, pick it up and throw it away.
• Make sure your room is decorated.
• Your classroom is like your house, its dirtiness reflects on your teaching.
• Make your kids clean up trash.
• Decorate your bulletin board.

Yep. That's about it.

Ring The Alarm

We've had, I don't know, maybe 10 or so fire alarms go off since the school year started. Once we have actually left the building. Other times, once you've got the kids in the hallway (I generally associate a loud, blaring alarm with a sense of urgency. Maybe it's just me...) they come over the intercom and say, "Teachers, please disregard the fire alarm. Disregard the fire alarm." Meanwhile, the alarm continues to go off for at least 20 more minutes making it impossible to teach.
Today was another "alarm" but no one left, they all waited to hear that it was a false alarm. What happens when there really IS a fire? (Which wouldn't be surprising, to be honest.)

IB Conference

So, I'm in Seattle for an IB conference. Our school is a "candidate school" for the international baccalaureate program. It's sortof ridiculous. Basically we have created an elitist program where only smart, well-behaved students are allowed the best teachers(and by "best," I actually mean the ones with classroom management and least likely to leave in the middle of the year), schedule, field trips and anything else our school has to offer. We're on the first floor, so that visitors see this school instead of the one I write about in this blog (that is mostly the 2nd and 3rd floors). The principal constantly threatens them with removal (what do they care? The 3rd floor looks "really fun" to them.) They are always told how horrible they are for petty stuff like talking in the hallway (heh hem, JOE.) But they see other students throwing books at teachers and screaming profanities down the hallway.
Now I'm at this conference. All the teachers have to have the training in order for us to become an official IB school. I get here, and meet all these other teachers who are cool, but who totally piss me off. Today in my group, there were teachers from Orange County ("Our kids are exactly like those jerks on that show.") and a teacher that complained about her school because 30% of the kids are on free and reduced lunch (100% of my kids are on free and reduced lunch...i.e. poor.) They tell stories that start with, "Well, last year when we put on a full-scale production of Romeo and Juliet..." and "Our supply room has been out of lavender tinted paper for almost 2 weeks!" (wait, wait...Supply Room?!)
Meanwhile, we discuss "challenges" of IB. I mention that we have difficulties getting teachers trained because of such high teacher turn-over. Inquiries are made. All of a sudden I'm like some circus sideshow. "Quick! Go talk to the Baltimore teacher! Listen and be amazed! You'll be shocked! You'll be appalled! You'll *tsk* and shake your head!" Now everybody looks at me like I am slowly morphing into a banana and they don't know if they should say something.
Good Times in Seattle.

"Ain't this where Jeepers Creepers be?!"

Had a good time at the corn maze. Left the school an hour later after principal yelled at me/us for asinine reasons (apparently I'm supposed to have all permission slips signed, alphabetized and also on a typed list two weeks in advance so that she can go back over it and make sure I'm not retarded. I disagree with this strategy. Harassment and name-calling ensues.) It's Saturday afternoon and nobody has called and said they found a random kid still lost in the maze, so hopefully everything turned out okay.

The kids kept asking, "Where is the corn? I don't see no corn."

They really enjoyed the slide.

There were like 10 different mazes at this place.

You could also "mine" for gemstones.

It was good times. However, I will have to be insane if I ever want to take charge of another large scale field trip. I'll still go to Outward Bound (I can manage a 15 kid trip.) But when you start throwing around 150+ permission slips with that crazy woman as a principal, it is WAY too much to handle.

I wouldn't wish the stress of planning and organizing a field trip on my worst enemy. Hopefully there will be a fun-filled trip to a Corn Maze tomorrow. I'm sure something crazy will happen.

Snipers and Hostages

I let the kids go at 2:35. I was in my room getting some stuff together for a field trip, and about 30 kids come back into my room saying, "We can't leave. They won't let us leave." We hung out for like 10 minutes, then the school secretary came over the intercom and said for us all to report to the auditorium. There we sat for about half an hour after school.
Why? At the street over from us, there were about 10 police snipers stationed outside of a house. I don't know the whole story (It didn't even make the news!) but I heard some man had hostages in the house.
So my after-school activity was teaching 11 year olds what the word "sniper" means. While we were in the auditorium, principal screamed and blew a whistle--they had to be totally silent. 400 middle schoolers--DON'T EVER TALK OR YOU GET SUSPENDED. Why not?

Speeding Tickets

The other day, I saw a police car pull over a speeding car in one of the worst neighborhoods in the city. Driving down that road, I've seen prostitutes, drug deals and other kinds of unsavory activity. Is it really the place for a speed trap?

That is the mentality of my principal at my school. Yesterday, I saw a student scream in a teacher's face. When I went to the office to write a referral (the teacher is new and was also having other problems) the principal said to me (about the teacher), "He has to learn what to do with them. I can't be everything to everyone."
Later on that same day, I was standing in the hallway and she screamed down the hallway at me, "Miss V, YOUR student is in trouble AGAIN." I had no idea what she was talking about, so I walked down to her and asked. Apparently, Joe had been walking down the hallway on the way to the bathroom and he had *gasp* looked in the window of another class! Well shit, where's a guillotine when you need one?

Today, after school, there was a huge fight outside the building. The police officer and all the male teachers were asked to go outside and monitor. Two students were brought back in the building in handcuffs and went to the police officer's office. Principal was nowhere to be found. About 10 minutes later, she comes outside to yell. She sees Imani, who is one of my best students. She is well-mannered, studious and all around wonderful. She was standing with her friend, who was using Imani's phone to call her mother. Principal came up to the girls and said, "Give me the phone, you are still on school property." When she gave it to her, Imani said, "But that's MY phone!" Principal then SCREAMED at her in front of about 60 other people and then sent her into the office. She then walked back in and screamed at her (at the top of her lungs...I could hear her down the hallway) for about 20 minutes. When I left about 20 minutes after that, she still hadn't even acknowledged the students who had been fighting earlier.

Speeding tickets in the midst of murders.

Joe

We all met with the principal and Joe is still in our class.
YAY!

Breaking My Heart

I love all my kids, I really do. But there are a select few (I'll say about 5) that I really feel like they're my children. I don't really consider them my "favorites" because they're sometimes troublemakers. But they are those kids that you just see something in and yet at the same time, you know they've gotten the shaft so far in life. Tavon is the sweetest boy I know, and so smart, but his mother is a drug addict and he just has this bone-deep sadness about him. Like he has already found all the ugliness of the world, and he's only 12 years old.
Another one of those children is Joe. He hasn't lived her his whole life, so he knows what "real" school is like. He told me last year that he can't learn when its loud. And when you have a new teacher (or a bad teacher...) it is generally loud and rambunctious (or out of control) in a classroom. Some of the hardcore kids from the city that DO want to learn can maintain through the chaos. But Joe is one who just can't. I tried to get him in the advanced classes last year, but they were full.
This year, after I fought, and he aced his standardized tests, he got in the advanced classes. However, our principal still hates him because he's a goofy little boy and gets in goofy little boy trouble.
Apparently, when he was 9, and living somewhere else, some kind of innappropriate sexual something happened with him and a younger child (I'm really not clear at all on what happened, the principal vaguely mentions it in a "I know, and its really important but i just can't possibly tell you" kind of way) Whenever Joe gets in trouble, the principal brings this up. What the HELL does that have to do with him talking during spanish class?
(And on a complete side note, how can you blame a CHILD for something like that? Normal nine year olds don't know about sex. If he molested somebody, HE HAS BEEN MOLESTED HIMSELF.)
So, two days ago, he got suspended for hitting someone after that person hit him. (Despite what most people think, at my school, that is relatively minor.) The other student did not get suspended. When he came back to school, the principal said he was coming out of advanced classes. (This is her form of punishment, wtf?) He has had no problems in any class besides Spanish (which is a brand new teacher). He, in fact, excels above many of his classmates within the advanced classes.
I walked into the office this morning because I saw Joe coming back from suspension. I asked him what had happened. He started to tell me, but the principal interrupted and said, "I'm taking him out of the program. He's going upstairs." I started to argue with her, because upstairs is all new teachers and a huge chaotic mess. He did nothing wrong in his classes, and suspension was his punishment (which he spent at the library by the way.) She says to me, "I have to make decisions based on what is best for the entire school. I know things that you don't know about this boy, and I have to make those decisions that benefit everyone." (She doesn't know that I know about the molestation.)
Basically, she doesn't want this "criminal" corrupting her "good" kids. HE IS A GOOD KID. A good kid that obviously has serious personal problems. Does that mean we give up on him? I have known him for two years and he has never been innapropriate in any way.
HE IS A CHILD. Aren't we there to try and help them?