Well. Friday morning during announcements, principal said that all teachers needed to come to a "quick 10-minute informational meeting" after school. I had no idea what it was about, so I didn't think anything of it.
After school we all crowded in to basically get our heads blown off. She spent 20 minutes yelling at us and saying that she has been a principal for 9 years and never had a school this bad, and she's not going to start now. She screamed and blamed us for the horrible state that is our school.
I don't know if I've mentioned before, but on the first floor of the building (where I teach) its like a normal school. Every now and then something crazy, but mostly pretty calm. The 2nd and 3rd floors get progressively worse, with the third floor being total chaos. Basically there is a bunch of new teachers, a bunch of foreign teachers that aren't loud and have no classroom management, and a few veteran teachers that just don't give a shit.
So, here's the new plan. Instead of helping the new/struggling teachers, they are just taking away their classes. The 2nd floor teachers and the other side of my floor are doubling their class sizes. In November. These classes now have upwards of 40! kids in a class. We literally do not have that many desks or enough room. We have to spend Monday morning procuring desks and chairs. These children that are coming from upstairs have been running up and down the building for 3 months screaming and setting fire alarms. We're supposedly giving them a sheet of paper with their new schedule and trusting them to find their way to the new class and wait patiently while someone finds a desk for them? Give me a break.
How this affects me is this: As the IB teacher, my 7th grade classes already had 35 students (but they are well-behaved) so we aren't getting any more of them. However, my 6th grade classes are very small (and wonderful). But so everyone doesn't murder us, we are combining our two sixth grade classes and taking on some kids from the other side.
This situation pisses me off for a number of reasons:
1. These good kids downstairs are going to get SCREWED. they did nothing to deserve having to sit in a classroom with somebody who throws books at the teacher. They will learn nothing.
2. Any teacher who is any good at their job is getting SCREWED. These teachers that couldn't control the 3rd floor are now being regulated to assistants and hall monitors, but they still get paid the same as I do. I'm not saying that as you get better you should get easier students. I'm saying fine, send me upstairs to where the insanity is, and I'll fix it. Don't put them down here with the students who actually care.
3. The administration KNEW this was a time bomb. But they scheduled the "quick" meeting on a Friday after school. This is supposed to go into effect on MONDAY.
4. Whenever someone in the meeting brought up something negative about this idea (there is absolutely not enough room for 40 students in ANYBODY'S classroom.) The administration turned into defensive children and said that if we didn't like it, then we should come up with a better solution. No, that's YOUR job.
5. It's frigging November. I get screamed at all the time about student achievement and lesson plans and planning ahead and blah blah blah. I'm getting an entire new CLASS. They will no longer have any of the teachers they've had since the beginning of the year. I have no idea what they've been learning, where their skills are.
AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
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