Update

You know things aren't going well when I never post. When every time I decide to write is going to turn into a post where I have the urge to TYPE IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE I AM SO ANGRY, I know it is time to take a step back.

It's not good. My actual day-to-day life isn't bad, my classroom is only sometimes bad...but the school as a whole is the worst thing I have ever seen. There are several things that probably deserve their own post, but I will lump them all here just because all the titles would be something like, "WTF".

1. We had a meeting a couple of weeks ago. The special education classes are a mess--none of their teachers have any control and the kids aren't learning anything. So, the solution is to completely dissolve the special ed classes and put all those students in regular ed. Yet another meeting where I am told that if I would "just work a little harder" then everything will be fine. So what if these kids read on a kindergarten level, right? As the Special Ed Department Chair told my co-worker, "They need to be in a classroom with regular ed students so they can realize their limitations." WOW. really?
All I have to do is modify the classwork I give the students so everyone can understand it. I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure the kindergarten level is something like, "one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish" and I'm going to modify "Mapping Coordinates Using Latitude and Longitude" to three and four letter words?

2. I have a student named Michael. He is in 6th grade and everytime he starts a sentence with, "Did you ever teach a kid named..." it ends with some crazy ass child who got put out of our school at some point. So, obviously, his friend base leaves a little to be desired. The other day, he told me this story:
"Did you ever teach a kid named Andre [Last Name]?"
"Yeah.."
"He's locked up."
"Yeah? What happened?"
"Well, he was asleep and me and Donte (Donte and Andre...both crazy ass boys who got put out of our school for doing something terrible) had this knife. And we took the knife and held it over a fire until it got really hot. And then we put it on Andre's face. And when his father took him to the hospital 'cause of the burn, the hospital people called DSS, and when DSS came, they realized he had a warrant out and so he got arrested and now he's in jail."

"Wait, you put a hot knife on somebody's face?!"

"Yeah?..."

After our conversation ended, I went to the school social workers to tell them that this boy needs some serious intervention. They directed me to one of the school psychologist and hopefully somebody will talk to this kid.

During the conversation, one of the social workers told me that the school is so bad right now, that we will be on the news before the school year is out. She said "a fire, a stabbing, a shooting, something...and if we don't get on the news, we are the luckiest people alive."

3. My team consists of me (6 years teaching), a science teacher (4 years teaching), a math teacher (12 years teaching) and a language arts teacher (25 years teaching.) We are the "veteran" team in the school. The Lang Arts teacher, Ms. P, said she has never had it this difficult. Last Wednesday, something happened. I don't want to be incorrect on the details, because this thing is pretty huge. But from what the student told me, she got put out of the classroom, when she tried to get back in, Ms. P hit her so hard she fell on the ground. While she was on the ground, Ms. P got down and slammed her head into the ground multiple times. (She's not hurt, she was in school the next day and told me the story.)
I don't know what to say. I don't even know what my opinion is. Ms. P hasn't been back and the Asst. Principal told me that she won't be back. I guess they have to do an investigation, but the student's story is the same as Ms. P's and the entire class. Twenty-five years of teaching down the drain in less than 5 minutes. Insane.
But while all the teachers have been talking about this, other information has come up. For example, AT LEAST 7 teachers have been assaulted by students since the start of the school year, and only one of those students has gotten any punishment at all. I DO NOT condone what Ms. P did, but everybody has their breaking point.

The people who took over the school, the ones who were supposed to "turn it around" rarely are even in the building and when they are, they just walk around with a horrified look on their face and then blame us for the problems. We had a meeting with our Turnaround Director. He keeps talking about curriculum and Professional Development. The Math teacher on my team said, "You know what, it really seems like you guys think that WE'RE the problem in this building." He insisted that wasn't true and he knows we are working hard and blah blah blah....but when your ONLY answers to problems are for US to "try harder" or "have better lesson plans" or some other ridiculousness, what are we supposed to think?