Captain Obvious and Nepotism

I'm the Team Leader for the 7th grade team. We have a 2nd year Language Arts teacher (Ms. K) who is a very nice person and a very hard worker. Sometimes in this school, niceness is seen as weakness by the children. So, coupled with her inexperience and being incredibly nice, sometimes the children give her problems.

We have a new guy at our school and his job title is Intervention Specialist. There was no interview process for this position because I would have applied. He is very condescending to Ms. K and does nothing to intervene when things are going wrong in her classroom. His job also appears to be walking around and telling everyone else what THEIR job is.

We have had 5 full days of school. After the 4th day, Mr. Specialist told Ms. K that "y'all won't be having any more problems out of Raquan. I've talked to him." Oh, thanks Mr. Specialist. I taught Raquan all of last year and have had hundreds of "talks" with him, but I'm glad you are here to save the day. (Unsurprisingly, Raquan was misbehaving less than an hour after Mr. Specialist's little talk.)

On Friday, Ms. K came into my room during lunch on the verge of tears. Her 2nd period had been very disruptive. At one point, two boys were chasing each other around the classroom and knocked over her entire bookshelf. RAQUAN was throwing pencils at her.

Mr. Specialist comes into my room as Ms. K is recounting the story for me. THIS GUY has the nerve to look at me and go, "Well, these kids don't give YOU any problems DO they, Miss Vinson?"

"Um, what does that have to do with anything?"

He realized I was a little hostile. So, he turns to Ms. K and asks her IF SHE HAS EVER CONSIDERED DETENTION.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME, GUY?! They pay you to come suggest to us that we should give detention?!

So, I pretty much let him have it. I wish I could have recorded it or something because it was brilliant. But the gist was something about how as a teacher, Ms. K shouldn't even have to be worried about the punishment for a child who is THROWING THINGS AT HER. In my opinion, that jumps right into the hands of the administration, or at the very least, THE INTERVENTION SPECIALIST. Am I wrong?
When they don't show up for detention (they never do), then what happens? Call the parent? What about when none of the phone numbers we have work? What then? And while we're going through all these steps, he's still THROWING THINGS AT HIS TEACHER. She shouldn't have to deal with that. At all.

He then proceeded to tell me that whatever happened was "up to the team." WHAT? The "team" is the 4 teachers that this student has. We are all teaching while this is going on. Should I stop teaching my class to walk down the hall and deal with this?

So, after this lunch fight, I was incredibly heated. Ms. K said she wondered what Mr. Specialist's background was in. I was curious so I looked him up on Facebook.

1. He has an Associate's Degree in Art from a community college.
2. His previous job was at a Wine Shop for about 7 years.
3. There are pictures of his baby daughter with our Turnaround Director.
4. He has the same last name as the girlfriend of our Turnaround Director.

Now, I'm no detective, but I'm calling BULLSHIT on this one. Tomorrow, I'm going to see if someone can sneak me this guy's salary information. If he is making any more than what a hall monitor is making, I'm going to start some serious shit.

"Man, Shakey be lyin' yo. His mother didn't beat up no bear!"
-Darrell

Oh, Except This Guy.

This year I'm doing my counseling internship on Wednesdays. The lady I'd always wanted to intern with retired last year. So I'm stuck with a guy who has been a counselor for many, many years but has only been at my school for about a semester. He wants to be all experty on things I already know.

Anyways, the other day at our meeting we were both discussing how we'd been without power for 4 days because of Hurricane Irene. He then, in all seriousness, begins to warn me about December 21, 2012.

"Well, Vinson. It's good that you're learning how to survive. After 2012, things are going to be different in this world. They way we live now, it won't be like that anymore."

"Um, sure."

"I'm serious. This is good practice for you to get used to living in a different way. It's going to happen."


Only 599 hours of internship left!

Nothing Interesting

So we started 2 days late because of Hurricane Irene. I've had two days of school and they've been fine.

A WHOLE BUNCH of kids have transferred, so all of my classes are at about 15 kids. Which is pretty great.

Things are good.

Don't worry. It won't last long.

Wishin' and Hopin' and Thinkin' and Prayin'

So the last like, 20 minutes of Professional Development before we break for the weekend and the last moments we are going to see each other before the kids come, our principal has us to the Pig Personality Test.
I don't know if you've heard of it, but I've done it about 20439439209 times. You draw a pig and then they tell you all these things about what that means about your life.
If you drew your pig at the top of the page that means you are positive and optimistic. If you drew it in the middle, you are a realist.

Now, I didn't see other people's drawings, but I've decided I'm probably one of the few people who drew my pig in the middle.

Let's get real here.
We spent the entire week before school starts playing games (I'm Hilarious Heather and you are Athletic Al!), debating the semantics of writing school mission statements (Should it say we FOSTER learning or ENCOURAGE learning?) and seen presentations on very obvious things (if a student misses a lot of school, they are in danger of dropping out.)

You know what we haven't done? Made decisions. Do we have locker assignments for any of the students? No. Do we know if there is a special schedule (extended homeroom) for the first day? No. Do we know what floor our students eat lunch on? No. Do we know what steps to take when someone doesn't follow all the rules we made up? No.

It might not seem like much, but those are the little things that add up to big things.
The problem is not that the staff is retarded. We aren't burnt out morons who just need a little pep to fix everything. Things aren't bad because we don't get along with each other. Things are bad because the CHILDREN DO NOT HAVE ANY CONSEQUENCES. Things are bad because there is MASS CONFUSION. Things are bad because we start each school year like we're opening for the first time and we're the first school to ever open.
"The kids just run wild in the hallway."

"Well, have you told them to stop?"

WELL I NEVER THOUGHT OF THAT!

Super.

Got my IEPs for the Special Ed students yesterday. I only have one new student so I'm reading through to find her learning accomodations.

"severe emotional/behavior issues" ...."reports feeling depressed and angry the majority of the time"..."is hostile toward other students"...


What are the students strengths?

"Attendance."

My Classroom is So Pretty You Guys!

Your Highness

So, new principal has her doctorate. And as most of those people are, she is very proud of it. So we have to address her as Doctor Blahblah.
The other day she went on some long-winded blah blah about how we are all important and so she is ordering us nameplates for our door. (It's nice, I get it. I thought we were broke? whatever.) She wants us to put our first and last name and how we want to be addressed, as well as the colleges we attended and our majors.

Hmm... How I want to be addressed....

I'm waffling between "Colonel Vinson" and "President Vinson."

And I want my room to be referred to as HMR 118. (Her Majesty's Room 118)

More on Research vs. Experience

Last year, the school day went from 7:45-2:35. It had been that way for four years.

The Operators read some research that says that adolescents learn more later on in the day. They also saw many of our children coming to school around 9 or 9:30. Without consulting us (not that they have to, but maybe they should), they changed the school day to 9-4.
Here's something they didn't research: Our first year, those were the school hours.

And here's what happened that first year:
-4pm is the same time the elementary school that is attached us let's out, and our kids would try to bully the younger kids and get into fights with the 5th graders.
-The high school down the road is let out around 3:15 or 3:30, and by 4pm, they are walking through our parking lot and down our street. The kids who aren't busy bullying and fighting the elementary kids are busy being bullied or fighting the high school kids.
-It gets dark incredibly early in the winter (duh.) Our neighborhood is INCREDIBLY unsafe. Many of our students walk home, but just walking to the bus stop is still dangerous. So, you can't have any after-school activities or hold any type of detention for fear that the children will leave too late and be MURDERED.
-The kids who come to school late? The vast majority of them aren't doing it because they have too much to do in the morning or because they just cannot get up at 7am, it's because they don't want to be on time for school! Now they'll come at 10:30 or 11.

A lot of the staff is super pissed. I get to sleep later in the morning, so I'm not that bent out of shape. It's just another thing in the long list of ways they don't believe we have anything significant to contribute to their precious research.

The Culture of Low Expectations

For the first time in my career as a teacher, I was informed of my new classroom #, the grade I was teaching and my classes BEFORE the day before school started. In fact, the lady who was our principal for a grand total of one month was so organized, she had it together before the end of the 2010-2011 school year.
I was told I'm teaching 7th grade. I'm ambivalent about that. It's the same kids which is good, but 7th graders are the devil and the curriculum is all wonky. Basically they want you to teach everything, ever. They aren't really into "history" so much as social studies concepts and skills. It's all over the place.
I've taught this grade before and I wanted a little more structure.So, I decided that I wanted to take 4 short fiction novels about children in different countries. (If you are dying to know: The Breadwinner-Afghanistan, Before We Were Free-Dominican Republic, Long Walk to Water-Sudan, and The Year of Impossible Goodbyes-Korea.) Basically, I would take these books as a supplement and study each country's culture, government etc.
I go to speak to the Director of Literacy about my idea. (She works for our Operator, the people who took over.) She informed me (and I have a witness) that, "Miss Vinson, we learned from last year that these kids don't really LIKE reading, so I don't think it's fair to have TWO classes, in addition to Language Arts, in which their grade is based on reading." Wellllllllllllllll.
I was in shock, so I had a hard time finding my argument. But I started by telling her that we wouldn't read the book like they do in Language Arts (no similes or metaphors, just culture) and that it would just be a supplement to the curriculum. She continued to insist that it was a bad idea. She eventually relented by saying that I could do the first book, but we would wait on the rest.

Things I wish I had said:
1. WHAT DO YOU THINK WE DO NOW? Look at pictures all day? No! We READ!
2. Because they don't WANT to??!! ARE YOU SERIOUS?
3. THIS. IS. SCHOOL.

The other teacher that heard this little exchange had some more input. She had been a first year Language Arts teacher. She said that it was pretty insulting of this lady to assume that kids didn't want to read EVER because of the mess that was her classroom.

These are the people that are supposed to be making us BETTER.