So I'm having a typically stressful day trying to rein in class enough to cram some soon-to-be-tested skills down their throats. We've flown through characterization, idioms and colloquialisms, tone and mood, theme, POV. I need to re-teach everything from the first quarter because their test results were not great, and I also need to teach the new stuff too, even though the reason they are failing tests is not necessarily skills mastery, but text unfamiliarity. And--is it reasonable to expect kids who read two years under grade level to learn literary analysis skills? WTF?
Whatever. I'm having this stressful day and trying to decide if I should fail the girl who became homeless and stopped doing her work, and the Big Cheese makes an announcement that there will be a fire drill @ 2:00. She makes the announcement @ 1:40. The kids on the 2nd floor go ballistic! They are running rampant in the halls, rushing to their lockers to get coats, grabbing their back packs, teachers are standing in doors trying to get them under control, and I'm thinking "What kind of idiot does that?" And then we finally get them under control and back in their classrooms @ 2:00 and then they are jumpy and unfocused and the fire alarm happens at 2:10 and then we are outside and it is frigid cold and the wind is whipping and the field where they have to stand is muddy and they are all dirty and sunk in up to their ankles and then they send us back in and there is mud all over the school and the entire last period is shot.
And then I'm having this typically stressful day and the language arts chair says "we need to have a meeting after school--a brief meeting," and I know what that means and I go to the brief meeting and it's about the test scores and re-teaching and re-grouping and re-focusing and we have to go through all the data and all the students and all the skills and see who missed what and we have to come up with a plan and we're still in school @ 4:30 when I finally just get up and leave because I'd been there since 6:45 and because of the meeting I haven't done my grading or my planning and I'm like "holy shit I'm pooped!" and now I'm going to stop.
3 comments:
you are a rockstar. i can't believe you have to handle this EVERY DAY. you are a soldier. hang in there. it was so great to see you guys last night. i think i work hard--then i read your blog and remember what real work looks like. seriously, hang in there. i know it's frustrating, but what you are doing is so important.
Aw, shucks! YOU are the rock star, as you proved yet again last night. How fun. It was about the same time last year that I was in a fould mood and went to see you at El Rancho Grande. You cheered me up then, and again last night!
Lovin' the new CD.
yeah srsly, lunch my ass! don't owe us anything. hey we saw rich a couple of times, need to get together with him too.
can't remember who recommended Lost Girls to you? but that is a great read, good taste whoever that was. won't find too many funny books being written in the states at present time. for laffs i read Little Lulu and Dr. Slump
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