Take Me To Your Leader

The principal of the last school I taught at is a nice person. He is interested in the welfare of the students and tries to make the school better. That being said, he needs to take charge, put some teeth in the rules, and pay attention to me when I have a concern. I will briefly relate the two worst incidents. Hopefully my bitterness has had time to become less sour.

During the first semester I had a delightful little brat in my fourth period class. We teach on the block schedule, so that was the last class of the day. One afternoon as class was starting I told him to sit in his assigned seat. In response to that request he walked across the room, forcefully swung his binder to within an inch of my face and walked to his seat. I don't recall exactly where I sent him because I was pretty upset. At faculty meeting (15 minutes after class ended) I informed the principal and one of his assistants of what happened.

"He hit you with his binder?!?"
"He didn't actually hit me, but he swung it in my face."
"Oh. Okay."

Okay? OKAY??? Perhaps he didn't hear what I said. He. Swung. A. Binder. In. My. Face. I asked him to do something about it and he told me to write him an e-mail to remind him.

Dear Principal,
I don't care if you don't like confrontation with the students. That's your job. That's why your salary is three times what mine is.

I guess that "fake assault" is a small enough crime that the only consequence was moving the student from my fourth period class to my second period class. Magically, my second period class then became my most difficult, rather then the fourth period. Grumble.

The second story is better and reflects much less rancor. Background: I shared the foods room with the other foods teacher and had another room to myself for teaching the Teen Living class (it's too difficult to keep even the foods classes away from the stoves, let alone a regular class). The semester ends two weeks after classes resume from winter break. A week or so before winter break another teacher came to me and asked if I was ready for us to swap classrooms at the semester. What? I hadn't heard a thing. I e-mail the principal and he responded that I was to switch my Teen Living classroom with the classroom of the math teacher. He wanted the whole math department together. I understand that. I was fine with that. Later he decided that he wanted us to swap by winter break. That was laughable, considering we would both be dealing for two weeks with students "forgetting" that we changed classrooms and showing up 20 minutes late. We did the passive aggressive thing and just didn't move our stuff until the semester break.

But that's not the best part of my story. Two days before the semester change (at the end of the day, no less) the principal informed me that the math teacher's class would not be available for my use. Long story. I asked where I would hold my Teen Living class and reminded him that my other classroom was filled with ovens. He agreed that was not the best place for them to be. Instead, he said he would think about where we could go. "Umm...we only have one more day until I get a new class." To save time in explaining what all happened he suggested we meet in the library. Really. The semester started and I had students going to three different classrooms trying to figure where they belonged. I called the replacement Assistant Principal (our real one was in the state legislature) and, miracle of miracles, she had us in an empty classroom within five minutes. That classroom stuck, but they never did give me a key to let myself in.

Parent-Teacher Conference

Tonight is parent-teacher conference at the jr. high I taught at last year. Insert manic giggles here. The picture at the left seems a little bit out of touch. Why? All three people in the picture are smiling and the kid is happy to be there.

As a Home Ec teacher (sewing the first year at the high school, foods and Teen Living the second year at the jr. high), parents are not overly concerned about seeing me. Science, Math and English teachers have lines that stretch from the teacher to Oklahoma, while I sit patiently at my location to have someone to talk to. Like a puppy waiting to be adopted.

Don't get me wrong, there are good things about it. The best is that all day long you can threaten the students with, "Tonight is parent-teacher conference. It would behoove you to follow directions today." That one gets them quiet and cooperative for at least five minutes before returning to their normal behavior. And I like using the word behoove.

PT Conference is also a good way to understand why your students are the way they are. The disrespectful vandal from second period is accompanied by an angry-looking parent who, before sitting down, demands, "Why is my kid getting an F in your class? It's cooking! Anyone can do that!" I take that moment to leaf through and find the student's progress report so that I can show exactly why their kid is failing. "Well, as you'll see from the list of assignments Billy hasn't turned in, he spends less time doing his class work than he does trying to set fire to it." At this point the parent is more submissive and says they didn't know that. You can guarantee that the student had given the reason "she hates me."

PT Conference is also wonderful time to see a child being meek. You'll never see it on some of them, otherwise. That's when the fear takes over that you're going to tell the parent about the dough-throwing episode or the switching sugar with salt debacle.

Those, however, are the parents you really want to see. Generally, the only parents who show up are the ones whose children have a solid A and are asking for extra credit to make sure it stays that way. It's great to see the "good" kids' parents, but the ones who really need to talk about their kids don't come nearly so often. I wish that part were funny rather than true.

Welcome to School

For the past several days I've been gleefully reading old blog posts from Hobo Teacher. I wish I actually knew these guys so I could shake their hands. Anyway, I say that I was gleefully reading the old posts because of my own happy situation of not teaching. Whenever I'm not thinking about it very hard, I miss teaching in much the same way as people miss dear childhood friends. You remember the fun times had together and forget the times you were made to eat dog poo on a dare. Ah, memories.

So, as I read through the posts I lamented to myself that I taught for two years (one at a junior high, no less) and had no good stories. What?!? Of course I have good stories. I've just blocked them out. So, for the next little while I will be posting my own teaching stories for your reading enjoyment.

Every teacher has at least one student that is so horrid they swear they will never give one of their own children that name. I have several. Angel. Bronson. Carson. Ivette. Josh. Tinei. Ty. Willard. Zane. Those nine alphbetized names actually only belong to six students, but it's best to avoid the danger of using their last names, too. If I had stayed in teaching too much longer I would have to resort to obscure Biblical names like Smyrna or Festus (Maher-shalal-hash-baz is a personal favorite, but you can use it if you want, Abbie) when I have kids.

Tangent: the other option is to do the Utah thing and combine names of the parents. I saw an announcement for the 50th anniversary of people named, I kid you not, Delyle and LaWana.
They were from Lehi, though, so that explains it.

The students I listed are the ones that most of my stories will be about. Three of them (the ones with interchangable first and last names) were from the high school. The others are from the junior high. As I taught at the high school first, we'll start there. It'a alos the least interesting story.

I taught Family and Consumer Science (translation: Home Ec. What else would the Goddess of Sewing teach?) There are few things in this world I tolerate less than lying. While we were reviewing for a test in sewing, two of the boys told me another teacher had requested their presence, if I could spare them. After telling them this was the only review, I released them to the other teacher. Their fatal mistake was that that night happened to be parent-teacher conference. Why is that important? The teacher that "requested" to have them shares my last name and we were seated next to one another for the evening. He asked if I'd had problems with them. When I said I hadn't, he told me they came to his class saying I had thrown them out. Then they proceeded to spend the rest of the period playing with the large rodent that is his class pet. How silly of them. They ended up being marked truant, had their parents called, and needed to make up two hours of class for lying to us. Darn.

I thought that event had solidified my authority with the class, who declared the consequences "gay", but I was mistaken. Two weeks later the school held makeup testing for the Utah Basic Skills Competency Test (UBSCT--or U biscuit). Announcements about excusing students who were taking the test to be late to class were flying around the PA all week. Two of my football players walked into class half an hour after the last UBSCT student had returned, saying they were taking the test. I didn't buy it, so I looked on my list of all the students needing to take the test. Miraculously, their names weren't on the list. I called the office to report the incident and left it at that for the moment. I had a class to teach. Later that afternoon I received a call of congratulations from one of the secretaries. Perplexed, I asked what I had done. Turns out there was a football game that day and any player marked truant the week of a game is not allowed to play. It was an away game and the coach found out about it after the bus was loaded. He then threw the boys off the bus and they had to call their parents for a ride home. I don't know which team was victorious, but I was the clear winner. One of the boys earnestly apologized and his named is not on my list. The other one, however, has declared his hatred for me many times over and is not at all like his name would suggest. See if you can guess which one I'm talking about.

Happiness is...

...paying off the car

...not teaching school this year (classes started today)

...good friends to help you (thanks Carrie!)

...not teaching school

...possible cavities actually being raspberry seeds

...not teaching school

...insurance paying your hospital bill

Did I mention not teaching school?