Or one of those weeks...
1. We had no heat. Zero heat. All week. My classroom was registering 62 degrees most of the time. I rather like working inside layered up. My giant pink fleece makes me look like a fuschia Tootsie Pop. I had to get creative and match my scarves to the pink fleece. And I saw kids visibly shivering. Didn't help that they were wearing t-shirts even though I told them of the situation. Supposedly we'll have heat next week. November in New England is the perfect time to be without heat.
2. Grades were due, then they weren't due. And the announcement came after the bell rang at the end of class, so did they really think we could hear them over the sound of 2400+ bodies moving simultaneously? Oh wait. Admin probably planned it that way. Deal was our grades were due electronically by 11am on Thursday. I stayed up til after 11pm finishing my grades off so that I wouldn't have a panic the next morning, and I had to teach the first three periods on Thursday. Muffled announcement was that the due time was moved up til midnight on Thursday due to a computer glitch. WTF?
3. Along with the grades announcement was something about senior grades needing to be in three days earlier on Nov. 1st, and that guidance needed those grades. Good thing I could ask a kid about it, because the kids findout about stuff way before we do. No one had ever mentioned that date--how am I supposed to do something if I didn't know it was something I was supposed to do?? God forbid someone tell a teacher directly.
4. The main copier broke down repeatedly. The riso copier on my floor is broken and despite calls to have it fixed, no one has shown up. At various times the risos on the other floors go in and out of commission, so it is very easy to spend a huge chunk of your time every day searching for a copier that functions while praying you won't have to wait in line to use it because you've already spent 35 minutes of your 45 minutes of your "free period" hunting for it. One story I heard is that we, the school, had our own maitenance contract with the copier and riso companies, so we could call for fixing when needed. Now, the city has taken it over and it's out of our hands. Does that really make sense?
Maybe this would work better?
5. In relation to number 4, we ran out of paper. Yup, no copier paper anywhere in the building. So the remaining 10 minutes you have during that period are most likely spent trying to remember where you hid your secret ream of paper that you stole just for these occasions. I would love to know if the paper budget is really smaller than what it would cost to buy books? If the kids could have the workbooks that accompany the text books, I wouldn't have to spend half my life making copies. Or plan to stay til 6pm because if I can find a copier that's working, no one else will be in the building that late and I can make tons of copies. If there's paper. 6. It's probably a good thing that we are out of paper, because it's getting increasingly difficult to find a computer printer that works. Since the city cut technical support to trim the budget, regular teachers with a little knowledge have been asked to "oversee" the printers and tech issues. They also have to teach 5 classes a day and know about as much as I do about where to get help. And that isn't much.
7. Two kids came back to class this week--I haven't seen them since mid-September. They have both been out with "documented medical issues", but I can't be told what those issues are. And, both have waivers for term one, so they can make up the work and get a grade for it; but, they are supposed to "jump in" with term 2 material and we'll worry about term 1 later. Um, my subject is cumulative, as in term 2 needs info from term 1 to do well and make progress. It's kind of hard to "prioritize" the assignments and have the kids only do the "essential" ones. In my opinion, they're all pretty essential, and they need to be in class so I can TEACH them. If they only needed a textbook to read on their own and become fluent, then attendance wouldn't be an issue, would it?
8. I have an AP student who went blind in September. As in legally blind, can't read anymore, can't write anymore. Instead of going to battle with the copiers during my free period, I'm recording things for him so he can "access" the curriculum, and trying to figure out ways for him to be assessed. Or what to do with him when I have the class use a picture prompt for a discussion. The whole thing sucks, especially for him. No diagnosis or prognosis yet.
9. There is a train wreck in department who is also greatly distracting a bunch of us. This person is probably a very nice human being, but absolutely sucks in the classroom. It's painful and demoralizing to watch every day, knowing that this person's students will feed into some of my possible classes next year, totally unprepared, unmotivated and angry. They do get angry, because while they are having a blast with all the chaos, they are smart enough to realize that they are being cheated and will have to pay for it later. We are about 40 days into the school year, and so far I've only seen admin show up once or twice. I'm hoping that there is more going on behind the scenes to address the daily derailments. What pisses me off more is that this person has something like 7 years in education. Therefore, this teacher has tenure/permanent status and probably isn't going anywhere. This is when I hate the unions. In the meantime, the noise level is horrendous (and it's not "good" noise), my room is regularly trashed after this person's classes, and the kids are learning very little.
10. On a happy note, one of my AP classes got so wrapped up in a disucssion about tecnologia that I hated to cut them off--I heard subjunctive used correctly! On a downer note, the other section asked me if they had to speak in Spanish. WTF?
11. College rec letters for early kids are done. Now I have to chase down the regular kids and get working on those.
So. I'm complaining. Just a little. But things seem off this year. I can't figure out what it is, although that list looks pretty damn annoying. Notice that very little of it has to do with actual lesson planning or the art of teaching? One thing I've noticed is that there are times when I will actually plan out a lesson based on whether or not I need copies, or will spend time trying to minimize the number of pages I have to copy. I've had ideas planned only to find that there's no paper or no copier or no printer, so I have to chuck it. I'm getting good at using half sheets of paper, or making the font as tiny as possible to cram everything on one page. Does that sound like good educational policy to you?
This is pretty typical....
This is why I slept in unintentionally on a Saturday til 11am.
Next week has to be better.
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