Pink Slips

This was an actual write up for a student that walked out, "SHIT/FUCK/WALKED OUT". I got a good laugh out of it.



I'll have a series of entries done soon. I've been busy working, and job searching and working. Fun!

Peace and Quiet

The title of this entry is something that I never have at school. As I'm writing this our lunch lady, otherwise known as Grandma, is screaming at a student to get out of the kitchen. There are at least ten extremely loud students at the security desk across the hall. It's always like this. Loud. My teaching voice sounds like a yell to the average person, especially those I encounter after work when I have errands to run. To those people I apoligize because I haven't quite turned off my teaching voice and they probably think I'm a bitch who just yells at everyone. In reality I have to talk LOUD to make myself heard even just a little. The students here are LOUD people by personality. Whispering in class to them is really talking in a normal speaking voice. Top this normal occurance with the noise in the cafeteria every hour right outside my door and you get the idea. My teaching voice is LOUD and peace and quiet don't exist.

Break sucks

Break sucks. I am completely over the idea of it. I just want to get back to school and finish up yet another shitty year. Don Bosco as an organization blows hard. I sat through a board meeting on Monday, of which I'm certain my being there was not expected. During the principal report staffing was supposed to be talked about and in the end all that was said was, "and we had to cut staff....." And that was it. I will say I do feel loved and cared for though because of the other staff members. I feel like I have total support from them and I feel like Don Bosco is going to go down in the fiery pits of hell because of the recent cuts.

I feel silly saying that Catie and I lost our jobs because of personal issues the principal has with us. It seems like I'm covering for something, but I'm not. I really truly feel like I was let go because first and foremost I'm young and I'm white and our principal isn't either of those things. Secondly, I think she dislikes the fact that Catie and I being young have bonded with the students and once again our principal has not. I'm obviously not going to pursue this accusation in a court of law. But I really do think and believe I don't have a job for next year solely based on my age and race.

I am looking forward to the rest of this year. After my meeting last Friday, I could tell, along with everyone else, that the climate at Don Bosco is changing. Not a single person wasn't mad about Catie and I being asked not to come back. In fact it was voiced by many other staff members. It's going to be an interesting rest of the year for sho.

Spring Break

I often wonder why exactly I went into music for my education degree. Two previous generations in my family have proved that elementary education has it's perks and downfalls like every other job and yet I chose music. And while I'm K-12 certified and could teach elementary music classes, which would be lots of fun, I don't have a strong vocal background. I sang in choir throughout high school and college and enjoyed it, but elem. music is completely vocal driven. I also didn't take more than the required one semester for elem. music and Jewell didn't offer any other classes for it that I know about. Add on top of that the fact that I student taught in a high school and middle school and in the end you have that I am not, in my opinion, qualified to teach elementary music. Also, considering that I'm instrumental I'm really not qualified to teach choir but I'm learning as I go and it's actually been an enjoyable experience.


Why do I mention all of this? Because the Friday before Spring Break, last Friday actually, we had been told budget cuts were unavoidable. That being said, jobs would need to be cut to make up for the loss of monies. Two weeks ago I was all sorts of freaked out. Our principal, who rarely deals with me, I am fairly certain dislikes me. I've never had a bad review, in fact they've all been great, I always do what I'm asked and I only complain when neccessary, when everyone else is complaining with me. Last week though, I stopped worrying and decided what happens happens. I can't control it, I should worry and if anything does happen it's probably for the best. My health has suffered greatly this year, with horrible migraine headaches. My patience is shot outside of school when dealing with normal sane minded human beings who decided to act like fools. And, my "teaching voice" which at my school is almost like a kindly sounding yell, is destroying my throat.

I, along with several good friends and colleagues, had theories about who would be let go. There are several questionable teachers, who are good people, but we're at a loss as to how they came into teaching. Also, because my best friend works there and seems to be the whipping boy or girl if you will, for our principal we thought she might be asked to leave. Although my theory was that because our fearless leader somehow just this year clued in that we're friends, even though I helped get my friend her job and we lived together last year, I figured one of the two of us would be asked to leave.

Friday was a very nervous day for me. To begin with my contact ripped so I was blind in one eye for half the day. Second, around 3rd hour, which is my plan period I got an email requesting a meeting with my principal after school. Scared I went to tell the art teacher, who went with my upstairs to talk to our principal right away. She was with a student so I was forced to wait, which only made me more of a nervous wreck. Walking back to my room I ran into our HR person and asked her to come speak to me in my room. Catie wandered down at the exact same time saying she had received an email as well. From here I basically had one of several melt downs. While our HR person had no clue about the emails and was pissed about that, she couldn't tell us any information. By 5th hour Catie had had her meeting and was at my door sobbing. They were regrettfully not renewing her contract next year, but greatly appreciated her service.

Having classes until the end of the day, I asked our art teacher or he offered to come up with me for my meeting. He volunteered to form the mob that followed though, with at least ten other teachers standing outside the door glaring in at our "leader" while she broke the news to me too. They regrettfully won't be renewing my contract but have greatly appreciated my service. When I asked why I was chosen I was told over and over again that it was budget cuts. Not that you suck, you numbers are bad, nothing except budget cuts. As I walked out I did say that at least being told a real reason would have helped, then I slammed the door and punched a window, which I'm not too certain didn't crack.

Having several days to think about where I go from here I'm scared. And I'm worried. I won't have health insurance after June and my last pay check comes at the end of July. I've worked hard this year to pay off debt, get current on payments and support myself. Not having lots of money at the end of a paycheck hasn't mattered because I've been current on bills and I've been paying things off. I've been supporting myself with the help of no one and I've even been saving money. I struggled to find a job in music after I graduated. I wasn't even hired for this one until 5 days before school started. I can't do that again. My boyfriend just bought a house and we've been planning on living together. I don't want to become a financial burden. I have two pets. I have $24,000 in student loans, $8,000 of which I was lucky to have put on deferment during the school year, which loan forgiveness applied to them. It was helpful. I can't get that again. At the end of the day I keep thinking why me? And why did I choose music?

The countdown to break is on

Thursday last week started our last semester (thank god!) and I'm totally shocked with my classes because....... they do work! And ask for help! And seem to want to do well!!! I'm not used to it in such large quantities. I love it! I am working with them non-stop throughout the hours, constantly going around the room working one on one, explaining information and checking work, that is often times correct! I even assigned homework last Friday stating that it was due Monday but they'd have time during class Monday to work on it and it wouldn't be due until the end of the day. Monday came around and they had it finished! At the beginning of class!!! I thought surely only one or two would have it done, but all of them did it. No joke. Again, I LOVE IT!!! I hope my numbers don't drop after spring break, because last year I seriously had one class each hour where no one was at school every day.

I'm glad break is around the corner, because after last week I need a few days.... or an entire week to just sleep and do work without time limits. I'm hoping these last couple of days go by quickly with little issues but I'm sure it will become the usual crazy like it always is before breaks. We shall see though.

Is it spring break yet?

It's been an extremely busy past few weeks. Today was the end of our 2nd semester and tomorrow starts our 3rd. Normally we would have had today as a work day so there's a day to do grades and prepare your room and just rest from the insanity, but because we've had TWO SNOW DAYS (gasp!) we had to use today as a makeup. I didn't think it's be an issue until Monday when I couldn't stop saying in my head, "I have to do this...... and this...... AND THIS?!!!!" I'm basically going to wing it for parts if I have to.

The students have been off the charts nuts. Constant noise, chronic absences and lots of pushing to get some work out of them before the end of the semester. I literally watched a student fail for the semester today by sitting and doing nothing. I even reminded her throughout the hour that her work was due, she didn't have much time, over and over and over and over....... She did nothing. I watched several fail slowly throughout the semester and finally had to resort to removing a student for the end of the semester. While I really like the kid and he does work hard, it's rare because he's all over the place sometimes. Choir is not the class for him and I felt bad he was ever placed in the class because I've tried really hard to not have that one class a dumping ground this year. And he got dumped.

In other news the day before Valentine's our counselor put on a special presentation for a group of students called KISS or Keep It Safe and Special. It was all about sex education, STD's, safe sex practices, those sort of fun things. We all learned how to put on condoms, both male and female, saw some lovely pictures of STD cases and at the end got gift bags with candy and free condoms. Here are my favorite quotes from the presentation though:

"Do the gift bags come with condoms?"
"Is it safe to masterbate or have sex?" This one has even asked this in class before. Apparently he forgot the answer, and "Do they make condoms for little kids?" This one threw me for a loop soooooo much that I just stared in shock, blurted out "NO!" and walked away.

Another favorite quote came last week when a student was cleaning off tables after breakfast. After finishing with one another student tried to sit down at it and she turned to him saying, "Don't you disrespect my table by sitting there!"

The art teacher had a roach crawl up his pants last week, which freaked me out so much a screamed and it didn't happen to me. Roaches are common at school but that is sick. I've been trying to wear my Uggs more so I can tuck in my pants.

We had an assembly today for Black History month and my choir sang. While I think they did better in my room and it was extremely hard to practice with them day to day because of absences, they did well and I was pleased.

Action packed week

The title of this blog really doesn't describe my week at all. Tuesday I drove down Independence Ave to find it completely blocked off right after my turn my police tape and half a dozen cop cars. There was a shooting a couple hours before school started. Supposedly there had been a domestic disturbance call made and when the cops showed up a man came at them with a machete. He refused to drop it so they shot him and when he tried to run away after that they tasered him. The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. I did have a "problem" child decide to walk out 4th hour after he couldn't get a pass, which is nothing new btw. When he decided to come back I lost it slightly only because I have had to write him up four times in the past five weeks. Lucky me though when I tried to call someone, anyone, no one answered. It was extremely irritiating.

I'm supposed to be on metal detector duty this week and have refused to go. I hate metal detector duty. I hate the idea of policing students and going through their things. So I don't do it.

Wednesday meeting was spent coming up with new contract terms, but I apparently missed the most explosive meeting ever. I think everyone has finally snapped and is really, truly tired of being told we're crappy teachers. I just wish I had been in meeting.

TAN-TAR-A!!!!!

Recently our school got a secure network which means I can no longer do ANYTHING online! While I can no longer play on facebook (sad face), I also can't use the google image feature, look up lesson plans for any music that might be considered naughty to the server (even though it's not) and I can't read my damn CNN.com news stories! I also can't update this lovely piece of non-fiction. It makes my computer painfully slow and I now have to listen to the art teacher complain because just this week he can no longer listen to AOL radio or something close to that.


Other than that work has been slow and rather uneventful. I still only see about 13 students for the entire day. I recently started helping the discipline team by taking pink slips and entering them into student logs so we have files on some of our frequent offenders. It's been a pretty funny job. I love reading the stories that go along with each write up. One teacher went so far as to write out a conversation between some students that involved the word "dildos" and some absolutely horrible sexual references that I'm spare everyone else from having to read.


The most exciting thing right now lately is that I went to the annual Missouri Music Educators Conference at Tan-Tar-A resort. This year I actually stayed on the resort with my friend from Jewell Melissa and you've never seen two more excited girls than when we got our room. A two bedroom suite right off the lake and two minutes away from the main building. In the past years we've stayed some where in Osage Beach which is never close and usually means we have to park a mile away and wait for the shuttle to get to the resort. It wasted lots of time and since we're lucky enough to have our conference at the lake, in January, it's also freezing cold. But this year the conference was great! I literally loved every minute and it was all thanks to having a room on the resort.

Stupidity on Massive Levels

I hate writing up students for stupid behavior because they exhibit it all the time. I'd be wasting my time if I wrote up every little thing that went wrong in a given day. Today however, I wrote 4 pink slips, which are discipline referral sheets. They don't take long but can become tedious because you have to write descriptions about the incidents and so on. 4 is probably a record for me since I usually go weeks without writing up students. Lately as part of the discipline committee we've been working with students to development conflict resolving techniques. Students assigned Saturday schools for their misbehavior have the chance to go to teachers who have wrote them up and work at a solution they both agree upon. Once the solution is figured teachers can forgive the Saturday school and students no longer have to serve it. I've only resolved one and my deal with the student was that if they act out again I talk to the assistant principal and the student has a 3 day suspension. I liked that deal. However, since then because our students feel entitled to their behavior and constantly feel we teachers are in the wrong I've decided to no longer resolve anything. Saturday school can be fun...... I hope.

Back from Break

I've tried to post this two previous times now, but I've gotten distracted, forgot what I was doing and by the time I remember the page has refreshed about 700 times and nothing was saved.

Wednesday, back from break now, and I'm exhausted. Staying up late over break is a horrible thing for me to do, but I can't stop it. I am fated to stay up late after my boyfriend gets off work, sleep in late no matter how early I went to bed or listen to my crack head neighbor downstairs get drunk and high and party it up allllllll night.

I've seen 13 students for the past two days now. My numbers are down from before break. It worries me that my classes are so small because with a lack of students attending we're not getting enough funding and that ultimately means staff cuts. I'm afraid that my classes would be one of the first looked because no one is here and thus there is no need for me. Looking through my rosters each period and at the end of the day though the students are really gone. They're not skipping and honestly I do try to call after a couple days just to find out what's been going on, but still. 13 a day is extremely boring for me and the students. The ones showing up are very smart, hard working kids so we get our work done early. Maybe if each class wasn't 72 minutes long........

Speaking of which they're thinking of changing our class schedule and calendar for next year. One the of the ideas on the table is year round school, which would just blow hard and I would seriously consider finding employment elsewhere, even though I am job hunting as we speak......

Break is finally here!

There are 25 minutes left for the day and then I'm FREEEEEEE!!! I'm very ready for this break. It's much needed for everyone here at school. Today I saw a total of 14 students and my average for the week is 14.75. Several students have been dropped so I'm not sure of my exact total number of students anymore. Either way 14 students for the whole day is sad. The school has seen less than 50% of its students the whole week. It's been super cold and snowing and raining and I don't really blame those that didn't show, however when it comes time to figure their grades I won't be as sympathic.

2 more days

Today I saw a total of 15 students. We're supposed to have an ice storm starting tomorrow so we might get lucky and have another snow day. Since today was an early release day I didn't feel pressured to get a whole lot accomplished but overall I've been super lazy this week. Monday I had 13 students and most of them were in my 4th hour class. That was good though because we were getting ready for a concert, which was supposed to be yesterday but was cancelled. I've lost all motivation to do anything this week and so have the students...... we're all ready for break.

SNOW DAY!

I love snow days. Except this is was our second one and twice now I've been up for about an hour when I finally get "the call" and then since I'm wide awake it takes forever to fall back asleep. That's what I do with snow days. I sleep. It's wonderful.

4 more days

Current temperature outside: 7.4 degrees
Total number of students seen today: 13
Total number enrolled in all my classes:39
Basically having a plan period every class hour:priceless

Coooolllldddd

The temperature when I woke this morning @ 5am was a warm 3 degrees. Currently @ 7:35am it's dropped to 1.3 degrees. Sitting in my first hour class I have one student out of ten here, and hardly anyone was on the buses. It was so cold even my dog who normally lives for snow and cold weather walked to the end of the block, decided screw this and literally pulled me back to my apartment. Most schools in the area didn't cancel or even delay by a few hours but really??? It's freezing outside. I watched the news and even though it says it's 1.3 degrees it actually feels like -17. I'm seriously hoping they didn't cancel or delay in the hopes that the bad weather we're supposed to get tomorrow and Thursday will actually result in a real reason to cancel and not as a actually suspect out of sheer stupidity.

One more week

Winter break is one loooong week away and it can't come soon enough. I'm currently trying in vain to get my choir ready for a concert on Tuesday. As always my major issue isn't so much students lack of ability (they're all actually very talented when they put forth the effort) but working through their attendance issues. I did progress reports last weekend for all of my classes and was actually shocked to discover that majority of my students are failing. Normally i would attribute this to my inabilities as a teacher, but after poring over all of my students records I found that the main reason for failing grades was lack of attendance. When a student is gone 8 out of 15 days yeah, they're going to fail.


Last year, being my first year, I was always concerned about how many failing students I had and was extremely caught up the way it made me look. But as the year went on and into this year I have realized that even trying my hardest, trying every teaching technique in the book, if the kids aren't there they're not going to learn and eventually won't pass.

I'm learning to take things in stride and adjust to the mindset that it's not always me as a teacher. Sometimes it really is the students and their work effort or lackthereof. I do hate though that out of a class of 15, 10 are failing, 1 has an A, two have D's and one just enrolled so they don't even have work in yet to actually grade.

Thanksgiving Thank God!

Thanksgiving break a few weeks ago was a much needed break. However, DBHS was the ONLY school in session in the Kansas City metro on the Wednesday before break started. When I was in high school in Iowa we always went on Wednesday and Missouri does lots of things differently when it comes to breaks, but last Wednesday I ended up seeing a total of 11 students for the entire day. It started out normal the day before a break, with late buses, no students going to class and of course the art teacher and I have already given in to laziness and decided to watch a movie allllll day.


I'm on a committee at work called SIT which primarily deals with fixing issues relating to students; updating our pink sheets which are for write ups (and contain such previous things as writing up a student for murder/homicide), building case files against students with repeat offenses in an effort to get them removed from school and our latest task of making a sexual harassment policy.

Two weeks ago one of our teachers was verbally harassed by a student who came into her room, after being kicked out of his class, in a search for his cell phone. After asking the student to leave the teacher was bombarded with a horrible slur of profane comments remarking on of all things her female body parts. The teacher clearly upset as anyone should be left for the day and in the meantime has consulted a lawyer about pressing charges against the student for sexual harassment. Her lawyer is encouraging her to do this and also speak to the administration about what can be done to the student at the school level. After hearing how her conversation went with them I was appalled to learn that the student, who the teacher wants kicked out and he should be, got nothing more than a five day suspension.

Normally I do try extremely hard to mind my own business and not get involved with issues involving students I don't have or am not directly related to with the classroom or school environment. Lately however I've lost my cool.

I recently found out that I suffer from stress migraines, alllll of which are related to work. I've even had to speak with one assistant principal about the possibility of not being able to finish out my contract year because the headaches and stress of this school are so much I've basically used all of my sick days to stay at home crying in pain, unable to walk my dog or even get out of bed.

This current issue literally pushed me over the edge. I am determined to help in turning this school around. It may very well kill me, but to keep a student after severe sexual harassment charges against a teacher is INSANE!

The reason they won't get rid of him by the way..... we get lots of money for having a certain number of students in attendance every day and the admin. was afraid kicking him out would affect this number and thus cash flow. The student...... doesn't even go to class when he's here. I should know, because I had him last semester and he was barely there.

Profile Pic

to clear up my profile picture for my mom and her co-workers, who i'm certain are the only people reading this, that is not how i dress for work. last Halloween catie and i dressed up as the students mocking the males attire, complete with oversized shirt, shorts hanging out and way too bangy pants. i was sick this halloween so i couldn't dress up as them again, but i will say that i understand why they dress that way. it's very comfortable.

IEP

last wednesday a student that my fellow friend and teacher catie and I have been dealing with literally went of the handle and freaked out on a teacher. i am fortunate enough to have my classroom positioned right next to the cafeteria and also one of the assistant principal's offices. so when something happens in the cafeteria, where majority of things take place, i can look out my windows and watch the action. then when they're taken into the principal's office next door i can literally hear every word of everyone's side and what their punishment is or lack there of.

so once i saw who the student was, i wasn't totally surprised that after she got in the assistant principals face, was taken to his office to "calm down" 20min. later during passing period she threw a student into one of the vending machines in the cafe. normally i'm somewhat sympathic to students who do get picked on, but in this case the student freaking out ususally brings something upon herself.

since wednesdays are early out days followed by faculty meetings i wasn't shocked to find us talking about the incident, but blown away to find out that the 3 day suspension she was given by an assistant principal for fighting was TAKEN BACK by the principal herself because........ the kid had an IEP that we don't even have documentation for. Now i understand the importance of following IEPs and how behavior IEPs work, but to me a student fighting is a student fighting. 3 days out should be appropriate regardless of their behavioral or learning disabilities. but what do i know. i'm just a teacher.

Assembly fun!

This happened last Tuesday, Nov. 11th, Veteran's day, but i know i will cherish this moment always. The week before Veteran's day we had an announcement on Wednesday about an upcoming assembly to honor our vet's and celebrate Obama's presidential win. Later in the day I was informed that my choir would be singing(!) during the assembly. So with basically three days to prepare some patriotic music or something I inform my choir this is their final on tuesday (fun!) and get ready.

Tuesday rolls around with the usual mess assemblies create. NO ONE read my freaking email OR letter in their mailbox about how i didn't want choir kids until an announcement was made so i ended up with 11 students in my room 30 min. early. then the assembly started late. so we finally get the kids in the gym (think moving a herd of cattle through the building) and we no sooner say the pledge then a HUGE fight breaks out. AND we have guests (war vets) to witness the whole thing.

Once the fight is broken up to calm the atmosphere my lovely choir sings America the Beautiful, which i think was quite fitting and touching. So the assembly carries on with no other huge problems until the color guard enters the gym to do their march, to which they are pelted with pens and pencils by every member of the student body. then to make matters worse for them as they're making their way around the gym the kid carrying the flag runs it right into the basketball hoop and practically knocks himself over. And then my choir sang again.......