Posts Tagged ‘teaching’

Today a mother came to visit after school, four children in tow.  Her son Efrain was a 2nd grader with me last year, and her son Elijah is a fifth grader with me this year.  They are both behind grade-level in all subjects.  They are both small, sweet boys with broad, white smiles and a [...]

Driving home from school today, I waited at an interminable red light tapping my fingers and half-listening to Scott Simon interviewing some expert about some new type of robot-armed eco soda machine of the future. Blah blah blah blah. I knew it was important, something about fluorocarbons and the ozone layer and blah blah blah [...]

Not just a couple of weeks, but a couple of months.  I needed to get FAR away from the wild things, and I did.   I roamed all over.
But now tomorrow’s the first day of the new year, and today was wrap-up of last year.
We got our scores today, both last year’s class’s results and this [...]

The marathon is over.  The Wild Things have gone home (or what passes as home).  All that’s left is bits of ratty paper and crumbly memories strewn through my room, through me.  A school year.  Nine-ish months of intense proximity.  Just like a pregnancy, only with 20: viginitituplets?  Puts Octomom to shame.
As I look back [...]

We finished Day 2 of testing today.  Day 2 was much better than Day 1 when my well prepared students seemed like they’d been sucker-punched, even though we’d spent the whole year covering the material (antonyms, synonyms, word usage, phonics, syllabification, reading comprehension, etc.).  And we’d spent the whole year doing a bit of test [...]

I had to do it again today.  Call the Department of Child and Family Services to report a parent.
This one haunts me for different reasons than the last one: last week, I knew the mother intended well but just needed some parenting help; today I know the mother intends bad.
This mother instructed her seven-year-old child, [...]

This week I had to make the phone call all teachers dread.  To the Department of Children and Family Services.  The supreme form of tattling.
Kelly walked at the front of the line holding a water bottle with ice in it.  The last time Kelly was carrying a water bottle with ice in it, she’d brought [...]

He’s back!  He’s better than before!  He’s José!
I met with his mother yesterday.
And his brother.
And his social worker.
You’d be surprised how many kids come with entourages these days.  It’s my second social worker conference this year.  The other one (surprise!) was Griselda’s (I just knew they had a connection).

If only their entourages brought them movie [...]

11 warning notices filled out to be sent home to kids not meeting grade-level standards
5 notes to parents (homework issues)
3 mini-conferences with parents (Kelly, Jesus, Brianna: Kelly brought a glass perfume bottle to school because Jesus, a 2nd grader in another class, called her fat and stinky; Brianna’s having a hard time counting to 20 [...]

Every school has to have one. They’re loved. They’re hated. They’re sometimes ignored. A charter school in New York is working hard to minimize them by choosing to pay its teachers principal salaries and its principal teacher salaries. 125K for the teachers, 90K for the head guy. But minimized or maximized, they’re still [...]