Mad Hot Math

Written in pencil, traced with purple marker:

Tits, clits and bong hits

From our local paper, today:

Another parent asked about the greatest obstacle facing {the superintendent} and the administration to get children to learn in order to score higher on tests.
“The {local} School District is still the {local} School District,” she answered. “Unfortunately that is not how we are measured… It tests content more so than skill, so teachers must teach that content, and that is something we will have to change.”
She also explained that she didn’t see any obstacles rather than getting all teachers on the same page to teach the curriculum frameworks, and maintaining differentiated lessons for students of all learning levels.

She sees no problems other than the teachers.  None.  I am even more determined to make this my final year as a teacher.

Five persons are involved.  I will nickname them for ease of writing.  Two beaters, two thieves and a seller.

When I was in school, we had a ‘break.’  No class, the snack bar opened and we could relax for a moment.  If we had that here, somebody would be beat up every day during break.  So, some enterprising youths sell candy out of their locker.  Hence, the seller.  A ninth grader of average stature and slightly below average intelligence.  Nice, talks too much, a little of a teacher’s pet.

The thieves (of which there are two) are okay kids.  Averages in the 80’s, behavior that is mostly good with occassional tardies or bad moods.   They have a tendency to try to impress whomever they are around.

The beaters (of which there are two) are angry, violent kids.  Both are 17+ and still in freshman  classes.  They frequently announce that they don’t care about school and their averages and records show it.  They have both been in multiple fights and spent time in ISS and time suspended off campus.  They brag about drug and alcohol use and prevent me from teaching at every available opportunity.  Both have stolen things from my classroom.  They threaten other students.  One of them you may remember from the head slamming incident earlier in the year.  But, they don’t want to punish them enough to make them want to drop out.  Drop out prevention is our Number 1 goal.  So, if they threaten to quit school, we revoke punishments, allow them to re-take tests, and pretend not to notice when they curse and shove people around in the hallway.

The thieves and beaters robbed the seller of his candy.  They threw it up and down the hallway and the beaters beat him up.

One of the thieves ratted out the beaters when questioned.

Today:  The beaters are both in class, having missed two days of school as punishment.  They are re-telling the story and laughing about it.  One of the thieves is back, slightly penitent after two days of in school suspension, but also re-telling the story as if he is the hero.  The other thief dropped out, terrified of the beaters.  His mother can’t afford private school so he just roams the streets.  The seller dropped out, embarrassed and afraid to come to school anymore.

To sum up, we prevented two adults who routinely threaten and abuse others and whose grades are currently keeping them from being promoted from dropping out….for now.  We lost two pretty good kids with a good chance.

I am ANGRY and FRUSTRATED that I was right.  I knew, in the abstract, that this sort of thing was happening.  Seeing it happen in front of me is the reason that I don’t want to be a teacher anymore.  I cannot continue to be a part of this system.  I can’t ‘work within’ the rules when they appear designed to punish the good, hardworking students.

The bad news?

Yesterday’s staff development involved two hours of a man telling us how to use the ‘extra time’ our block schedule provides.  100 minutes every two days versus last year’s 50 minutes every day.  For those of you, non-mathematicians out there, that’s the same amount of minutes.  Exactly the same.  When I brought that up, he said “So you feel the block gives you less time?”

I said, “No, I know it has the same amount.”

He said, ” So you don’t feel like you get more time.”

I said, “How I feel doesn’t matter.  It’s the same.”

He looked confused.  Other teachers tried to help.  Eventually we gave up.  Sure, mister, show us what to do with all that extra time.

¿

Our faculty representatives me with the superintendent and we were all forwarded the summary/ minutes of that meeting. This tidbit appeared in answer to the comment:  “I don’t feel like the every other day schedule is working for our students”

“Adjust homework assignments. Break it up into smaller segments rather than discuss time management and organization Teachers need to work on time-management.”

¿

At 12:05 on Wednesday,  Mr. Square sent an e-mail to all the teachers telling us our computers MUST be turned off by 1:00.  In addition, all grades must be posted TODAY so that progress reports can be printed.   Progress reports go out Monday at 5:30.  How long does your printer take, exactly?

He was very angry when people had not shut off their computers.  It did not occur to him that telling us to ‘teach bell to bell’ is incompatible with ‘check your e-mail every 20 minutes.’   Also, many teachers were desperately trying to post grades in the 55 minute window of warning he provided us.  During class.

¿

Mr. Square came in during the middle of my first block today to invite me to teach in the extended day program.  I already do that.  Every day.  He still has no idea who I am.  The school isn’t that big.  For serious.

¿

A student, R, convinced three seperate people to call my classroom today asking for make-up work.  All three adults were confused when I pointed out that I was in the middle of teaching a class, making it an inconvenient time.   I promised each time to do it during my planning period.  She did the same thing yesterday.  She hasn’t been to my class in nearly three weeks and wants me to send her tests and quizzes home with her because she’s  ‘got stuff to do after school and can’t stay.’   Mr. Square came by to ask me to ‘try to work with her.’

¿

Someone donated $10 to my donorschoose.org project and I am way, way happy.

Our second round of  Testing is quickly approaching. We will begin testing the week we return from Thanksgiving! Wow, in a blink of an eye our first semester will be over. Please remind your faculty and staff the importance of  testing. If teachers and students have not already been working on timed math fluency of basic operations, please have them begin. Teachers should also place emphasis on students placing numbers in the correct place value. This can make a difference in a right and/or wrong answer. Once again I have attached the  schedule. Also, please have your teachers begin placing  test dates in daily or weekly newsletters. If you have questions or concerns, please let me know. Thanks

Intervention Director
# School District

Some thoughts:

No, I am not practicing timed math fluency of basic operations.  Neither are the science, english or social studies teachers to which you sent this e-mail.  I will not be starting any time soon.

I will also not be teaching place value.  I’m a little busy teaching algebra.  I was aware that it can make a difference toward making answers correct.   Was anybody unaware?

I don’t publish a daily or weekly newsletter.  Does anybody?

Is the writer aware that this went to high school teachers?

Why are we even giving this test?  The students never see their own results.  The results have no effect on the students.  Teachers are given the results, but because they are meaningless, they aren’t used.  But it will take several hours of instructional time.

So, I’ve been trying to introduce class each day with a video clip and a lot of them from here:    http://abel.math.harvard.edu/~knill/mathmovies                 are good.

But today I found www.vidoemo.com   You’ll have to search math, but there’s some funny stuff.

I hope you love it.

I don’t want to blog about work on the weekends.  I want to pretend work doesn’t exist on the weekends. So, my blog every day goal has been amended to blog every school day.

Our football team is going to the state championships.  Many of us were rooting for them to lose.  The coach is a lot crazy and the players are awful.  Rude, disrespectful, thieves, liars…I wanted there to be some justice.  There isn’t.  He’ll probably get some kind of bonus this year.

I have some kind of illness that I will call ‘7th block flu,’  because that’s where it originated.’  I am sneezing and coughing but they made me fill out my time sheet for after school tutoring 13 school days in advance, so I can’t really stay home.

Maybe we’ll have another pep rally.  I do like those.

Perception:

I admit that I snap judge my students.  The first day of school, I start making guesses.  I guess who needs to be up front and who can sit by their friends, who needs extra help and who will have an ‘A.’  I am frequently wrong.

N.D. proved me wrong.  Day 1, I had him pegged as a ‘gangsta.’  They all have baggy pants and shirts in size 5XL and more money invested in shoes that I will ever have, but he had the slouchy look of Trouble.   By November, I was writing him job reccommendations.  He still stops to say hello in the mornings.  I was 100% wrong.   I am spending today trying to step back and re-assess the new crowd.

If you have a twin, that is your nickname at my high school.  You will both be called ‘twin.’   Does that happen anywhere else?

To show solidarity with a friend, I’m giving this NaBloPoMo thing a try.  I’ll post every day — we’ll see how it goes.

At my school, a minimum of 60% of the students have a tatoo.  Many are on arms, but the neck, breasts and top of the foot are also very popular.

My donor’s choose project was approved today and is now on the site.  It’s called “Look what I did!”  for those rich people willing to donate.