Ain’t been done in over a decade.

They announced who will be the new principal at my school for next year.  There were several possibilities, a few of which I had worked with before.  The one they chose is not.

Thinking back I realized the last time I started a school year with a principal I had never worked with before was back in 2001.  Heck, when I came to this school I had already worked with the principal, vice-principal and one of the counselors.  I knew what to expect.

The good news is that they didn’t assign the one person I would not work with, so I won’t be putting in for summer transfer this year.  Figure I might as well give it at least a year and see how things go.

Well, c’est la vie.  And at least I do have the schedule I wanted next year – all 7th grade.

Chaos in front of the school.

Well, up the street a block or so.

The other day our school officer called the office because he was afraid we would get panic calls from parents because there was a major police presence just up the street from the school.

He wanted to tell us that there was nothing to worry about.  They had tried to serve a warrant on someone, who happened to ram a police car trying to get away.   Fortunately, the suspect didn’t get away, which was why there was nothing to worry about.

If you agree, please sign this petition.

Click HERE to go sign the petition.  Thanks.

Survived the first week.

Only 174 more days to go!

The two hardest things about going back to school for me are 1) getting up early and 2) getting used to being on my feet all day again. (Exhaustion is why I haven’t been around the blogosphere at all this week.)

I hate getting up early.  I love waking up, looking at the clock and being able to roll over and go back to sleep.  This alarm clock thing is for the birds.

But – other than those two things, this week went quite well.   My biggest class is small by Utah standards, where 36 in a math class is normal and 75 in a P.E. class is not unheard of.

The mix of students in my classes is quite good, meaning that I don’t have one period that is chock full of kids that play off each other and cause the class to be hard to keep on task.  I’ve got some of my favorite students from last year back in my classes, and some really cool new ones.

Looks like it’s going to be a good year (knock on wood).

Paranoid or Prudent?

At the Roller Derby my brother, niece and I got into a conversation about how different parenting is than it was even just 20 years ago.

When my siblings and I were kids (40 years ago) we would leave the house first thing in the morning and be out with our friends until the street lights came on, our parent’s had no idea where we were, other than with friends.  We’d hop on our bikes (without helmets) and ride for miles, one time a bunch of us made the 20 mile round trip between Lexington and Concord.

My niece said that even just 20 years ago, when she was a kid, she had more freedom than she feels comfortable giving her kids.

So, this headline on the front page of the paper today startled me a little bit:

An app for walking to school?  Our “app” was mom’s foot on our butt kicking us out the front door.  (Ok, mom never really kicked us out the door, but at least as far as I know, she never followed us to make sure we made it to school.)

So my question is:  Is the world really that much more dangerous that it used to be, are we just more aware of the things that can happen or are we just living in a culture of paranoia?

Now, I’m not trying to belittle parental concerns, during our conversation at the roller derby  my nephew-in-law explained why he wants his son to wear a helmet whenever riding his bike, and I understand his concerns.  And I would be amazed if any parent these days would let their child ride un-seatbelted in way-back of a station wagon with a bunch of unsecured camping equipment. 

I just wonder if some of the concerns are a little unfounded, and take away a bit of kids being kids.

Just a drummer in a rock & roll band…

I had my musical debut today as a drummer in a band called “The Fab 9.5”.

It took some intensive practice (one lesson from an ex-student and 6, count them s-i-x, rehearsals), some serious interviewing (“Will you?”, “But I never played before.”, “That’s ok, the backup singers never sang before, the lead guitarist never lead before and the lead singer is hoarse from the play.”, “Oh, what the heck.  Ok.”), and a major make-over (a wig and a tie) and we finally got our first gig in front of a paying (if you consider captive as paying) audience.

We rocked.  We brought down the house.  We won the competition; which was easy considering this was all for the announcement assembly for the next year’s Student Body Officers, and the script called for us to win.

If you take into account the group consisted of the poor band teacher stuck with two math teachers, a French, Spanish, science, history, drama and English teacher and the school Librarian, we pulled off a pretty good rendition of “Twist and Shout”.

Yeah, well, at least the kids loved it, probably more for the fun of watching teachers make fools of themselves, but it was a lot of fun for us anyway.  And I got to be a drummer in a rock and roll band.  One more thing checked off the bucket list.

I’ll be fine with 4 hours of sleep.

Got a call from my principal around 10:15 tonight.

There was a fire in the auditorium and the Fire Marshall needed some information about the stage lights and how the light board worked.

He tried to get the information from me over the phone, but in the end I ended up having to head down to the school to turn things on so I could answer his questions.  I ended up being there for a while, I didn’t get home until a little after midnight.

We figured out that is probably wasn’t a short in the system, and that none of the lights were left on.  What we think happened is that a couple of the spot lights that are on light trees on the stage were a little too close to the curtains, and somebody probably accidentally pushed the curtain right onto one of the lights on their way out of the stage.  Even though there were off, they had been on and if you’ve ever worked with them you know that they get incredibly hot, and can stay that way for a while.

Fortunately, thanks to the fire-sprinkler system, the damage (to the building) was minimal and we’ll still be having school tomorrow.

The main curtain was ruined, as was one of the black side curtains.  The nice hardwood on the wall by the curtain was burned and had to be removed, and a little of the hardwood floor was singed a bit too.  The stage and auditorium floor were drenched, according the the Fire Marshall there was 3 feet of water in the orchestra pit area.

The big damage was water damage to the sets.  The school production of “The Wizard of Oz” was scheduled to start next week, but since the witches castle and the front doors to the emerald city were destroyed, we’re not sure it’s going to happen.

Anyway, at least the building didn’t burn to the ground and I’m getting real tired so it’s off to bed.  Hopefully they’ll have the smoke smell cleared out of the building by morning so I won’t have to deal with that. 

G’nite.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

I’ve been working with the same Vice-Principal for the last 3½ years at 2 different schools.  A week ago we got informed the district had decided to move him to another school.  That put the faculty in a panic, because he’s been fantastic and the previous Vice they had (I never worked with him) was, well, uh, … not nearly as good.  He didn’t ask to leave, really doesn’t want to, but when the district “asks”, you simply say “thanks & how high?”, especially if you ever want to make it to full-fledged Principal.

The good news is that we’re getting a rookie, an intern that is being promoted to his first full position.  A rookie is good because, of the five rookies I’ve seen my current Principal train, 2 have become a couple of the best Principals in the district, one is in charge of Technology and Adult Education for the entire district and the fourth, the one we just lost, is being transferred to a school in need of a strong V.P.  I have no idea what happened to the fifth, but an 80% success rate makes me comfortable that the new guy is going to be good.

Anyway, I decided we couldn’t just let him fade out into oblivion, so I orchestrated a fun farewell, live during Thursday’s morning announcements.  The Student Body Officers got him up to the studio on the premise of presenting him with a farewell card.  He made a little “I’m gonna miss you all” speech and then was presented with these:

Before things got too emotional, but mostly before he could escape, my Tech Crew and I presented him with one final farewell gift.

After he finally extricated himself from all the silly string, he told me “Now I know what it’s like to be an insect, getting sprayed with bug spray.”

Blurred Vision

I’ll admit it – I blurred these perfectly sharp pictures just for this theme.  That’s because as soon as I saw the theme I thought “Cool, now I can use some of my school pictures.”  In case you didn’t know, I can get in trouble if I post pictures of students on my blog, especially if the students are in focus and easily identifiable.

So I waded through my school pictures and chose one from each of the schools I taught at, ones with (hopefully) good stories that go with them.

School #1:  In 2001 our school did a service project where we brought a bunch of students up to Midway to help clear part of the track for one of the 2002 Olympic venues.  Here are a few students sitting on the hill relaxing after a day of clearing.

Back then it was common for both boys and girls to bleach their hair, and this picture reminded me of one student who did it himself.  He came to school with his previously brown hair bleached a very white blond.  One spot on the top, back of his head was particularly white, and the hair just fell out onto my finger when I poked at it.  I asked him what he did to bleach is hair.

“I poured a bunch of bleach in a bowl, stuck my head in and held it there.  I figured it was done when it started burning.”

Uh, more than done.  He ended up having to shave his head completely.  At least it grew back.

School #2: This kid got paid $5 to lick my chalkboard when I called him up to do a problem.  The smearing of chalk all over his face was free.  **This student also drank a 3 month old carton of milk for $7, and was confused why he was feeling nauseous by lunch.

School #3: One of the classes I enjoyed the most was this after-school cooking class at an inner-city middle school.  It was always packed and the kids loved it, and surprisingly they liked cooking “real food” more than desserts.  Several of them proudly told me how they had made our home made chicken noodle soup for their families.

School #4: Another class I really enjoyed teaching was my Psychology classes at the high school.  One of our counselors got her father to bring in his lie-detector machine and we had fun hooking up students to it and asking them (benign) questions.

School #5: A student brought in some Kool-Aid that he had forgotten to put the sugar in.  We spent some time seeing who would dare to try the unsweetened Kool-Aid, and getting pictures of their reactions.

School #6: And finally, a crowd surrounds students competing in a pie eating contest during lunch.

Oh yea.

Goose on the loose atop the roof.

Halfway through 1^st period one of my students points to the windows and says “There’s a goose watching us!”

Lo and behold, there it was, perched on top of the building one floor above us, and we’re already on the 3^rd floor. I got some good pictures and then went back to teaching.  By the end of 1^st period it was gone. 

Two ships passing in the night. Or one ship passing 30 others in the morning.

Unfunded Mandates.

The State Legislature loves giving educators more and more to do.  Every time they meet we sigh a collective sigh and contemplate what new thing they are going to dump on us.  90% of the time without relieving us of something we are already doing so that we have the time for the new stuff.

More often than not, these mandates come without any funding to pay for them, we’re supposed to squeeze it out of our 51^st-in-the-nation per pupil funding.

This year there are a couple things that I actually support, except for their being unfunded.

The first one will require school districts to hold yearly seminars for parents on bullying, substance abuse, mental health and internet safety.  If it weren’t for the fact that funding for these seminars will be coming out of my classroom, I’d be all for it.

They are also voting on a bill to put caps on K-3 classrooms.  It would mandate that kindergarten classes could be no bigger than 20 students, 1^st & 2^nd grade at 22 and 3^rd grade classes would stop at 24.  Wonderful idea, one I have been argued is the #1 issue in education for years.  The problem is that the bill includes no extra money.  Zip.  Zero. Nada. Ziltch. Niente.

This means class sizes in the upper grades are going to have to get bigger.  Having 34 kids in an Algebra class will be a thing of the past.  42, which I’ve had before, will be the new norm.  An article on KSL.com reports Logan High School already having 50+ students in their English classes.

You up on the hill:  The rubber band  is already stretched to the max, the camel’s back is cracking and the balloon is pushing it’s outer limits.  Something’s gonna blow, and it ain’t gonna be pretty.

But hey, we got $500 million to move the Utah State Prison so some developers (aka: friends & legislators) can make a bundle building houses at the Point of the Mountain.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Parent/Teacher conferences were this week.  Went quite well, not screaming parents, no crying students.   And a few of the parents I needed to talk to even showed up.  If it weren’t for the three days of no sleep followed by a half day of teaching, I’d even say they were enjoyable.

But, in it’s infinite wisdom, our district decided to give the secondary teachers their compensation day the week before the conferences.  Usually we have a 3 day weekend following the two 14 hour days, but this year they decided to combine the elementary and secondary days off into the same day, even though we have our conferences one week apart.

This means that instead of having one day to recuperate from those two long days and then the usual 2 day weekend to do my usual weekend stuff, I have only two days to recuperate, do laundry, clean the house, clean the dishes, fix what needs to be fixed on the cars and relax.

I know it seems like a little thing, and maybe it is, but I guarantee that it is going to make a difference in my energy level come Monday.

Now I’m off to check out all the shiny things on Thematic Photographic.

Let the games begin…

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BACKGROUND

At the end of last school year I took over the technical side of the announcements at my school.  Because we switched from closed circuit TV to intranet streaming to teacher computers, I had some failures and some successes.

And all along the way one of our science teachers, I’ll call him Mr. L, was quick to congratulate our successes, and make fun of our failures.  He even left me a voicemail giving me crap on one of our less successful days.  I downloaded it and played it for the entire school at the beginning of the announcements the next day.  (He hasn’t left any voicemails since.)

This year things have gone relatively smoothly, but he still pokes fun at our small blunders.  We actually get along really well, and have developed a relationship where we willingly partake in giving each other crap when things happen.

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FOREGROUND

On Tuesday Rite-Aid came to our school to give out flu shots to the teachers.  Mr. L got his while I was doing lunch duty, but when I came in to get mine I found out that he has a little phobia of needles.  Seems he came real close to actually passing out when he got his shot.

After I discovered that he wasn’t too embarrassed by his reaction, I decided it was open season.  I sent him an email that contained nothing but this photo:

We then traded notes back and forth a couple of times, both of us using words and phrases like needling me, poking fun, taking jabs and any other similar euphemism we could think of.  He was demanding an apology, I was giving him back-handed ones.

Then, during one of my classes, one of his students showed up and handed me this: (click on it to enlarge it to read)

I sent back a tootsie roll, with a post-it note with this on it:

After school I brought him his soda and we had a few laughs over the whole thing.

Drawback, and a benefit.

There’s good and bad taking over a classroom from a person who is leaving the teaching profession.

• Good:  You get all the cool stuff they leave because they don’t plan on using it again.
• Bad: You have to go through all the crap you’ll never use to get to the good stuff.

I spent a few hours up at school today going through my new classroom and finally got all the crap I don’t want out of there, and organized the stuff I’m keeping.  Feels good to have that taken care of.

I also met with my student-teacher for next year.  I’m part of a program through the University of Utah that pays math-teachers-to-be to spend an entire year with a mentor teacher.  She will be there from day-1, for 2 of my classes, until the last day of school.  It’s a gradual release program, at first she will just be there observing me as I set up the classroom expectations and procedures.  Once things get going, she will start interacting more and more with the class; assisting me, co-teaching, teaching mini-lessons, taking over a whole class here and there, going solo, until the the last term where she will take over every aspect, just like a regular student-teacher.

I really wish all student teaching included the beginning of the school year, I certainly wish I had gone through this kind of program.  It took me a really horrible first year of teaching to realize the importance of the expectations and procedures set up at the beginning of the school year.

School’s Out for Summer…

ZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

The Fridayest of Frietag of all Venerdi.

“This is it, this is life, the one you get, so go ahead and have a ball.”

Tomorrow is The Last Day Of School for this year.

As always, it’s bittersweet.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m ready for it, looking forward to it.  I’m exhausted, my nerves are frazzled and if I paid attention to my stress-induced physical symptoms I’d probably be on all kinds of medication.  (They always disappear before the next weekend).

But at the same time, there are some 800 people that have, peripherally at the very least, been a part of my daily life and that I will not see at all for a couple-three months.  About a third of them I may never see again.  That’s part of life as a teacher, you accept it even if you don’t completely get used to it.

So, tomorrow is going to be a great day.  I’ll be relaxed as I drive home.  I’ll do nothing all weekend except relax some more. 

But every now and then, I’ll miss the interactions, the laughter, the kidding around, the questions and answers and those spontaneous comments that stick in my mind.

“Money is temporary, but cooking is forever.”

Lost … and Found.

I got home from going out to the Great Salt Lake to take some pictures and as I put my camera case on the counter I noticed my school keys were not hanging on the lanyard hooked to the case handle.

F&@%.  Yup, I said it.  At least once.

I rummaged through the trunk of the car, hoping that they had fallen off in there.  No luck.  That meant they were somewhere between my house and the Great Salt Lake, including a stop at Liberty Park.  I seriously considered just giving up here, assuming I’d never find them, and fessing up at school tomorrow.

First stop – Liberty Park.  I parked outside the park because, well, it’s Memorial Day and driving through the park would take forever.

There was a family gathering at the table I sat at and I went up to them and asked if they had seen any keys around the table.  They were incredibly sweet and even grandma helped search the grass around the area.  No luck yet.  I headed off to retrace my steps and they assured me that if they found the keys they would let me know when I passed going back to my car.  I went halfway across the park, asked if anyone had turned anything in at the concession stand, found a parks worker and she let me look in their lost & found, and even went to the Tracy Aviary gift shop.  No luck, nowhere.

I’m halfway out to the Great Salt Lake, on I-80 going about 90 MPH (145 KPH) when two Highway Patrol cars on the other side of the freeway flip on their lights and head off towards the median.  More cursing, lost keys and a ticket.  I pull into the right lane and slow down to a legal 75 (121) and the adrenaline rises as I see them in the left lane catching up to me.  Please, just let me get to the exit so I don’t have to sit on the side of the freeway to get the ticket.

My signal is on, I ‘m headed into the exit lane as they blow past me because it wasn’t me they flipped around for.  My luck is getting better, I start to feel like maybe, just maybe, I’m gonna find my keys.

I spent 20 minutes retracing my steps, deducing where I sat and the paths I walked, rummaging through dry grass and under rocks.  I’m about to give up and start up the hill back to the car. 

There they are!  Relieved that I found my keys and happy I took the time to come back out to look for them, I head home.

From now on, the keys go in the camera case.

Quelle duh, # deux.

Usually when I read an article about some parent suing the school, I think “Oh, great, what are they blaming us for now?”

But as I read this article in the Salt Lake Tribune this morning, my thought changed from “Here we go again…” to “Why the hell did they need a real gun as a prop in a school play anyway?”

The school was doing the play “Oklahoma!”  They needed the sound of a gunshot to come from offstage and the administration let them use a real gun with blanks in it.  They had safety procedures in place, the gun was kept in a locked box.  It was only to be handled by an adult, during transportation and for the actual shots.  Good for them, but frankly it would scare the hell out of me to even have a locked gun around teenagers.  They are notorious for doing stupid things, even the ‘good’ kids.

You could argue that the kid is really to blame.  He broke into the locked box, he handled the gun when he knew he wasn’t supposed to and he was stupid enough to shoot it off.  And all that is true.

But why even take the risk when there is absolutely no need to?  The gun would never be seen, they were going to fire it off stage.  It would have been a lot easier, and safer, to just use computer sound effects.  I Googled “gun sound effects” and got over 13 million results in .14 seconds.  I clicked on the very first link, and they had about 75 free downloadable MP3 files.

I’m sorry.  Normally I’m on the side of the educators, who usually are doing their best to provide a safe environment for all their students.  But in this case, in an attempt to provide authenticity to a play, it was a stupid risk to take.

Schedule from Heaven.

The master schedule for next year is locked in.  Which means, short of any dire circumstances, all the teachers know what classes they are going to teach and which period.

I couldn’t have asked for a better schedule.  Actually, it’s pretty much the schedule I did ask for.

All 3 math classes are in the morning, when the kids are still relatively fresh, sedate and most inclined to be willing to learn and cooperate.

My 3 keyboarding classes, which is more of an activity based class, are in the afternoon.   A much better class to have after they’ve had a lunch of sugar and caffeine.

Having the math classes all together and the keyboarding classes all together also means that I only have to change classrooms once a day.  This year it was math-keyboarding-math-keyboarding-math, 4 class switches a day.  Bleah!

Bonus points – my prep period is the period lunch is done in.  Which means I get to go to first lunch or second lunch, which ever one I’m in the mood for.  It also means that I have an hour and a half break at once, I could actually go out for lunch once in a while.  Wahoo!