Tradition!

You’d think that a teacher who has spent the majority of his career changing schools more often that a teenage boy changes his socks wouldn’t have developed many traditions.

But I, inadvertently, have developed at least one.

Right now my keyboarding classes are in room 208 and my math classes in 203, even though the rest of the math teachers are on the 3^rd floor.   The principal did this to keep my classes close, since I go back and forth between the two at least 6 times a day.

Well, now we’ve thrown in room 314, which is where the announcements studio I’ve been talking about is.   I found out that the teacher in room 316, right next to the studio, is pregnant and not coming back next year.   I figured it would be a lot easier to run the announcements and my classroom if they were right next door to each other, so I asked the principal if I could move up there.

It became official today, my math classes will be in room 316 next year.

Now I can honestly say that I never stay in my first room at any school for more than one year.  Tradition.

1. First school – room 328 first year, 306 the next 7.
2. Second school – room 32 for a year, 33 for the remaining 3 years.
3. Third school – room 121, I was only there for one year.
4. Room 225 for a year, 110 the next 3.
5. Started out in B7, moved to A3 for the second (and last) year.
6. Right now I’m in 203, next year I’ll be in 316.

Tradition!

19 my Aunt Fanny.

… They really need to rephrase the term “Average Class Size”, or find a more informative way of calculating it.

… I just got done adjusting my seating charts for the second semester, which starts Tuesday.  Of my four 8th grade classes, two have 40 students, and two have 39 students.  My 9th grade class has a scant 36 students in it.

… Then I’m in reading the Salt Lake Tribune, where they reported that the average class size for secondary schools last year was “19 students a class.”  That’s one more student than half my smallest class.  A more accurate, and less deceptive, way of stating that number would be “19 students per certified staff member.”

… Here’s the problem with that number, they figure it by taking the number of students registered and dividing it by the number of staff members on teacher contracts, including the ones with no class loads.  Counselors are on teacher contracts.  Librarians are on teacher contracts, so are the School Technology Specialists.  They don’t differentiate between classroom teachers and these other positions. When you also consider the smaller class sizes of Special Ed, Youth in Custody and other at-risk specific classes, you get an incredibly distorted impression of the the class size most of our students are in.

… I’d like to see the stats from actual class rolls for your mainstream classes.  That would give you an accurate idea of what the majority of the students see in all their classes, and I’d guarantee it’s a lot more than 19.  Or at least word it so that the general public doesn’t picture classrooms with less than 20 students in them, and wonder why all these teachers are complaining about “stack ‘em deep and teach ‘em cheap.”

Moving day

Well, it's official.  I've moved into my new classroom out at the Jr. High that rhymes with schmeisenhower.  I had to borrow The Gearhead's truck to get my desk out there (you'll see the thing I would have been stuck with if I hadn't brought my old desk with me), and although it wasn't blocked, they had parked their Jeep pretty close to the side of the truck, I had to squeeze it out.  I backed it back in when I returned it, and in being careful not to hit the Jeep, I got it a lot closer to the fence, and more into the bushes, than it was before.  I thought about calling them, but decided I wanted to see if they would notice that the Jeep wasn't as close to the truck as it was when they left. (Didja notice?, and thanks for the use of the truck).  Here's some pictures, I didn't get a picture of my desk there, but I'll post one later.

This is the teacher's desk they had in the room.

There was also this one, which has no drawers.  It's also kind of old, since it was surplus from Mountain Bell.  That was the name of the phone company in Utah before the big AT&T breakup.  Which means the school got is some 20 years ago, and at the time it was old enough for the phone company to want to get rid of it.

This is looking from where my desk is towards the front of the room.  My room and the room next door are actually one huge room that is split in two by that big accordian wall.

A window.  My room has a window!  Which is why I'm willing to put up with the accordian wall.  The school was built when "open classrooms" were all the rage.  That meant that the building was one huge room and that the classrooms were seperated by nothing more than bookcases and blackboards.  Surprisingly, that didn't work too well, so they ended up building walls to break up the area into real classrooms.  That left very few classrooms with windows.

This is looking from the front of the room by the accordian wall out towards the door, which is another perk because it's right by an outside door.  Which means I can sneak out early without the principal knowing.