A Great Class
Obligations
What's on my mind lately? The amount of stuff I have to do:
- One grade per week per student
- One Common Formative Assessment per class per three weeks
- One Common Summative Assessment per class per grading period
- Contacting all homeroom parents by phone within the next three weeks
- One collaborative team meeting per week
- One grade-level English teacher meeting per week
- One grade-level meeting per week
- Assorted meetings with district personal about various topics
- Assorted 504 and IEP meetings
- Lesson plans in a very detailed required format that include
- Differentiation for ML (multi-lingual) students for each lesson
- Differentiation for special education students for each lesson
- Differentiation for early finishers
- Plans for collaborative teaching with co-teacher in inclusion classes
- Plans for integration of ML strategies
- Data chats with students every Monday
- Faculty or department meeting every other week
- Positive notes to three students each week
- Create a list of every book in my classroom library
- Make publically available every resource I use
And that really doesn't cover everything -- that's just what I could list off the top of my head.
Is it any wonder so many teachers are burning out?
Fall 2024 Soccer Season Starts
What Should Be the Last Straw
It was near the end of the school day, and the eighth-grade assistant principal pulled me out of my classroom to tell me something. "You're going to get an email in a little bit that I don't want you to read until you get home, relax, have some dinner, and then have a drink."
I knew what was in that email from what she said. It's something that has been bouncing around for a year or more and now has finally come to full fruition: South Carolina Regulation 43-170.
The email from our principle included a link to the official district explanation:
Effective August 1st, 2024, SC Regulation 43-170 requires teachers to produce a complete list of the Instructional Materials (including classroom library books) that are used in or available to a student in any given class, course, or program that is offered, supported, or sponsored by a school, or that are otherwise made available by any District employee to a student on school premises. That list shall be provided upon reasonable request by any parent/guardian of a student in the District.
What does this mean in practical terms? The principal spelled it out in no uncertain terms:
- All books in your classroom library have to be named in a list
- Link to Lesson Plans
- Worksheets
- Books
- PowerPoints/Slides
- Articles
- Workbooks
- Video Clips
- Excerpts
In short, all the materials we might give to a student in a given year.
Why?
Because there's a concerted effort among teachers to turn as many students gay as possible and promote critical race theory every chance we get. We have so few other demands on us that, out of a sense of woke duty, we purposely spend time trying to turn kids gay and putting down whites. All mathematics word problems are set in San Francisco or must include some anti-white framing. History teachers eschew all periods of history except the Stonewall riots and contemporary history with a bent toward institutional racism. Science classes neglect all disciplines except genetics, and they only discuss the gay gene. Finally, we English teachers simply have students watch episodes of Will and Grace and write summaries of them.
In case anyone can't tell (and those who proposed and promoted this law probably can't tell), this is satire. I feel it necessary to state that upfront. None of this actually happens. That goes without saying, but just in case someone stumbles on this and uses it as proof that teachers are encouraging students to identify as gay, anti-white cats, I must say emphatically once again, this is not happening. When dealing with a blunt viewpoint, one must use blunt instruments.
If either of our kids expressed any interest in going into education, I would try my hardest to discourage them. I've come to wonder whether or not there is a conscious effort to destroy public education by placing such onerous demands on teachers that the majority of them quit so that the state can farm out education to private firms just like so many states have done with correctional institutions.
August Monday
We've been in school for nearly two weeks now. It's time for the honeymoon period to end, sending everything into a series of predictable unknowns: who is going to turn out the nearly-constant talker who, when redirected, grows aggressive and disrespectful? Who is going to become the example of a nearly-always bad mood? Who is going to start refusing to do much of anything?
Usually by this time of the year, I can see those students starting to let the cover drop and be their true selves. Last year was so tough there was no honeymoon period: we eighth-grade teachers could see it clearly the first day.
This year? I'm still waiting for them to appear.
I'm trying not to get too unrealistically optimistic about it. They're sitting in my class for sure. They have to be: they're always there.
But maybe, just maybe, not this year?
Backyard Badminton
The Only Picture
I took today was of one minor accomplishment:
I reinstalled the pressure-reduction valve that I put in last week but was leaking.
Yes, that's red and blue pex. No, I don't care.
From the Far Past
Start of the Final Season
We're not the powerhouse we were a couple of years ago when the girls took the state title. But the girls love the game nonetheless.
20
Twenty years ago this all started. Nineteen years ago we moved to America. Almost eighteen years ago we became three. Twelve years ago, four. Along the way we've added a cat, a dog, and a frog. We've added a house, and some cars came into our lives and then exited. We've moved a time or two. We've changed jobs a time or three. We've renovated a bathroom, then a kitchen, then a carport, then another bathroom, then a basement. We've pulled up shrubs and planted trees, added a shed and a smoker to the backyard along with swings, a trampoline, and some hammocks. We've fought yellow jackets in the yard and battled roaches in the house. We've turned a mixed surface parking area into a lovely concrete parking lot. We've planted blueberries, tomatoes, zucchini, raspberries, peas, elderberries, radishes, figs, cucumbers, blackberries, and more that I can't even begin to recall. We've cut down trees in the backyard and let bushes grow into trees in the front. We've been to countless volleyball games, soccer games, and basketball games. We've had a leaking roof, a flooding basement, various electrical mysteries. We've lost parents and gained friends, lost touch with friends and turned friends into new family. Uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandparents have passed away. We've amassed a wealth of Christmas decorations and gone through passing periods of Halloween decor. We've walked around these blocks in our neighborhood more times than we care to recall, ridden our bikes together miles upon miles, played boardgames, card games, and video games until we're tired of them and they become permanent closet inhabitants. We've cooked thousands of pierogies, traveled thousands of miles, spent thousands of dollars on things that later turned out to be less than important. We've been to the emergency room, to family care physicians, dermatologists, gastroenterologists, dentists, and orthodontists. We've had surgeries and celebrations, baptisms and funerals, and quiet evenings looking at the Christmas tree and drinking tea. We've had ups, downs, lateral and diagonal movements. We've laughed, cried, and sat bewildered. We've hoped and regretted. We've planned, failed, and succeeded.
Through it all, this has been the one, stable constant. And that's all I need to look to the next twenty years with a smile on my slowly-wrinkling face.