So I think I'm gonna hit the Rising Tide conference on Saturday morning. It's derby bootcamp this weekend but I can't really afford to drive to Houma and spend that much time when I need to be focused on school right now. No, that's just my excuse to go rub elbows.
I'm tired. I'm losing my voice. The attitudes are starting to show. But it's a good challenge and I'm not burned out yet.
I have found my favorite derby name to date:
Lois Carmen Denominator (a Boston Derby Dame)
Someone please tell me when, exactly, I become such a math dork.
Life, at this exact moment, is all about surviving the next two weeks. The enormous amount of papers, assignments, grading, and pre-Thanksgiving stress leading right up to the next derby bout of Antoinettes versus Punches. But I did just get back from a pretty cool presentation on a third grade class room that is run like a corporation. It gives me hope for the rest of my school year, that it can be saved. Basically this guy started and economy in his classroom, beginning much like I had wanted to do originally with paying for desired behaviors. I just wasn't on my game enough at the start of school to implement anything effectively. But I think that now, listening to what he's done, I could probably handle it and I think it would work wonders for my kids. So that's something.
Also, I'm debating about having my derby life intertwine with my school life. I want to get the rollergirls to do something with my school or just my sixth grade, but I realize that it would probably compromise my school's anonymity out in the internets and beyond. Not that I have many blog readers, and not that I'm a particularly popular rollergirl, but it would be out there for anyone and everyone and I would have to cope with that. It will probably be just fine, but still I'm sure that there would be consequences that even I can't imagine, good or bad.
In the effort to make my tests more LEAP-like, to better prepare my kids for the 6th grade iLEAP and beyond, I gave a mostly multiple choice test today. I am wary of grading it, as I don't know new levels of disappointment my kids can dredge up. On the other hand, my hope when I was writing the test was that it would actually make things easier on some level. Kids would have choices, an idea of what the answer might be. On the other hand, a lot of my kids see multiple choice and just start circling answers without paying much attention to what the answer means. Here goes nothing.
This week has been alright. I think I'm getting into a good pace. Still a little too brisk, but more manageable. The most helpful part has been the face that D got himself suspended for 6 days and that makes my second period classroom about a hundred times more manageable. It's amazing what havoc one child can cause. I found out some other disturbing things about him that make me wonder how this kid can ever avoid the fate of so many New Orleans children: in and out of jail, dead on the street. All I can think of right now is the good of my other 49 kids and that good means that this one kid has to go. He's a terrible influence and I don't have the tools to help him straighten out (if in fact he ever gets the notion to make something better of himself).
I also had four other boys on in school suspension for Thursday and that made my Thursday go by like butter. The absence of them made my other trouble case, SR, look like a completely different kid. He did all his classwork and then some and he never once talked back to me, mocked me, or argued about it. I hardly recognized him.
Started making my kids serve detentions with me this week during their P.E. I am trying to cut down on the exorbitant gum chewing and eating in my class. I tell them to spit it out and I end up catching them another half dozen times in class. So I am back to my three strikes. I tell them once to spit gum out as they walk into class. Any breaking of the rules once they are inside goes against their three strikes. They get three chances and on the fourth anything they get to spend P.E. with me in my freezer of a classroom. Too early to tell whether it is working (a lot of my kids seem indignant but that's middle school for you), but one of my worst gum offenders had detention yesterday and I didn't catch him today. I made the gum chewers fill in every single square on a sheet of graph paper with GUM, one letter per box, until the paper was full. I hate having to give up my free planning periods to do the detention but hopefully it will make my life easier for the rest of the day.
On the subject of getting my teaching butt organized, I set up a bulletin board system so that my kids have to be responsible for their own missing homework. No more putting together homework packets for three weeks. They have a week to turn in a missing assignment and then they are out of luck. I've got folders for each day and little cards with missing assignments marked off for each kid. I'm rather proud of it.
I also got to hand my kids over for a chunk of today to work on the budget finally. It was fantastic. Get to do it again on Monday for part of the day. Got the principal all set up with a much more manageable spreadsheet for the school's petty cash account and started setting up the larger budget into something that will be easier to track. Also gave him a couple of derby tickets.
Marigny Antoinettes vs. Crescent Wenches is coming up next weekend. I'm stoked and terrified. I've never had to jam in a bout before and I think I'm going to have to do it this time. Possibly going to sub for another team too (it's a doubleheader), but no decision has been made. If you haven't got tickets yet get them now!
My week ended relatively calmly. I did my best to scare some sense into my kids. 14 of them out of 50 passed the last math test and I gave them hell about it. No more "I can't" and no more "I'm not good at math." Screw that. Every last one of those kids has the brains to pass my class and I'm not about to let them slide by and become statistics. I told them that I was disappointed that they choose to screw around in class and then just accept failure. It's not okay because I know that they can do better and they will do better, dammit. So sit down, shut up, pay attention, and take responsibility for your actions, you little punk brats.
I also spent some time at the bar with the teachers last night and oh, how drunk teachers can be a little militant with non-teachers. Have I mentioned that I kind of have a thing about the librarian? This will probably come back to bite me but I was psyched that he made it out last night. So did Mr. R and KO (she got me my job and was also visiting school yesterday). I've got so much backup - it makes the exhausting days bearable. KO insisted that Mr. G, the principal, thinks I'm doing good teacher-type things and that made my night. I'm constantly in fear that I'm doing something horribly wrong, that I'm not good enough, I'm not working hard enough. But she was very reassuring. Mr. R (who teaches 7th and 8th) invited himself to come into my class next week and put the fear of god into my kids. I told him to come in and set them straight any time he wants. Everybody is in agreement that our school's principal is a rock star. I know that I talk about him a lot but really, he's the principal every good teacher needs and wants to have at their back. I love it so much.
Even though I have a million tons of work to do this weekend, I'm going to Mobile to watch me some derby. Biloxi vs. Mobile and our refs are going in to help out. I don't want to miss out on the fun so I'm taking the homework with me and being a little irresponsible. Can't work all the time, right?
My schedule is out to kick my butt in more ways than one. One more day of Algebra Camp before I'm out on my own in rough-and-tumble world of middle school teaching. I've got to finish my portfolio and all my reflections for class to be turned in first thing Monday morning at the latest. But I've also got derby boot camp kicking my ass all night tomorrow and all day Saturday and Sunday from 8 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. Then I've got to get a running start on my job and take care of some more paperwork issues and get my classroom set up and my procedures all laid out. Work officially starts Wednesday, 7:30 a.m. and I got the call from the school secretary this morning to remind me of that. All the other lucky bastards in my class have a couple weeks to recuperate. Next weekend is Satchmo Fest and my uncle is coming to town soon and the kids start in a week-and-half and I have no illusions that I will have any time for anything once that madness begins.
Have I mentioned that I'm exhausted?
All that said, derby was great today. Tough without leaving me feeling like I want to die. And my knee was cooperating thanks to the handy-dandy $20 knee brace. Let's just hope that continues.
The kids had a blast at camp today, thankfully. My lesson went over fabulously but I am about to strangle one of my girls, M. She has no focus and does not follow directions. C is so smart that he forgets that he should read the directions. And F is just an all around good kid to have. My project, LIII, was having a rough time today. He immediately shuts down when faced with a multi-step problem or anything that involves reading. When it comes to the computations he usually knows what he should be doing. But the reading really turns his head around backwards and I struggled to help him stay with the group. It was heartening to know, however, that sometimes when he appeared to be off task he was really just thinking the problem through and I wouldn't realize it until he answered my question 2 or 3 minutes after I'd asked it. I could tell that the other kids were starting to feel held back but none of them stepped in to help him and a sense of snobbery came peering through. They come from a much different school environment than LIII and they don't seem to know what to do with him so they just stick to themselves. I'd hold it against them but that wouldn't fix anything and they're all good kids, flaws and all.
This job is so big and I haven't even really started yet. Commence deer in headlights.
