Random Projects

I found this post half-written from two weeks ago. It was a rant about how much I hate little "extras" that I'm supposed to do. Like remind kids about fundraisers. Prepare them for standardized tests. Remind them about projects. Things that always get driven from my mind as soon as there are actually kids in my room.

Well, standardized testing was all of last week, and it will happen again on Tuesday. So far, two kids missed one day of testing from my class. I'm pretty sure that I have the best attendance of any class in our school. I am, of course, taking full credit and responsibility for that. I am equally confident that my kids will all bomb the social studies part. A large part of that has to do with our state standards, which are dumb. But that's a rant for another time.

We just started a fundraiser done through the Leukemia and Lymphoma society called Pennies for Patients. It's basically a fundraiser. My class has been embarrassed in every fundraiser we've done so far this year. I refuse to lose another one. Plus, there's a pizza party involved at the end. My class has set the highest goal, and I have quite the incentive plan set up for the class. I will be selling things like homework passes, bonus quiz/test points, "get out of jail free cards" to get them out of one of my punishments for a day (those are expensive - $10), and there will be Gatorade and chip sales after school on some days. In addition, there are some cool class rewards. Upon reaching $50, I will play music during every homeroom time during April. After $100, we will have recess after lunch every day. After $200, two of my kids who have been dying to perform their raps for the class will be able to perform a concert, and upon reaching $300, I will get a rather embarrassing haircut (a "Boosie fade"). WE. WILL. NOT. LOSE.

We just did our African American Wax Museum on Friday for the younger grades. Each middle schooler was supposed to pick a famous African American to represent both by dressing up and through the use of props. They were to memorize a short biography of the person. We lined them around the cafeteria and the elementary school grades walked around pushing their buttons (which were little pieces of paper that said "Push Here") and listening to the speeches. All-in-all it was pretty good. About half of each class went. Which means a significant number of students will get a 0 as a test or quiz grade - I still haven't decided which.

This week is the last week of the quarter. We don't have school Friday (so we can take the day to finish up inputting our grades). Hopefully I make it to next weekend.

Surprise!!!

I went home for my Mardi Gras break. (Yes, I had a Mardi Gras break.) We had a snow day last Friday, so I drove home Friday and met my family at our favorite restaurant at home. Then I spent the weekend and came back yesterday (Tuesday). It was a nice stay - very relaxing; I did no work for school, and only a little bit for my ACE coursework.

A couple things to report today - I did ALL my lesson planning for the entire (3-day) week last night after I got home. That means that I wouldn't feel like I'm staring down a daunting amount of work to do if I had done any of the briefcase-full of grading I took home for the long weekend. Hopefully I'll have everything caught up by next week.

I have 10 of my 23 7th graders absent yesterday. I don't know if it's because Mardi Gras was too hard on them or their parents, but either way, today has been nice so far.

Two fun new ways to keep my students accountable. Instead of just give zero after zero for students who don't do their classwork, I'm going to start requiring them to bring their classwork worksheets back with a parent signature. That way they will either feel some need to do their work in class, or I can tell their parents that not only are they not doing their work, but they're then not getting your signature to at least get some credit. The other development is a little more fun (for me anyway). I have seven of my 7th graders spending PE with me this week for being extremely disrespectful and unruly last Thursday as we tried to line up from lunch to class. Not only am I making them write lines, I just had the awesome brainstorm today that their presence shouldn't interrupt my planning period. So I turned my Pandora station on (Pandora is a website that plays songs that resemble your favorite songs or artists). My Pandora mix includes country, soft rock, and classical. I cranked it up, and they couldn't say anything (unless they wanted to start over on their lines.) I'm pretty sure they hated it, and every time the songs changed, the guy in front of my desk turned around like he wanted to say something. I almost laughed out loud a few times.

Several of you have asked about my community issues. Basically, I just get annoyed but don't say anything. To avoid getting annoyed in the first place, I go to school and work. I also had plans on a few days that my community decided last-minute to do something (for example, I had plans in December for two Fridays ago, but my community decided to do something that night on Thursday at dinner). So, I was missing some events and I wasn't around much. I spent part of last night cleaning my room, and we're meeting tonight to restructure some community guidelines. I think it'll be fixed. (In my personal opinion, there's not much to fix because I have to get the work done. Now, instead of going to school, I will hopefully keep my room clean enough to work there.)

My Early Attempts at Office Politics

So, there's a boy in my class today not doing ANYTHING!! He do his warm-up questions. He didn't have his homework. He didn't do his homework as we went over it (I told them that I would accept it out of the goodness of my heart...for a late grade, but still - we were REVIEWING THE ANSWERS!!!). He took the zero. He didn't do the classwork assignment - answering three questions.

I basically stood over him the entire time and asked him to start working, and right under my nose, he continued annoying his classmates around them. Talking smack at them, pointing at them, making faces at them as if I weren't there.

So...office politics. He was in a fight yesterday. At school. And back today. Want to know how it started? He was annoying his classmates a bit too much and so they fought. For a little more background, yesterday those two 7th grade fighters from Tuesday were suspended. I sent my principal a memo explaining why I had sent him to the office, and explaining that from my perspective, we had not been very consistent and that we may have even encouraged the behavior since there was literally no punishment. I just received a rather snippy reply. "I am surprised that you have such a strong opinion so that you feel it necessary to challenge a decision that was made."

How dare I?

In other news, I have "packed it in" on my community. That is the consensus between myself and our community supervisor. She suggested a "throw down" just to clear the air. I'm starting work on my laundry list as we speak. So...that looks to be fun.

And, finally, we are predicted to get 1-3 inches of snow tonight. That would effectively cancel school tomorrow. Dare I start counting chickens so soon?

Forgive the Delay...

I started the new semester going strong, but due to a lack of reader feedback, I lost my momentum. So...let me fill you in on what has been going on lately.

6th grade are angels. We are starting our unit on World War II.

7th grade are up and down, but still very manageable. We are starting what I hope to be an awesome unit. I'm hitting the standards for political parties and branches of government, but we're going to do it by studying the Civil Rights Movement. (After all, it IS black history month.)

8th grade is still pretty out of control. However, a few have shown impressive improvement, so I'm mollified for now (notice I didn't say happy - at least with them).

Big news!!! We won our first game on January 30th!!! It went into overtime, and in the three minute overtime, we scored 7 and they were held scoreless. We resume the season after two weeks off on the 20th. Our last four games are against rich white schools. Should be interesting.

More big news...I had a meeting today at the Office of Catholic Schools, so I was not at school this afternoon. Within 30 minutes of leaving, 2 of my 7th grade boys started fighting (really fighting). Luckily two of my other boys pulled them apart and helped my sub sort them out. The great news? The two that pulled them apart aren't exactly the two that you might immediately think would be breaking-up-a-fight material. Quite the opposite on most days, actually.

Anyway...our community supervisor came in this afternoon. Her job is to make sure we're a functioning community. I've not been around much between basketball and annoyance with some housemates, so what happened on the first evening of her visit? My phone died while I was at school (where I stayed until 8:30), so I missed the memo on our community dinner outing. Yeah, doesn't look too good.

Oh, The Good 'Ole Days

I miss the days when I could pull a really late night getting things done at the last minute and only have to drag myself out of bed presentable enough to mope to class and either fall asleep or sit there in a stupor until returning to the comfy confines of my dorm room to take a nap with Law and Order playing all afternoon in the background.

I miss those days because last night I went up to the wire doing some classwork for ACE that was due at midnight. Then I still had to write two exams that I've given today. And I won't be able to sleep until AFTER I do basketball practice and write a test that I'm giving to 8th grade tomorrow.

Yesterday was fun because we had a new seating chart in all three classes. Only 4 people had to be sent to the office for absolutely refusing to move where they were told to sit. A whole lot more complained vociferously, so I think that means I may have done a good job with the new assignments.

I had just told someone two nights ago that I had yet to yell at any of my classes this semester. I promptly turned around and blew up on a kid yesterday. I don't really feel that bad about it, because it was only directed at one student. He never raises his hand, he "Mr Clarys" me incessantly. Until I stop what I'm saying to tell him to stop "Mr Clarying" me. Yesterday, I interrupted myself to stop him, and within 3 minutes he was back at it even louder. I didn't even pause, I just cranked up the volume (a lot) and yelled at him, "THAT IS NOT HOW YOU GET MY ATTENTION! STOP MR CLARYING ME!!!" Then 8th grade wasted the last five minutes of class. So I took them across the hall for dismissal and they kept wasting time. Fifteen minutes later, they were finally quiet (this is 15 minutes after they were supposed to be dismissed from class). By the time we got out, it was 3:25. We dismiss at 3:00. Unfortunately for the kid I came down on, his cell phone went off right before I dismissed him. I took it up (they aren't allowed to have them out or on until 3:30), and turned it in to the office. He was carpooling yesterday, so he couldn't get his phone back since his parents weren't picking him up.

Today I'm collecting 8th grade 10 minutes early from lunch to practice entering my room and sitting quietly. If we can't get it done in that amount of time, it'll be 15 minutes tomorrow. If that doesn't work, I may work out a way that I can take them during PE - all I would have to do is get someone to do something with my class for their extension class.

Crackdown Day

Well, 7th and 6th grades have both seen me. They got the message loud and clear. Apparently Mr Malone is also cracking down. He is being H-A-R-S-H on 6th grade at the moment. He also assigned a ton of homework to 8th grade last night as punishment. 7th grade got the message from me this morning, but they started playing on me at lunch/PE. The boys thought it would be funny to start leading the line from PE to lunch in the opposite way from the cafeteria. After I asked "Where are we going here?" and they all laughed and ran back to where they were supposed to be, I walked them in the wrong direction anyway. They insisted it had been a joke. I told them not to joke with me and that they should have realized I have no sense of humor today.

We ended up walking all the way to the opposite side of the campus. The girls got the message, walked back to the cafeteria, and sat nicely in our silent lunch formation. The boys took a little more time. But we made it. Most of the boys will be repeating silent lunch come Monday because they continued to try to play with me during their "silent" lunch.

8th grade is still coming in this afternoon. I have no idea how that period will go. We'll see.

Out of the Mouths of...Middle Schoolers (pt 2)

So, I was talking with three students whose rides were late picking them up after school. Let's call them Doug, Johnny, and Jill. Jill and Johnny are twins. Doug is a 7th grader. Doug mentioned that his mom was coming from Wal-Mart. Johnny asked me if I knew where the ghetto Wal-Mart is. I replied that since it's 15-20 minutes closer to my house than any other Wal-Mart, that's the one I use. They all laughed at me, and then Johnny told me not to go to a certain other one because "They be racists there." Jill said, "Why would he care?" I asked her what she meant. She gestured at me and said, "Who's gonna be a racist to you?" We all kind of laughed, but then Johnny said, "Naw, they would. We've blackified him."

So, I'm officially blackified, apparently. However, the process isn't complete because Johnny then informed me that they have to get me off "them country love songs" and on to the "black love songs."

Also, 8th grade was extremely attentive for a guest speaker. Like, perfect for 20 minutes. Then it took me 5 minutes to get any attention after the speaker left. Ugh. That's all right. I'm starting line boot camp tomorrow. And I'm also raining down hard on my 7th graders today. I love how they can come in and take stock of the situation and be silent within a minute. Then knew I meant business this afternoon. First of all, it took us about 10 minutes to move from PE to the cafeteria. Then another 15 to move from the cafeteria to the classroom (including two do-overs). Then, I had to take a student back to lunch after we came back (we're the last class scheduled to go), and found the tables we used A MESS. And that's after my two "table washers" had supposedly washed tables. I was just all-around unhappy with them. So tomorrow (Friday) is going to be a trial day. I'm going to be all business, and if they comply we'll cut it off next week. If they don't, it will continue for a while. (All business means no talking in class, no getting up in class, and silent lunch).