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Category Archives: Gripe
Maybe jumping jacks are the answer
It takes approximately nine minutes to take 23 first graders to the bathroom. I’m in charge of the boys’ line. Around the corner, my co-teacher supervises the girl’s line.It’s the worst nine minutes of my day.Honestly, what is it about school bathrooms… Continue reading
Posted in Gripe, School Policy
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he’s baaaaaaaaaaaaack
If you’ve been with me long enough, you’ll remember “Jose”. He was the fourth grader who drove me (and countless other teachers) wild with rage and brought me to my knees in tears last year.You might also remember that after much drama and to-do, we FI… Continue reading
Posted in Gripe, School Policy, Trouble
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whining and bragging
I haven’t been around the blogosphere as much as I’d like to in the past couple of days. I’m having one of those weeks that takes you over its’ knee and whips your butt.
On top of the general craziness it is to be a teacher, there have been some hiccups. Like when I spent all that time on Monday inputting grades and then LOST EVERYTHING. And when one of my students lost an expensive piece of her cochlear implant on the playground on Tuesday morning but didn’t think to tell me until five minutes before the bus was going to bring her home. Oh and let’s not forget the groups of college students following me around on Monday and Wednesday morning, learning how to be deaf.ed teachers. And then having to stay until 8 pm last night for parent-teacher conferences (ONE parent out of nine made it. So glad I stayed…)
But enough whining. It’s Friday!! And I thought I’d share with you something that I did over the summer that has been making my school year go MUCH smoother:
I made a file folder for each of our basal series stories. I put all the practice book/extra support book worksheets in each. Then, I listed all the skills we’re supposed to be learning on the front of the folder so I could go through my own files and pull activities/picture cards/fun printables and put them in the same file.
So now, when it comes to my weekly lesson planning, I just pull the file and I have everything I need right there: homework, extension activities, vocabulary cards, and the basal series worksheets.
It took about three days to set that up over the summer, but it’s turning out to have been well worth my time!
Do you have any organizational tricks that save you time?
not the kind of question you ask out loud
It has become the norm, I think, for schools around the nation to require their teachers to submit their lesson plans at least one week ahead of time. I’m not really sure why — none of the three schools I’ve worked at has ever explained the purpose. To make sure we’re doing our job? To torture us? In case there’s a substitute teacher? Probably just for liability’s sake, I imagine.
So here’s my question: if the administration is going to expect us to be Prepared Ahead of Time, shouldn’t they also be held to the same standard?
We had this past Friday off for a glorious three day weekend. But on Thursday morning, we all got a note in our mailboxes: “On Monday, Oct. 4, 2010, we will have a half-day meeting to ramp up the rigor in our Reading/Language Arts curriculum. You will meet from 8:00 to 11:00 in room 103.”
Whaa………? This came as a total surprise to all of us: it wasn’t on the calendar. So… we then had to frantically put together a whole morning’s worth of sub plans and we only had ONE DAY to do so.
I wasn’t the only one who thought this was unprofessional. Lots of other teachers were upset. It didn’t matter though. Ultimately, we all made our plans and showed up to the meeting.
It didn’t stop me from feeling resentful, though.
Posted in Gripe, Meetings, School Policy
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fake it till you make it, right?
I had an all-day training at the school district this past Saturday. Before you go feeling all sorry for me, you should know that I opted to take this mandatory training on a weekend so that I could have the entire week of Thanksgiving off (that Monday and Tuesday are professional development days – which you have to go to unless you got in your hours during the summer or the weekends).
So future Sarah will be very pleased.
But Saturday Sarah was pretty ticked off. Especially when I got to the training (on behavior management) and realized that it was going to be a waste of time. The presenter was saying things that were painstakingly obvious and common sense as if they were GROUNDBREAKING NEWS!!!
At one point, I considered raising my hand and asking if I could be excused from this training on account of I Went to College.
But I didn’t have the guts.
Finally…. fifteen minutes before the seven hours were up, I heard something useful. I’ll save that for a later post because I suspect that this piece of behavior management could be useful to parents too.
I did want to share this video, however. I’m sure you’re one of the four million plus people who have already seen this, but if you haven’t, you’re in for a treat!
I think every once in while, I should stand in front of the mirror and chant:
“I love my school!”
“I love my district!”
“I love my trainings!”
“I love my meetings!”
“I love my paperwork!”
the crazy continues
I was warned when I was in college that teachers have tantrums too.
“No…. not me! I’m so on top of everything, I would never let that happen!”
Haha.
In the first two years of my teaching career, I had several little breakdowns (not in front of the kids, mind you…). Sometimes they involved yelling to myself in the car. One time I threw my keys against the inside of my classroom door and shrieked in frustration (true story!). One afternoon, I was crying little sobs underneath my teacher desk.
There are just things that happen to make your job harder that come out of left field! Like this week….
1. I already have a new student.
2. I have to hold a temporary IEP for this student BEFORE Monday!
3. We were supposed to have a teacher workday all day on Friday but OOPS one more three hour meeting just special for you deaf ed. teachers… forgot to tell you until just now!
4. New school policy: we can’t touch the copy machine or the laminator. All requests must be filed two days in advance (DON’T EVEN GET ME STARTED!!)
So last night, it was completely understandable that when I clicked to watch this strangely charming video, I laughed so hard I cried….. But then I COULDN’T STOP CRYING.
Unless all of you had the same reaction I did, that was definitely my first mini-breakdown of the school year!
Posted in Gripe, Reflections, teaching
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Pee happens
I was talking with a friend of mine over the weekend who admitted to drinking at least one can of soda each day at work (she’s an accountant). “The only problem,” she said, “is that I have to get up and pee a lot”
To which I replied: “Hey at least you have the luxury of peeing whenever you want to!”
You know, because I’m a teacher. And we have to wait until recess or our planning period or lunch to go pee.
I have this vision of what it’s like to not be a teacher: you get expense accounts, an hour or two for lunch, and you can leave your office whenever you feel like peeing. No holding it!!
Then yesterday happened.
Yesterday was the state standardized test for our fourth graders. The rules for administering the test are taken very seriously. Like you have to go to special meetings, sign papers, vow not to do ANYTHING except stand there and monitor the students. Anyways, there were many special education students (including mine) testing out in the portable (there are five or six classrooms in ours). There are extra staff available in the hall to escort children who need to use the bathroom to and from the main building. They are also available to stand in for us should any of us teachers need to use the bathroom.
I’ve gone through this testing stuff before with my fifth graders at the beginning of the month. But this time was different. One of the staff, upon returning from the staff bathroom (which is located in the nurse’s office) reported in hushed whispers that the nurse was MAKING TALLY MARKS for each time you left your room to use the bathroom.
TALLY MARKS. I’m assuming that this sheet of paper will get handed to the principal (who undoubtedly asked for it in the first place). And what will the principal do with it? Will she write us up for insufficient bladder control? Do we have a pee-pee quota I’m not aware of? Will she confiscate the pop in the vending machines? Will she make teachers start using a hall pass?
I think I’m going to be sick. But wait, that would mean running to the bathroom, which apparently is no longer allowed…
“Please, sir. More, sir”
I’ve worked at three schools, and this one is different from any other school I’ve worked at for one main reason:
The teachers aren’t trusted.
Just my imagination, you say? Case in point: All teachers are required to sign in and sign out on an electronic scanner that recognizes your fingerprints. Also, there is no stack of copy paper next to the copy machine; each teacher is given one ream per semester. (If you run out, too bad for you!) This means lugging around heavy paper every time you need to make copies. And the biggest inconvenience? We’re not allowed to have a building key, so if you want to come in and get caught up on a Saturday, forget it! You’re there to steal computers, for all they know!
If you need basic supplies for your classroom, like copy paper or printer ink, you practically have to beg the front office for it. If they deem you and your cause worthy enough, they will unlock their secret supply closet and find what you need.
Is your school this tight-fisted with supplies?
Posted in Gripe, School Policy
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Forgive my technical rambling, and my civil disobedience
When people ask me what I do for a living and I say that I teach students who are deaf/hearing-impaired, I almost always am asked: “Oh, so you sign?”
But, no, I don’t sign. And there’s no quick way to explain the hundreds of years of history in deaf education and the competing philosophies that are out there. For the purposes of this post, I’ll just say that there are two main camps: the Total Communication method, and the Oral method (there are many more methods out there, I’m just over-simplifying here!).
The Total Communication method advocates the use of sign language as well as some speech/lip-reading to educate students with hearing loss. The Oral method involves teaching students (with hearing aids or cochlear implants) to use spoken language by listening.
So when parents are informed that their beautiful newborn baby has a hearing loss, they should theoretically have a choice (the choice offered really depends on where you live in this country). Do they want their child to learn to sign, or do they want their child to be able to talk and hear as best as they can? There are advantages and disadvantages to each choice.
I mention all of this because I’m at an Oral campus within a Total Communication district. There are three T.C elementary schools in our district, and just one Oral campus. I’m teaching at the Oral campus, and while I believe that sign language is a beautiful language, I personally think that we should be giving children with hearing loss every skill they will need to function in a hearing society.
I have deaf ed colleagues who strongly disagree with the Oral philosophy and I’m still wondering why they’re working at my campus (as much as I like them as friends!). I wince when I see them signing on the sly to the kids. Because, bottom line, we need to respect the choice that the parents have made. In California, I worked with a lady who was all about sign language–but she was able to put her personal feelings aside in the classroom and respect the methodology that the school campus and the parents subscribed to.
So all year I’ve been feeling like a black sheep on my own turf, and sometimes I resent it. But, I thought, at least my deaf-ed administrators have my back! They understand!
Until recently. Our speech/language pathologist (who is refreshingly neutral on the methodology issue!) came into my room after school and handed me a bunch of papers to send home with the kids. Papers for SIGN LANGUAGE CLASSES. After some probing, I discovered that this directive was coming from none other than the Big Cheese herself. Yep, the HEAD of the entire district’s deaf education program is sending fliers for our ORAL kids to learn sign language.
Oh the ridiculousness. Would you buy Chinese textbooks for your Spanish classes? Would you substitute salt for sugar in a cookie recipe? Would you use a football in a basketball game? OF COURSE NOT.
So I distributed the fliers…. in the trash can.
Posted in Disability Awareness, Gripe
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Going down in flames
Yesterday, we had a practice fire drill. Two things bothered me about this:
1. It was 29 degrees outside. Why couldn’t they have waited for a warmer day?!!?
2. The fire drill doesn’t go off in the portables.
Yes, you heard that right. The portables that I teach in — the portables with three classrooms full of DEAF KIDS — aren’t connected to the fire drill. Each room even has a bright red bulb above the doorway, and the blinking red light didn’t even go off during the fire drill!
So the only chance we have to save ourselves from a fire is if we glance out the tiny window and happen to notice a mass exodus of kids and teachers onto the field.
Umm… hello, Liability. We haven’t met before, but we may soon become very well acquainted.
I expressed my concern with the powers that be and I was informed that this was a problem for all the portables in our district and that our deaf-ed portables are somewhere on the list to be fixed.
Oh good. Let’s just hope there’s not a real fire before now and the time they get to “somewhere on the list”.
Posted in Gripe, School Policy, Trouble
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