Friday at 4:00pm conversation #1.
It appears that Gnu has a gentleman caller. He popped up in an earlier conversation and it appears he made the first cut. With the weekend approaching I casually mention the gentleman caller and she responds quickly that they are going out on the weekend. NoFouls overhears the conversation and starts laughing and says Miss Gnu has a boyfriend. So far his commentary is safe but then he asks "do you lay down next to him in bed?" Yikes, and I'm doing my best to avoid laughing out loud and wait for Gnu's response. There was none.
About ten minutes after this conversation the school day ends and Gnu walks the scholars to the bus pick up area. I'm in the room straightening up furniture when she returns. I can't recall how our conversation started but she said to me that NoFouls mentioned pole dancing on the way to the bus. She said to him you don't know what pole dancing is and his response was yes I do. He then said it's when girls are holding a pole and take all their clothes off. As a reminder NoFouls is in the second grade. During our conversation Oreo walks into the room and says what are you guys doing? I state we are talking about pole dancing. Her response was what? Gnu took over the conversation and I just sat quietly. The next thing I hear is the word lap dancing. So now we've progressed from pole dancing to lap dancing. At this point one of the second grade teachers enters the room and now we have three women talking about pole dancing and lap dancing. There are three women and one guy in the room and the conversation is about jiggly room activities so I'm definitely avoiding this topic as I guy could get in serious trouble. The tough part for me was to remain silent when Oreo mentioned she did not know anything about lap dancing. At this point Duck walks into the room. Now we have four women and one guy in the room and given the topics being discussed I stand up and say it's the weekend and I'm out of here. As a reminder, Duck is a special education teacher and she is also the person who encourages me to return year after year.
During our second quarter grading period we had a student teacher in the school and I was pretty excited as I knew her through my daughter. She worked with our sixth grade scholars and all the comments that I heard about her teaching abilities were excellent. With the start of a new grading period she is off to a different school but we've kept in touch. When I heard that she was up in one of those hoity toity neighborhoods and will be student teaching in a special education classroom I contacted her. She informed me that she was at an academy and I could check it out by visiting the academy website. So I checked it out and one key phrase I read doing research on the school was "education reform movement". Curious about the academy I decided to check it out and this is what I read. First, this academy does not have a Principal but instead a Head of School. Yup! Definitely in a hoity toity neighborhood. Next, I checked out the academy philosophy and found it most interesting. I'll share it with you. The academy offers a child centered education founded in constructivism. I'm not sure what that means so I'll continue. We engage in education as a process, balancing our two main objectives, remediation of deficiencies and constant extension of current skill levels. Then we determine if gaps in foundational knowledge exist and remediate resulting deficiencies when necessary. To quote Richard Nixon, "let me make this perfectly clear", I have no idea what any of that means. To get help understanding the school academic philosophy I consulted with my part time editor, part time consultant and full time spouse. After reading the statement twice she stated I think it's a school that doesn't place scholars into grades. For good or bad I guess that puts this academy into the category of education reform movement.
We didn't have school on Wednesday and Thursday as the morning temperatures were too cold. With the wind chill in the negative numbers it was deemed to cold to wait outside for the school bus. I wasn't too happy with the decision but who am I. The Indianapolis Star ran a column on why various school leaders cancelled school. Here are a couple of them. Students often don't have winter coats, hats or mittens unless the schools can provide them. Some neighborhoods lack sidewalks and their is a concern that on a snow day students will be standing in streets or snow piles when then are not dressed warmly enough. Just so you know the snow accumulation during these two cold days was less than two inches. Interestingly, although there was no school, our school was a designated location to serve lunch to any scholar of any school in our corporation that could get to our school. When you consider that approximately ninety percent of the scholars in our school corporation ride the bus I'm not sure why our school leaders would think anyone would either walk or be driven to school for a free lunch with a lack of proper winter clothing.
The weather was still cold on Friday morning but school was not cancelled. Instead of cancelling school the school leadership opted for the two hour delay. While I don't like school being cancelled I do like the two hour delay. Why? With a two hour delay the scholars don't arrive until 11:00pm. What made this even better is when our scholars starting arriving at 11:00pm only three of the eight arrived. If you think that's bad, a second grade with twenty six scholars only had nine arrive for the day. Unfortunately two of the three that arrived were MiniJ and NoFouls. As you aware that is not a good combination and by the end of the day it wasn't at they both went after each other aggressively. Fortunately no major injuries were sustained.
All in all, the amount of academics covered during the week was minimal due to the school closings and the two hour delay. With the IRead3 and ISTEP testing requirements slowly approaching it's going to start getting interesting. Keep in mind, teachers can loose their jobs over the test results and so can principals. Also keep in mind I think these two tests are worthless and a waste of millions of dollars but who am I but a guy with a view from the back of the room.
Thanks for your return visit. I'm out. It's the weekend.
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