Thinking Outside the Box

I attended a professional development day on Wednesday that was put on by our school corporation.  I've attended development days in the past and have mixed feelings about attending but I go because they are labeled as MANDATORY.  As in the past, the person giving the welcoming speech was from the main office of our school corporation.  At today's meeting it was our new Officer for Special Education so I was immediately interested in what he had to say because this is the person that referred to our scholars as "exceptionalities."  When I first heard the word "exceptionalities" I immediately thought this person falls into the pointy headed intellectual category but I was wrong.  When he spoke you could sense the sincerity in his voice as he thanked all of the instructional assistants that were in attendance for the work that we do.  When our new Officer for Special Education finish his remarks I had a pretty good feeling about being in attendance.  Sadly, that feeling went away as representatives from Human Resources were up next.

Before I move on to the HR presentation I have to tell you about the first note I made on the margin of the agenda that I had in front of me.  I'm not sure how many of you are aware of this but the First Lady of the US, Michelle Obama, has been on a campaign to insure that healthy meals are served in all of our schools.  That bit of information brought a smile to my face as I noticed that our school corporation was serving donuts in the morning and if you stuck around for the entire day you would earn a bag of potato chips.  So, in my finest penmanship, in the top left corner of my paper, was this note.  Donuts, chips and Michelle Obama's healthy meal campaign.

Ok, on to the HR presentation and I'm going to try and get through this without using any bad words.  "Good morning everyone, my name is Ms. HR, and I'm here today to talk about your job description."  On the big screen at the front of the room were the following bullet points.

• You must be able to push, pull and lift up to 50 pounds.
• Tardiness and absenteeism - you must be on time when reporting to school.
• Breaks and lunch - you can't take any additional time on your breaks or during your lunch. 

At about the seven minute mark of this presentation I was getting agitated.  Just a few minutes earlier a speaker spoke with sincerity and thanked us for what we do.  Now, in front of me stands a person who is talking to us as if we are common laborers.  I wanted to say to this person do you have any idea what we do everyday in our classrooms.  We are not common laborers.  We support a teacher by taking a small group of scholars and present to them a daily academic assignment.  We work in an environment where we are at risk of injury when a scholar with "exceptionalities" goes off and starts throwing objects, when a scholar starts screaming at us using the most vulgar language, when a scholar hits, kicks or scratches us with some degree of regularity.  I wanted so bad to say, Ms. HR we are instructional assistants, we are not common laborers.  Obviously I remained silent otherwise I wouldn't have anything to write about in this blog post as I would be unemployed.  As Ms. HR continued to speak she paused for a minute to ask if anyone had any questions.  As soon as I heard this I thought back to my previous career where I had many opportunities to speak in front of gatherings both small and large.  One thing I learned when speaking was to be very careful when you ask if anyone has any questions as in all likelihood you could open up a can of worms.  Well, for Ms. HR, it was too late as numerous hands were raised.  "When are we going to get a raise?"  The teachers got a raise, when can we expect our raise?"  "Is there something you can do to change the school calendar so that we don't have some many days off without pay starting in October and going through December?  "It is hard enough to make ends meet with the little pay we receive and it gets worse during the holidays because there are so many days where we don't get paid."  As the HR person is getting peppered with questions she finally tries to put and end to it by saying all of these questions need to be directed to your union president as they are all bargaining points.  She then walks over to a flip chart and writes down the union president's name and cell phone number on it.  As she returns to the center of the room a gentleman seated behind me just stands and starts to speak.  "I just completed my degree requirements and I'd like to know if I will get an increase because I now have a degree."   Ms. HR speaking, "there will not be an increase."  "There is nothing in the union contract language that addresses instructional assistants that earn a degree."  "If you want, you can take it to your union representative and ask them to put it on the bargaining table." 

Right after the HR person finished speaking we took a break so I got up and walked over to the gentleman who just earned his degree.  He was around fifty years old.  I introduced myself to him and said I also have a degree and I wanted to be sure that I heard the HR person say you would not get a raise and you had to take the issue to your union.  He said that I heard it correctly and then he said, "it took me a long time to earn this degree and if that is how I'm going to be treated I won't be here next year."  Right now there are several teacher openings in my school corporation and we are at the end of the first grading period.  The last time I looked there were fifty open instructional assistants positions and our HR person just took the position she took with a man that just earned his degree.  Given the conversation that took place between a recent degree earner and HR, I wonder how much time and energy HR spends trying to figure out why they have so many open positions.

On a much lighter note, the next presenter was a paid professional speaker and I enjoyed listening to her.  She spoke on keeping scholars motivated as well as yourself.  As a part of her presentation she showed a short video on how one school principal attempted to keep his scholars motivated and it goes like this.  Every morning the principal greets the car rider students outside the school.  He plays popular music, holds a microphone in his hand and sings and dances to the music as the scholars get out of their cars.  He even hands the scholars the microphone to sing along or invites them to dance with him.  After the video ended, the presenter talked about thinking outside the box to keep scholars motivated and thought that what this principal was doing was definitely outside the box.  She then assigned each person in the room to a breakout group so we could share ideas on what we've done to think outside the box.  As I moved to the side of the room with my break out group I'm thinking this will be easy given the number of outside the box things that Gnu has done in the last year and a quarter.  When our group was assembled one of the members asked if anyone wanted to go first.  I remained silent for a while but spoke up as I don't think anyone had an outside the box item to offer.  Before I go on, a little background information for you.  Several weeks ago Gnu was struggling as the scholars were not getting along and it was causing large losses of academic time getting them to do anything.  Around 7:30pm, well after school was out, I got a text message from her.  I'll paraphrase as it's been a while.  "Just so you know there will be very little academics tomorrow."  "I'm mad as hell that these scholars can't get along so all day long we will be doing team building activities."  My text back to her said a simple, "ok!"   Going forward I'm going to tell you about the three team building activities Gnu came up with and these are the same outside the box thinking ideas that I shared with our professional speaker.

Because we had five scholars at the time, IvyL filled in as the sixth scholar so we could have teams of two and believe me, Gnu paired the ones that do not like each other together. 

1. The first exercise was a rescue at sea.  Each scholarly pairing was given one gummy worm, one gummy life saver, a clear plastic drinking cup, a straw, and two large paper clips.  The first objective was to get a life saver (gummy life saver) around the neck of the person (gummy worm) that fell out of the boat (plastic cup).  The second objective was to right the boat (plastic cup) as it tipped over.  The third objective was to lift the person (gummy worm) out of the water and into the boat (plastic cup). The fourth objective was to retrieve the oar (straw) and put it into the life boat (plastic cup).  Now, in order to do this each scholar was given a large paper clip.  The only object allowed to touch anything was the paper clip. 
2. The second exercise involved six red plastic drinking cups (you know, the kind you fill up with beer), a rubber band, and five pieces of yarn.  So you know, the five pieces of yarn were attached to the rubber band.  I also need to point out that each piece of yarn was held by a different scholar so this project was going to require all five scholars to work as a team.  The objective was to pick up each of the six red plastic drinking cups and stack them in a pyramid using only the yarn and rubber band to lift them.
3. The last one was my favorite.  Gnu speaking, "ok, line up at the door as we are going outside."  "We need to stop by my car first to get something and them we'll gather on the lawn outside our classroom window."  With all of the necessary items in hand we settle down on the lawn.  Gnu gets up and picks up a large piece of canvas like material and spreads it out a little.  She then picks up a small duffle bag and empties out the contents.  Speaking to the scholars she says, "this is a tent and you have to put it together."  "Because all of you think you are so smart that you don't have to listen to me I'm not going to help you."  "You have to put this tent together and you can't go to lunch until it's up."  "And while you are putting it up I'm going to sit under this tree and eat this popcorn."  She then stood up, walked a short distance away and sat down in the shade of the tree and started eating the popcorn.  The scholars were pretty excited at first about the opportunity to put up the tent.  They managed to get the tent straightened out and then figured out how to assemble the tent poles.  From there, their frustration started to set in as they could keep the tent in the air.  Sensing their frustration I get involved and gave them some assistance as Gnu continues sitting in the shade eating popcorn.  As the tent slowly rises Gnu joins in.  As she is helping she says to me to go inside and get a part that I left in the classroom because we will need it to finish this project.  So off I go to retrieve the missing part.  My timing was perfect as when I returned the tent was up and everyone was sitting inside.  As I approached the tent there was a collective yell, "Mr. Schultz has pizza" and our lunch was consumed sitting inside the tent that was just outside our classroom window on a really nice day.

There you have it.  Gnu's big team building day and my opportunity for fabulous bragging rights as I was the only instructional assistant in the room that had any outside the box thinking ideas and you just heard them.  For the record, have I ever mentioned that I am working with a wonderful teacher?

This post is getting real long but I ask you to bear with me for a little longer.  While the scholars were helping Gnu return her tent and duffle bag to her car we walked past three adults that were searching around in some flower beds and shrubs at the corner of the school.  When I asked if they needed help looking for something one of them said I lost my medication.  Because it was getting toward the end of the school day Gnu and the scholars kept moving but I hung back and helped search for the medication.  As I was looking, one of the adults walked up to me and said "I had way to much to drink last night, I passed out, and spent the night sleeping in this flower bed."  Again, let me remind you, I don't make this stuff up.

That's it. I'm out.  If you are still reading this, thanks for hanging in there.