I'm on spring break, a wonderful sixteen day stretch of no school, that is going to end quite abruptly in a couple days. There were a few times when I thought about posting a new blog commentary but I decided to take a break from blogging. Obviously, the blogging break has ended.
April 4th will be the first day of the last quarter of the school year. It should be an interesting day because multiple scholar changes are going to or may occur. In the may occur category is Prophet. In case you forgot, Prophet is the scholar that looked me in the eye and said, "I'm going to kill you." Prophet is also the scholar that told Gnu that his parental unit had a gun and he knew exactly where his parental unit kept it. Since this incident, Prophet disappeared from school and I'm not sure why. Gnu said he was ill but I'm not sure that is the case. PhD(*)Pete has been carefully observing Prophet's behavior and I'm wondering if Prophet has left our school or will be leaving our school and going to a behavioral health facility that can provide him with the help he needs. During this observation period it was mentioned that Prophet may have some type of syndrome. The conversation about this syndrome was well beyond my understanding but one thing I do recall is that the people doing the observation mentioned that his ears are out of position. They stated that his ears are too low and appear to be a little to far back on his head. That part I could see but the conversation was way to clinical for me to follow. I guess I'll know more on April 4th. On April 4th, BigHouse will transition from going to school from 3:45pm through 6:30pm and begin attending school all day. During the two weeks of after school academics Gnu informed me that she didn't have any difficulty with BigHouse so hopefully the transition to full days with us will go smoothly. Gnu is also scheduled to have a new scholar on April 4th. This scholar is coming to us from another school that we know has an EH (emotionally handicapped) classroom so we are wondering why this scholar is being moved to our school. What makes this decision particularly interesting is that Gnu has seen the scholars Individual Education Plan (IEP) and it appears that when this scholar arrives at our school it will be the scholar's eight school and the scholar is only in the second grade. The IEP also reads that this scholar has improved his coloring and can stay inside the lines but still has trouble with letter formation. This makes me wonder how and the hell did this scholar get to the second grade without mastering either PreK and/or Kindergarten academics. Knowing this bit of information about this scholar is troubling because when the scholar arrives Gnu and I will be working with scholars that are at five different academic levels. That will be tough to manage and it makes me wonder if we will transition from an academic setting to a scholar warehouse setting on April 4th.
The TopCat of our SpEd department sent out an email to all of our school corporation staff announcing a SpEd reorganization for the 2016/2017 school year. As you are aware, I'm not real pleased with a number of our overhead personnel. It seems to me that these overheard personnel are not very visible and when they do make an appearance it is to give Gnu more work to do rather than less. So when I saw the reorganization announcement it was curious and opened the email message. "We are shifting the primary focus of central office deployed special educators toward rigorous instruction with a secondary focus on compliance monitoring," is how the email read. That sounds good so I read on. "The following new roles will start in June 2016 and are posted for internal and external applicants." Here are the new roles. Thirty-two SpEd Specialists (located at elementary and secondary schools) and four SpEd Compliance Monitors (located at central office). Whoa! That's a huge change. First or all, I had no idea that my school corporation had thirty-six people in overhead positions. That sounds pretty top heavy and I'm wondering what all of these people do all day as they certainly are not in my school. Now, thirty-two of these individuals, if hired, will find themselves sitting in a school and if "rigorous instruction" is involved, not only will they be sitting in a school, they will be sitting in a classroom. Although it's only my opinion, I believe the reason that people occupy overhead positions is that they don't want to be in a classroom. This change in direction is going to be so interesting to see it may force me to return to the classroom for another school year with or without Gnu. Dear newly created SpEd Specialist position that is involved with "rigorous instruction" in a classroom, if you actually show up in Gnu's classroom there is no way you will occupy my chair where I have a view from the back of the room. Go find you own chair.
An email message poured in to my school email address while on spring break. The subject line read, "Strengths-Based Education." Normally I just delete this stuff but for some reason I read on. "What is Strengths-Based Education?" "Strengths-Based Education combines social/emotional learning, student interest exploration and student-centered learning into a cohesive pedagogy that helps students find their relevance and helps educators increase engagement. Research confirms that a student's success is driven by non-academic factors such as their character, parental support and the level of hope + engagement they feel within school." If you think this message was written by a pointy headed intellectual, please raise your hand. I read this at least five times and I still don't know what the hell they are talking about. Here is what I do know for sure, Gnu's Strengths-Based Education philosophy and she put into practice numerous times. Gnu speaking, "if you think you are going to sit in my classroom all day and do nothing you are wrong. Now get to work and if you don't want to work then get out of my classroom and go sit in the hallway." Now that is a great motivator and not once did a scholar actually get up and leave the classroom.
That's it. I'm taking a time out as my part time editor, part time consultant and full time spouse will be home from her school day shortly so I better get the dishes done and the house straightened up before she arrives. Nine weeks left to the school year and with nine scholars in the classroom it is going to be interesting. Thanks again for continuing to follow along.
Thursday, March 31, 2016
Sunday, March 20, 2016
What The .....? Part Two
On Saturday, March 19th, I passed the two year mark writing this blog. That fact has me sitting here shaking my head and wondering how the time manage to fly bye so fast. Over the past two years I wrote 145 blog posts sharing with you my view from the back of a classroom. So far, there has been just short of 7,000 page views that mainly came from the United States but there have been hundreds of page views from Europe, Russia, and Asia. In all, this blog has been view by people in approximately 20 different countries. I find this absolutely amazing and I want to take this opportunity to thank each one of you for continuing to follow along.
Scholars have been coming and going, plus I know that I have a handful of brand new readers, so I'm going to update the scholar list and well as the list of individuals that support Gnu and I in the classroom.
Scholars The Adults
EM - 4th Grade Gnu - teacher extraordinaire
ShortTime - 4th Grade Me - the guy with the view from the back of the room
Uh-Uh-Uh - 3rd Grade BigB - the person in charge
MiniJ - 3rd Grade Phd(*)Pete - behavior support
BigHouse - 3rd Grade Hill'sGirl - behavior support
Prophet - 3rd Grade Oreo - behavior support
Knapper - 3rd Grade Knew2 - teacher of the other EH scholars
Grr! - 2nd Grade Duck - teacher and often my savior on the rough days
New Scholar - 2nd Grade, arrives shortly
Floss - former scholar now in the 6th Grade
Wide - former scholar now in the 5th Grade
Leftside - former scholar now in the 5th Grade
The Collector - former scholar now in the 5th Grade
CorP - former scholar now in the 6th Grade
Straw - former scholar now in the 6th Grade
I mentioned in the last blog post that I sent an email message to the TopCat overhead person of the SpEd department and that this person actually responded. I mentioned this fact to a couple teachers at my school, that I have a lot of confidence in sharing things with, and they cringed a little. Apparently, this TopCat over head person is a little higher in the school corporation that I thought so I felt a little nervous. After fretting about it for the better part of a morning, I decide that Gnu was placed in an unsafe position by a group of educators at another school without including her in the conversation, so I continued my conversation with TopCat. In my final text to TopCat, I again mentioned my concern about Gnu's safety and told him that putting her in this position made me very nervous. I hit the send button a few days ago and have not received a response. I said what I needed to say and I'm going to let this drop. Do I think I accomplished anything? Given that the SpEd overhead personnel appear to operate in their own silo, I'd say, "no."
Ok, on to What The......? Part Two. The results of the case conference for Big House, that Gnu was not involved with, eventually arrived on Gnu's desk a few days after the scholar arrived. As she has always done, she shared the information with me so I would be aware of any safety precautions that I should take when working with this scholar. There was one key point in the case conference notes that caught my attention as well as Gnu's. The primary decision to move Big House to a new school was because this scholar attacked a teacher. That bit of information did not sit well with either of us. Gnu commented first. "Do you know now many times I've been attacked by a scholar? This scholar is in the third grade and given the scholar's size, I don't think this scholar could cause any harm but they make a decision to move this scholar to my classroom," she stated. My turn. "I've been in this classroom for almost four years, with three different teachers, and never was a scholar transferred to another school for attacking me or anyone else." In my opinion this is what happened at the school that just transferred Big House to my school, they totally failed to do their job. Working with scholars that have anger control issues is a tough job and comes with the potential for injury to other scholars as well as adults. It is for this reason that there are two adults in every EH (emotionally handicapped) classroom. It is for this reason that each school that has an EH classroom has a Crisis Team that can be called when all hell breaks loose. At my school there are six adults, three men and the women, on our Crisis Team that are trained to deal with attacking scholars. When called, the Crisis Team arrives quickly and the scholar erupting is placed in a safe location allowing the scholar to de-escalate. When the scholar de-escalates, the Crisis Team leaves, the classroom is put back in order, and the erupting scholar gets back to academics. Should the same scholar erupt again, the process repeats itself but this time the BigB steps in, calls the parental unit, and the scholar is sent home for the remainder of the day. It is pretty apparent to me that the teacher, instructional assistant and Crisis Team at Big House's previous school totally failed to do their job and just dumped a scholar in Gnu's lap without even allowing her to be part of the conversation. I think the next time I get the nerve to email TopCat this may be my agenda item.
Part two of What The ....? Part Two. "So, why is Big House arriving at our school at the end of the academic day," I ask Gnu. "The scholar is OCI," she responds. You're not going to like this, but I forgot what she told me the acronym means. It might be Outside Classroom Instruction or Off Campus Instruction but whatever it is, the scholar is getting his academics outside of the normal classroom setting. "So why is the scholar OCI?" I ask. "The scholar's behavior was so poor that someone (the case conference people that did not invite Gnu to the conference) decided that it was in the schools best interest that this scholar be taught when others are not around. The scholar apparently also missed a lot of school so the previous school was using the academic hours taught in OCI to get the scholar caught up on the academic hours missed," Gnu told me. I hope you followed all of that because here comes the What the...? part. I look at Gnu and respond, "you're telling me Big House's previous school is using OCI academic hours to catch up for hours missed during the normal school day. That doesn't make any sense. If this previous school wanted to catch up on academic hours missed, why did they decide to have this scholar only go to school from approximately 3:45pm to approximately 6:30pm? Why didn't they just have him go to school during normal school hours? The scholar is not gaining academic hours, the scholar is actually losing academic hours." Gnu's response was, "I know, it doesn't make any sense."
At lot of crazy things happen in our classroom and there are often times I wonder if I should tell my part time editor, part time consultant, and full time spouse about my day. This happened recently with the scholar that was permanently assigned to our classroom because his behavior had shown improvement. It's 3:30pm and the end of the school day. Prophet didn't have a particularly good day and his parental unit was called to pick him up and take him home. When our administrative czar called our classroom to tell Gnu that Prophet's parental unit was here Gnu told Prophet it was time to go home. At the time, he had one of our iPad's and when Gnu told him to turn it off because it was time to go home Prophet said "no." Gnu reached for the iPad but Prophet moved it away from her but unfortunately for the scholar, he moved in it my direction, so I took it from him. Prophet then look directly at me and said, "I'm going to kill you." Anticipating that Prophet, as he has done numerous times, would try and run away from the classroom, Gnu tried to hold his hand so she could walk him to the front office to the scholars waiting parental unit. As soon as Prophet exited the classroom he tried to run but Gnu held on to him and I arrived to help her. As we are trying to control the Prophet, his parental unit calls his name and he relaxed. We then start walking, with Prophet's parental unit, to the waiting car so the scholar can go home. As we are walking, Prophet, who is in the lead looks back at us and I recognize immediately what is going to happen and say to everyone, "he is going to run." Sure enough off the scholar goes but the scholar failed to recognize that two members of our Crisis Team saw him running and captured him. With Prophet in containment, four adults escorted the scholar to the parental units car, place the scholar in the car and close the door. When Gnu and I are back in the classroom I say to her, "did you hear Prophet say to me, "I'm going to kill you?" Get ready for this one. Gnu looks at me and says, "in an earlier conversation I had with him he told me that he knew that his parental unit had a gun and knew exactly where his parental unit hid it." To tell her about my day or not, that is the question. I cautiously told her and she didn't show much of a reaction. So my part time editor, part time consultant, and full time spouse didn't really react much to the news that I was going to be killed. I'm now wondering what your reaction was when I told you what Prophet said and that the scholar knew where a gun was located?
The weather has been warming up, with occasional periods of rain, so the grass needs to be cut. I'm going to fire up my 40" cut, zero turning radius riding lawn mower and cut the grass. Thanks for continue to follow, for two years now, the musings of an old man who has view from the back of the classroom and enjoys writing about what he sees but is also looking for some body armor.
Scholars have been coming and going, plus I know that I have a handful of brand new readers, so I'm going to update the scholar list and well as the list of individuals that support Gnu and I in the classroom.
Scholars The Adults
EM - 4th Grade Gnu - teacher extraordinaire
ShortTime - 4th Grade Me - the guy with the view from the back of the room
Uh-Uh-Uh - 3rd Grade BigB - the person in charge
MiniJ - 3rd Grade Phd(*)Pete - behavior support
BigHouse - 3rd Grade Hill'sGirl - behavior support
Prophet - 3rd Grade Oreo - behavior support
Knapper - 3rd Grade Knew2 - teacher of the other EH scholars
Grr! - 2nd Grade Duck - teacher and often my savior on the rough days
New Scholar - 2nd Grade, arrives shortly
Floss - former scholar now in the 6th Grade
Wide - former scholar now in the 5th Grade
Leftside - former scholar now in the 5th Grade
The Collector - former scholar now in the 5th Grade
CorP - former scholar now in the 6th Grade
Straw - former scholar now in the 6th Grade
I mentioned in the last blog post that I sent an email message to the TopCat overhead person of the SpEd department and that this person actually responded. I mentioned this fact to a couple teachers at my school, that I have a lot of confidence in sharing things with, and they cringed a little. Apparently, this TopCat over head person is a little higher in the school corporation that I thought so I felt a little nervous. After fretting about it for the better part of a morning, I decide that Gnu was placed in an unsafe position by a group of educators at another school without including her in the conversation, so I continued my conversation with TopCat. In my final text to TopCat, I again mentioned my concern about Gnu's safety and told him that putting her in this position made me very nervous. I hit the send button a few days ago and have not received a response. I said what I needed to say and I'm going to let this drop. Do I think I accomplished anything? Given that the SpEd overhead personnel appear to operate in their own silo, I'd say, "no."
Ok, on to What The......? Part Two. The results of the case conference for Big House, that Gnu was not involved with, eventually arrived on Gnu's desk a few days after the scholar arrived. As she has always done, she shared the information with me so I would be aware of any safety precautions that I should take when working with this scholar. There was one key point in the case conference notes that caught my attention as well as Gnu's. The primary decision to move Big House to a new school was because this scholar attacked a teacher. That bit of information did not sit well with either of us. Gnu commented first. "Do you know now many times I've been attacked by a scholar? This scholar is in the third grade and given the scholar's size, I don't think this scholar could cause any harm but they make a decision to move this scholar to my classroom," she stated. My turn. "I've been in this classroom for almost four years, with three different teachers, and never was a scholar transferred to another school for attacking me or anyone else." In my opinion this is what happened at the school that just transferred Big House to my school, they totally failed to do their job. Working with scholars that have anger control issues is a tough job and comes with the potential for injury to other scholars as well as adults. It is for this reason that there are two adults in every EH (emotionally handicapped) classroom. It is for this reason that each school that has an EH classroom has a Crisis Team that can be called when all hell breaks loose. At my school there are six adults, three men and the women, on our Crisis Team that are trained to deal with attacking scholars. When called, the Crisis Team arrives quickly and the scholar erupting is placed in a safe location allowing the scholar to de-escalate. When the scholar de-escalates, the Crisis Team leaves, the classroom is put back in order, and the erupting scholar gets back to academics. Should the same scholar erupt again, the process repeats itself but this time the BigB steps in, calls the parental unit, and the scholar is sent home for the remainder of the day. It is pretty apparent to me that the teacher, instructional assistant and Crisis Team at Big House's previous school totally failed to do their job and just dumped a scholar in Gnu's lap without even allowing her to be part of the conversation. I think the next time I get the nerve to email TopCat this may be my agenda item.
Part two of What The ....? Part Two. "So, why is Big House arriving at our school at the end of the academic day," I ask Gnu. "The scholar is OCI," she responds. You're not going to like this, but I forgot what she told me the acronym means. It might be Outside Classroom Instruction or Off Campus Instruction but whatever it is, the scholar is getting his academics outside of the normal classroom setting. "So why is the scholar OCI?" I ask. "The scholar's behavior was so poor that someone (the case conference people that did not invite Gnu to the conference) decided that it was in the schools best interest that this scholar be taught when others are not around. The scholar apparently also missed a lot of school so the previous school was using the academic hours taught in OCI to get the scholar caught up on the academic hours missed," Gnu told me. I hope you followed all of that because here comes the What the...? part. I look at Gnu and respond, "you're telling me Big House's previous school is using OCI academic hours to catch up for hours missed during the normal school day. That doesn't make any sense. If this previous school wanted to catch up on academic hours missed, why did they decide to have this scholar only go to school from approximately 3:45pm to approximately 6:30pm? Why didn't they just have him go to school during normal school hours? The scholar is not gaining academic hours, the scholar is actually losing academic hours." Gnu's response was, "I know, it doesn't make any sense."
At lot of crazy things happen in our classroom and there are often times I wonder if I should tell my part time editor, part time consultant, and full time spouse about my day. This happened recently with the scholar that was permanently assigned to our classroom because his behavior had shown improvement. It's 3:30pm and the end of the school day. Prophet didn't have a particularly good day and his parental unit was called to pick him up and take him home. When our administrative czar called our classroom to tell Gnu that Prophet's parental unit was here Gnu told Prophet it was time to go home. At the time, he had one of our iPad's and when Gnu told him to turn it off because it was time to go home Prophet said "no." Gnu reached for the iPad but Prophet moved it away from her but unfortunately for the scholar, he moved in it my direction, so I took it from him. Prophet then look directly at me and said, "I'm going to kill you." Anticipating that Prophet, as he has done numerous times, would try and run away from the classroom, Gnu tried to hold his hand so she could walk him to the front office to the scholars waiting parental unit. As soon as Prophet exited the classroom he tried to run but Gnu held on to him and I arrived to help her. As we are trying to control the Prophet, his parental unit calls his name and he relaxed. We then start walking, with Prophet's parental unit, to the waiting car so the scholar can go home. As we are walking, Prophet, who is in the lead looks back at us and I recognize immediately what is going to happen and say to everyone, "he is going to run." Sure enough off the scholar goes but the scholar failed to recognize that two members of our Crisis Team saw him running and captured him. With Prophet in containment, four adults escorted the scholar to the parental units car, place the scholar in the car and close the door. When Gnu and I are back in the classroom I say to her, "did you hear Prophet say to me, "I'm going to kill you?" Get ready for this one. Gnu looks at me and says, "in an earlier conversation I had with him he told me that he knew that his parental unit had a gun and knew exactly where his parental unit hid it." To tell her about my day or not, that is the question. I cautiously told her and she didn't show much of a reaction. So my part time editor, part time consultant, and full time spouse didn't really react much to the news that I was going to be killed. I'm now wondering what your reaction was when I told you what Prophet said and that the scholar knew where a gun was located?
The weather has been warming up, with occasional periods of rain, so the grass needs to be cut. I'm going to fire up my 40" cut, zero turning radius riding lawn mower and cut the grass. Thanks for continue to follow, for two years now, the musings of an old man who has view from the back of the classroom and enjoys writing about what he sees but is also looking for some body armor.
Sunday, March 13, 2016
What The ........?
For the record, the number of days without a licensed teacher in the classroom was four. The number of days with a licensed teacher in the classroom was two. The number of days the instructional assistant directed all the daily academics was six. With the exception of PhD(*)Pete and Hill'sGirl (a behavior therapist), who technically are not of this school corporation, the number of school personnel that took the time to enter the room to see how I was doing was zero. The number of overhead personnel who took the time to enter the room to see how I was doing, one for a total of two minutes over a six day period. The number of times I was thanked for doing what I did was once and she arrived on a Thursday morning looking all tanned and relaxed. The being all tanned part was disgusting but her looking so relaxed made me feel pretty good.
It's Thursday morning at 8:45am and I'm wearing my bus duty captain's hat as the first bus has arrived. MiniJ exited the bus, walked up to me and said, "Mr. Schultz, is Miss Gnu back?" I responded that "she was" and he was so excited he ran into the school. EM exited the second bus in line and he walks up to me and says, "Mr. Schultz, is Momma D back?" I respond "yes" and his eyes lit up and he had this huge smile on his face. Our last bus arrived and ShortTime exits the bus and walks up to me and says, "Mr. Schultz, is Miss Gnu back?" I again respond "yes" and another scholar is sprinting into the school. When I finally make my way to the classroom, all the scholars are present and they have Gnu surrounded as she is showing them pictures from Maui. Did the scholars miss her? I'll have to give that a big yes.
Prior to Gnu's departure to Maui we had a conversation about the arrival of a new scholar for our classroom. Unfortunately, with the scholars so excited about her return, plus the fact that our third and fourth grade scholars had to take the Indiana STUPID Testing and Evaluation Process (ISTEP) test on Gnu's first day back, we didn't discuss this scholars impending arrival. The testing process went quite well as all the scholars stayed on task and completed the test to the best of their ability. With the day complete, I left the classroom early as I had to return a bus driver's copy of a bus incident report to the bus driver. As I'm approaching the bus, the driver steps off the bus and says to me "I'm glad your are here, I was told to pick up a scholar and bring him to this school at this time of day and I don't know what to do with him." I ask the driver "Where is the scholar?" and as I'm doing so the scholar (BigHouse) makes his appearance as he is standing in the exit door of the bus. I step around the bus driver and ask the scholar his name and he tells me. I then ask the scholar what school is he coming from and as he tells me, the light goes on. I introduce myself to the scholar and ask him to follow me. As I'm leaving, the bus driver says to me, "thank you for helping me as I was really nervous about dropping off a scholar when I know that school day is over." As the driver is talking to me I'm thinking about how this scholar will get home so I ask the driver, "are you going to pick him up later this evening and take him home?" The driver's response was, "No, my day is over." As I'm walking back into the school I'm thinking to my self that BigHouse is our new scholar and I'm wondering how is he going to get home when his school day is over. I'm only a few feet into the school when I see Gnu talking to a group of teachers so I walk over to her and get her attention. "This is the new scholar that we were expecting, his name is BigHouse." The look I got from Gnu was, are you serious, as we head towards our classroom.
As we entered the classroom, Gnu immediately walked over to her computer and logged on to email. A minute or so later, she confirms that BigHouse is our new scholar. She then informs me that the overhead person that sent her the email message did so at 1:00pm which was three hours ago. Gnu speaking, "what teacher will stop doing academics during the school day to check email? They send me an email in the middle of the day and actually think I will see the message. They know our school phone number and they know my cell phone number but they choose to send me an email message giving me a three hour notice that our new scholar will be arrived at our normal school dismissal time." When she finished talking I asked her, "how long will he be with you?" She informs me until 6:30pm. I then ask her how BigHouse will be getting home. She replies, "his parental unit will pick him up." At this point, I have all kinds of scenarios popping into my brain and they are not good scenarios so I ask her if she would like me to stay with her until 6:30pm. She responds, "No, you can go home, I'll be ok."
I'm now in my car heading home and I'm running all these scenarios in my head as I just left Gnu in a EH (emotionally handicapped) classroom alone with a scholar. Recently, in the state of Indiana, teachers doing totally stupid things in the classroom have made the headlines of newspapers as well as being the feature story on the evening news. These are teachers who were involved in inappropriate contact with scholars. These are teachers that have brought illegal drugs into their classroom and the more I think about these breaking news stories the more I begin to think about what could happen to Gnu. What happens if the scholar gets angry and turns violent? What happens if the scholar gets angry and runs out of the school building? What happens if the scholars parental unit is late or very late picking up this scholar? What will happen if the scholar totally makes up a story about what his teacher said or did to him while they were alone in the classroom. The more thinking I do the more concerned I become about Gnu's safety. The more thinking I do the more I begin to wonder, what the ..... is wrong with the overhead personnel that made the decision to put Gnu in this position.
It's now 4:30pm and I'm home. As I walk into the house, my part time editor, part time consultant, and full time spouse is sitting in the kitchen reading the newspaper and eating a snack so I tell her about the position Gnu was just placed in. "Are you serious, you've got to be kidding, who would put a teacher in such a unsafe position?" At one point, as she was talking, so stood up and continued as she was really upset. Later in the evening I'm at the local Y, I just finished my weight lifting routine and I'm sitting in the lobby area waiting for my part time editor, part time consultant, and full time spouse to finish her workout routine. As I'm waiting, a professor from one of the nearby universities joins me so I tell him the story about Gnu. When I finished speaking, the reaction from this professor was very similar to that of my part time editor, part time consultant, and full time spouse. That's two teachers, with about 45 years of teaching, and both gave almost the identical response and then I'm thinking to myself I wonder what as far west as Utah will say about Gnu's situation. I'm also wondering what a 30+ special education teacher as far north as Michigan will say about Gnu's situation. I'm pretty sure I'll hear from both of them by 8:30pm my time on Sunday evening.
My feelings about Gnu's position are pretty clear, what the.....? Two teachers gave me almost identical responses on Gnu's position and their responses gave me the impetus to send an email message. After I hit the send button I was comfortable that I wrote as professional a letter as I could. I didn't question anyone's decision making process, I just wrote a letter stating my concern with the unsafe position that Gnu was placed in and I actually got a response. To be honest with you, when I saw that I got a response, I'm became real nervous as I just received an email message from the top cat of overhead personnel in my school corporation. In a matter of minutes I settled down as I knew that I did the right thing. Gnu was placed in a horrible position and I'm going to state my case. If top cat doesn't like it, then maybe I need to find another school corporation and change my view from the back of the room.
On Monday we start IRead3 and all of the third graders, MiniJ, Uh-Uh-Uh, and Knapper will be taking this reading test. Gnu took all three scholars to our media center and walked them through a practice IRead3 test. Both Un-Uh-Uh and MiniJ answered all of the questions correctly. Knapper missed one question. Those are very positive signs but I know this because she told me. "I'm going to be a nervous wreck all weekend worrying about this test," said Gnu as I left the school for the weekend. I'm going to say a prayer for this outstanding teacher as IRead3 approaches and I asked that you do the same.
I'll keep you up to date on my conversation with the overhead top cat and I'll let you know how our scholars did on IRead3. Right now it's time to go. I'm going to put my grandfather hat on and spend a little time with my granddaughter. Thanks for continuing to read along.
It's Thursday morning at 8:45am and I'm wearing my bus duty captain's hat as the first bus has arrived. MiniJ exited the bus, walked up to me and said, "Mr. Schultz, is Miss Gnu back?" I responded that "she was" and he was so excited he ran into the school. EM exited the second bus in line and he walks up to me and says, "Mr. Schultz, is Momma D back?" I respond "yes" and his eyes lit up and he had this huge smile on his face. Our last bus arrived and ShortTime exits the bus and walks up to me and says, "Mr. Schultz, is Miss Gnu back?" I again respond "yes" and another scholar is sprinting into the school. When I finally make my way to the classroom, all the scholars are present and they have Gnu surrounded as she is showing them pictures from Maui. Did the scholars miss her? I'll have to give that a big yes.
Prior to Gnu's departure to Maui we had a conversation about the arrival of a new scholar for our classroom. Unfortunately, with the scholars so excited about her return, plus the fact that our third and fourth grade scholars had to take the Indiana STUPID Testing and Evaluation Process (ISTEP) test on Gnu's first day back, we didn't discuss this scholars impending arrival. The testing process went quite well as all the scholars stayed on task and completed the test to the best of their ability. With the day complete, I left the classroom early as I had to return a bus driver's copy of a bus incident report to the bus driver. As I'm approaching the bus, the driver steps off the bus and says to me "I'm glad your are here, I was told to pick up a scholar and bring him to this school at this time of day and I don't know what to do with him." I ask the driver "Where is the scholar?" and as I'm doing so the scholar (BigHouse) makes his appearance as he is standing in the exit door of the bus. I step around the bus driver and ask the scholar his name and he tells me. I then ask the scholar what school is he coming from and as he tells me, the light goes on. I introduce myself to the scholar and ask him to follow me. As I'm leaving, the bus driver says to me, "thank you for helping me as I was really nervous about dropping off a scholar when I know that school day is over." As the driver is talking to me I'm thinking about how this scholar will get home so I ask the driver, "are you going to pick him up later this evening and take him home?" The driver's response was, "No, my day is over." As I'm walking back into the school I'm thinking to my self that BigHouse is our new scholar and I'm wondering how is he going to get home when his school day is over. I'm only a few feet into the school when I see Gnu talking to a group of teachers so I walk over to her and get her attention. "This is the new scholar that we were expecting, his name is BigHouse." The look I got from Gnu was, are you serious, as we head towards our classroom.
As we entered the classroom, Gnu immediately walked over to her computer and logged on to email. A minute or so later, she confirms that BigHouse is our new scholar. She then informs me that the overhead person that sent her the email message did so at 1:00pm which was three hours ago. Gnu speaking, "what teacher will stop doing academics during the school day to check email? They send me an email in the middle of the day and actually think I will see the message. They know our school phone number and they know my cell phone number but they choose to send me an email message giving me a three hour notice that our new scholar will be arrived at our normal school dismissal time." When she finished talking I asked her, "how long will he be with you?" She informs me until 6:30pm. I then ask her how BigHouse will be getting home. She replies, "his parental unit will pick him up." At this point, I have all kinds of scenarios popping into my brain and they are not good scenarios so I ask her if she would like me to stay with her until 6:30pm. She responds, "No, you can go home, I'll be ok."
I'm now in my car heading home and I'm running all these scenarios in my head as I just left Gnu in a EH (emotionally handicapped) classroom alone with a scholar. Recently, in the state of Indiana, teachers doing totally stupid things in the classroom have made the headlines of newspapers as well as being the feature story on the evening news. These are teachers who were involved in inappropriate contact with scholars. These are teachers that have brought illegal drugs into their classroom and the more I think about these breaking news stories the more I begin to think about what could happen to Gnu. What happens if the scholar gets angry and turns violent? What happens if the scholar gets angry and runs out of the school building? What happens if the scholars parental unit is late or very late picking up this scholar? What will happen if the scholar totally makes up a story about what his teacher said or did to him while they were alone in the classroom. The more thinking I do the more concerned I become about Gnu's safety. The more thinking I do the more I begin to wonder, what the ..... is wrong with the overhead personnel that made the decision to put Gnu in this position.
It's now 4:30pm and I'm home. As I walk into the house, my part time editor, part time consultant, and full time spouse is sitting in the kitchen reading the newspaper and eating a snack so I tell her about the position Gnu was just placed in. "Are you serious, you've got to be kidding, who would put a teacher in such a unsafe position?" At one point, as she was talking, so stood up and continued as she was really upset. Later in the evening I'm at the local Y, I just finished my weight lifting routine and I'm sitting in the lobby area waiting for my part time editor, part time consultant, and full time spouse to finish her workout routine. As I'm waiting, a professor from one of the nearby universities joins me so I tell him the story about Gnu. When I finished speaking, the reaction from this professor was very similar to that of my part time editor, part time consultant, and full time spouse. That's two teachers, with about 45 years of teaching, and both gave almost the identical response and then I'm thinking to myself I wonder what as far west as Utah will say about Gnu's situation. I'm also wondering what a 30+ special education teacher as far north as Michigan will say about Gnu's situation. I'm pretty sure I'll hear from both of them by 8:30pm my time on Sunday evening.
My feelings about Gnu's position are pretty clear, what the.....? Two teachers gave me almost identical responses on Gnu's position and their responses gave me the impetus to send an email message. After I hit the send button I was comfortable that I wrote as professional a letter as I could. I didn't question anyone's decision making process, I just wrote a letter stating my concern with the unsafe position that Gnu was placed in and I actually got a response. To be honest with you, when I saw that I got a response, I'm became real nervous as I just received an email message from the top cat of overhead personnel in my school corporation. In a matter of minutes I settled down as I knew that I did the right thing. Gnu was placed in a horrible position and I'm going to state my case. If top cat doesn't like it, then maybe I need to find another school corporation and change my view from the back of the room.
On Monday we start IRead3 and all of the third graders, MiniJ, Uh-Uh-Uh, and Knapper will be taking this reading test. Gnu took all three scholars to our media center and walked them through a practice IRead3 test. Both Un-Uh-Uh and MiniJ answered all of the questions correctly. Knapper missed one question. Those are very positive signs but I know this because she told me. "I'm going to be a nervous wreck all weekend worrying about this test," said Gnu as I left the school for the weekend. I'm going to say a prayer for this outstanding teacher as IRead3 approaches and I asked that you do the same.
I'll keep you up to date on my conversation with the overhead top cat and I'll let you know how our scholars did on IRead3. Right now it's time to go. I'm going to put my grandfather hat on and spend a little time with my granddaughter. Thanks for continuing to read along.
Sunday, March 6, 2016
My View From the FRONT of the Room
First things first, a decision appears to have been made regarding the removal from our school of one EH (emotionally handicapped) teacher. Gnu was one of the teachers under consideration. As of this posting, it appears that Gnu may not be the teacher leaving.
Gnu will be out of the classroom for six school days. The search was on for a substitute teacher because I am not a licensed teacher plus two adults need to be in the room with our scholars at all times. On my last blog post I asked the readers to give me their best guess as to how many days there will be a substitute teacher in the classroom. Four individuals responded and all four stated the number of days a substitute teacher would be in the classroom would be zero. Let's see how they did.
As I entered the school on day one (Wednesday) without Gnu I stopped by the office and asked the administrative czar if there would be a substitute teacher in the room with me. The response from the administrative czar was, "forget it." There was a plan "B" as Gnu told me that one of the overhead personnel would try and make an appearance on Wednesday. Did that happen? I'm not even going to answer that question. Gnu left the lesson plans and academic materials for the six days she would be gone in various locations around the room. I gathered everything labeled Wednesday and got organized. It's around 10:00am and we are in our math block. The subject was geometric shapes, angles, and lines. I was doing great until I reached the section on rhombuses and trapezoids. Yikes! Where is my device? I love technology, a rhombus looks like a kite and a trapezoid is a quadrilateral with two sides parallel. I wonder if I have to explain quadrilateral to my 9Patch readers in as far north as Michigan? Who says you can't teach and old guy, with a view from the back of the room, some new tricks. About halfway through our math block my day was interrupted. Did a substitute teacher arrive? Seriously. The door to the classroom opened and in walked Leftside (a scholar from last year) and his posse, two men, Knew2 (the other EH teacher), and the BigB. Apparently Leftside left his classroom a tad bit angry and went for a walk. Leftside was corralled outside our classroom so a decision was made to transport Leftside to our timeout room. Talk about disrupting my math lesson. Except for Leftside taking his shoes off in the timeout room and throwing them at the ceiling tiles and managing to break two ceiling tiles before his shoes were removed, he was pretty quiet. Despite this interruption, two huge positives came from it with the BigB in the classroom. First, the scholars pretty much ignored what was going on behind them and stayed on task. Second, with the Big B in the room I had the document camera fired up, the overhead screen pulled town and I was teaching math. Dang man! I'm looking like a real teacher. Despite the Leftside incident, the day was pretty smooth.
Briefly, before I move on, each day that Gnu was gone PhD(*)Pete (behavior therapist) lead a group session with our scholars. PhD(*)Pete's daily presence in the room gave me a nice break to gather my thoughts and prepare for the remainder of the day. In fact, and although not necessary, PhD(*)Pete supported me everyday that Gnu was gone and I couldn't thank her enough for that support.
On day two (Thursday) without Gnu I caught a huge break. Was it a substitute teacher? No way. ShortTime, Prophet, and Knapper did not arrive at school. This is going to be too easy and it was.
Day three (Friday) without Gnu turned a bit ugly. Because I was in the room alone with the scholars I was required to eat lunch with them. The inability of our scholars to eat lunch without Gnu or I accompanying them is because real teachers with real licenses who have lunch duty responsibilities think it's above themselves to address behavior issue with our scholars while they eat lunch. Just before heading to lunch, EM asked me if everyone could eat their lunch in the classroom rather than the cafeteria and I agreed. With food in their hands the scholars walked back to the classroom. EM, Uh-Uh-Uh, and Prophet sat at Gnu's table at the front of the room. Grr! sat at his desk and I sat where I have a view from the back of the room eating my triple decker peanut butter and jelly sandwich. EM brought a pack of nacho chips from home to go with his lunch and was quietly eating them. At one point Prophet reached for the bag but EM grabbed it and politely said to Prophet, "my mother bought these for my lunch so please don't try and take them." A couple minutes later Prophet successfully grabbed the nacho chips. EM, still being polite said to Prophet, "those are my chips, can I please have them back?" Prophet starting walking away from EM so I stood up. As soon as Prophet saw me get up he started cramming full hands of nacho chips into his mouth. By the time I reached him, his mouth was so full of nacho chips that he couldn't even close it. When I removed EM's nacho chips from his hands he erupted. He started slamming cabinet doors as hard as he could and I instructed the scholars to take their lunch and head to their safe place outside the classroom. The scholars were absolutely perfect in their departure and I pushed the emergency call button by our classroom door to get assistance as I was alone with a very angry scholar. When helped arrived Prophet had really trashed the room. At one point he raised chairs up over his head and was throwing them. He also knocked over desks and did an excellent job of scattering all of the documents on Gnu's desk across the room. With help now in the room, Prophet was escorted to our timeout room and the BigB went to call his parental unit to come and get him. With Prophet gone, the scholars were directed back to the classroom and we continued into our reading block. The reading subject for the day was a punctuation exercise on quotation marks that I though was pretty funny. If you've read my blog long enough, and have the ability to recognize the proper use of punctuation, you know that I've probably made some serious punctuation mistakes. It was for that reason that I found it funny that I was teaching a lesson on quotation marks. Although I completed the lesson I knew I didn't do a very good job as the scholars weren't catching on. It was near the end of the day so I decided to repeat the lesson plan on Monday and called it a day. Gnu has been gone for three days, it's the weekend, and I'm surviving.
Real quick before I move on to Monday. The overhead person, that was supposed to be in the classroom on Wednesday, showed up on Friday. The total time this overhead person was in the classroom was less than two minutes. This is the same overhead person that felt that Prophet's behavior had improved in our classroom and made arrangements to have him permanently assigned to the room. Sadly, this overhead person arrived after lunch and missed Prophet's eruption.
It's Monday morning and as I enter the building I passed the BigB who says to me, "I'm really trying to find a substitute for your classroom." I thank her for the effort and head to the classroom. It's around 8:30 when my cell phone beeps and I see that a text message poured in. I opened the message and there was a picture of this large wave glistening in the sunlight and bearing down on three women. I checked the text that goes along with the picture and all it said was, "I'm in the middle." I thought I'd text back either my Leftside story or my Prophet story just to be hateful but chose not to. I work with a great teacher and I'm hoping she is thoroughly enjoying her time in Hawaii. After looking at the test picture Gnu sent to me, I decided to start the day with a geography lesson as I'm thinking the scholars are probably clueless as to the location of Hawaii. I pulled out, from our social studies drawer, a map of the United States and traced on it Gnu's route to an from Hawaii. The outbound trip went from Indianapolis, to Dallas, to Phoenix, and then on to Maui. The inbound trip went from Maui, to a city in Oregon, to Chicago, and then to Indianapolis. As I studied the map I noticed that the distance from the California (that is even farther west than Utah) coastline to Maui is only about two inches. That didn't tell the true story of Gnu's location so I set up my iPad and using Google Earth, centered the satellite picture right over Hawaii. When the scholars settled down I started my geography lesson and as expected, they were clueless as to Hawaii's location. In fact, I'm confident in saying this was the first time they saw a picture of an island. Academically and behaviorally, the day went well. Except for Prophet's constant disruptions I survived day four. For the record, the number of days that an unlicensed teacher led the class stands at four. The number of days that a licensed teacher led the class stands at zero.
Shortly after the scholars departed to go home an instructional assistance from our Pre-K classroom walked into the room with an adult that looked to be someone's grandmother. This instructional assistant asked me if Gnu was still on vacation and I replied, "yes, for two more days." The instructional assistant then told me that the person with her just finished as a substitute teacher in her room and did an excellent job. I introduced myself to the substitute teacher and then explained to her what type of classroom she was standing in. I then told her if she was interested she should talk to the BigB on her way out. The substitute teachers response to me was, "I'll think about it."
I'm combining Tuesday and Wednesday as things went well. TheSUB arrived at 8:30am and said to me, "you set the agenda and whatever you need me to do I will do." The day went amazingly well. We worked together on the distribution of work and everything on the daily lesson plan was completed. I was so impressed with TheSUB that I walked over to the BigB's office to inform her as to how my day went and suggested that she schedule TheSUB for the rest of the school year at our school.
It's Wednesday afternoon and I'm within two hours of surviving without Gnu for six days when things turned a bit ugly. TheSUB was working with the third grade scholars and I had Grr! and Prophet with me. Prophet lost his focus and headed to the front table. When he sat at the table TheSUB said to him, "you need to go back and sit with Mr. Schultz." Prophet looked up at her and in the matter of a few moments laid the N-Word, B-Word, and F-Word on her. TheSUB stood up, took off her glasses, glared down at Prophet and calmly said, "you have no business being in this classroom." Dear overhead person that permanently assigned Prophet to our classroom because his behavior improved, did you just hear what a substitute teacher said about Prophet?
I received a text message later in the day from Gnu informing me that she arrived safely back Indianapolis and would be in the classroom early on Thursday morning. I already have a title for my next blog post. It will say, What The..... As you can read, I cleaned that up a bit but I'll give you a hint. I'm upset, my part time editor, part time consultant, and full time spouse is upset. In fact, three other classroom teachers voice their outrage at what transpired upon Gnu's return. I also feel confident that the school teachers that read this blog next week will also be upset. How upset am I? I sent an email message to our school corporation's main office questioning if the proper protocol was followed when placing a new scholar in our classroom.
That's it. I'm out. Thanks for continuing to read my blog. Talk to you next week, if I still have a job.
Gnu will be out of the classroom for six school days. The search was on for a substitute teacher because I am not a licensed teacher plus two adults need to be in the room with our scholars at all times. On my last blog post I asked the readers to give me their best guess as to how many days there will be a substitute teacher in the classroom. Four individuals responded and all four stated the number of days a substitute teacher would be in the classroom would be zero. Let's see how they did.
As I entered the school on day one (Wednesday) without Gnu I stopped by the office and asked the administrative czar if there would be a substitute teacher in the room with me. The response from the administrative czar was, "forget it." There was a plan "B" as Gnu told me that one of the overhead personnel would try and make an appearance on Wednesday. Did that happen? I'm not even going to answer that question. Gnu left the lesson plans and academic materials for the six days she would be gone in various locations around the room. I gathered everything labeled Wednesday and got organized. It's around 10:00am and we are in our math block. The subject was geometric shapes, angles, and lines. I was doing great until I reached the section on rhombuses and trapezoids. Yikes! Where is my device? I love technology, a rhombus looks like a kite and a trapezoid is a quadrilateral with two sides parallel. I wonder if I have to explain quadrilateral to my 9Patch readers in as far north as Michigan? Who says you can't teach and old guy, with a view from the back of the room, some new tricks. About halfway through our math block my day was interrupted. Did a substitute teacher arrive? Seriously. The door to the classroom opened and in walked Leftside (a scholar from last year) and his posse, two men, Knew2 (the other EH teacher), and the BigB. Apparently Leftside left his classroom a tad bit angry and went for a walk. Leftside was corralled outside our classroom so a decision was made to transport Leftside to our timeout room. Talk about disrupting my math lesson. Except for Leftside taking his shoes off in the timeout room and throwing them at the ceiling tiles and managing to break two ceiling tiles before his shoes were removed, he was pretty quiet. Despite this interruption, two huge positives came from it with the BigB in the classroom. First, the scholars pretty much ignored what was going on behind them and stayed on task. Second, with the Big B in the room I had the document camera fired up, the overhead screen pulled town and I was teaching math. Dang man! I'm looking like a real teacher. Despite the Leftside incident, the day was pretty smooth.
Briefly, before I move on, each day that Gnu was gone PhD(*)Pete (behavior therapist) lead a group session with our scholars. PhD(*)Pete's daily presence in the room gave me a nice break to gather my thoughts and prepare for the remainder of the day. In fact, and although not necessary, PhD(*)Pete supported me everyday that Gnu was gone and I couldn't thank her enough for that support.
On day two (Thursday) without Gnu I caught a huge break. Was it a substitute teacher? No way. ShortTime, Prophet, and Knapper did not arrive at school. This is going to be too easy and it was.
Day three (Friday) without Gnu turned a bit ugly. Because I was in the room alone with the scholars I was required to eat lunch with them. The inability of our scholars to eat lunch without Gnu or I accompanying them is because real teachers with real licenses who have lunch duty responsibilities think it's above themselves to address behavior issue with our scholars while they eat lunch. Just before heading to lunch, EM asked me if everyone could eat their lunch in the classroom rather than the cafeteria and I agreed. With food in their hands the scholars walked back to the classroom. EM, Uh-Uh-Uh, and Prophet sat at Gnu's table at the front of the room. Grr! sat at his desk and I sat where I have a view from the back of the room eating my triple decker peanut butter and jelly sandwich. EM brought a pack of nacho chips from home to go with his lunch and was quietly eating them. At one point Prophet reached for the bag but EM grabbed it and politely said to Prophet, "my mother bought these for my lunch so please don't try and take them." A couple minutes later Prophet successfully grabbed the nacho chips. EM, still being polite said to Prophet, "those are my chips, can I please have them back?" Prophet starting walking away from EM so I stood up. As soon as Prophet saw me get up he started cramming full hands of nacho chips into his mouth. By the time I reached him, his mouth was so full of nacho chips that he couldn't even close it. When I removed EM's nacho chips from his hands he erupted. He started slamming cabinet doors as hard as he could and I instructed the scholars to take their lunch and head to their safe place outside the classroom. The scholars were absolutely perfect in their departure and I pushed the emergency call button by our classroom door to get assistance as I was alone with a very angry scholar. When helped arrived Prophet had really trashed the room. At one point he raised chairs up over his head and was throwing them. He also knocked over desks and did an excellent job of scattering all of the documents on Gnu's desk across the room. With help now in the room, Prophet was escorted to our timeout room and the BigB went to call his parental unit to come and get him. With Prophet gone, the scholars were directed back to the classroom and we continued into our reading block. The reading subject for the day was a punctuation exercise on quotation marks that I though was pretty funny. If you've read my blog long enough, and have the ability to recognize the proper use of punctuation, you know that I've probably made some serious punctuation mistakes. It was for that reason that I found it funny that I was teaching a lesson on quotation marks. Although I completed the lesson I knew I didn't do a very good job as the scholars weren't catching on. It was near the end of the day so I decided to repeat the lesson plan on Monday and called it a day. Gnu has been gone for three days, it's the weekend, and I'm surviving.
Real quick before I move on to Monday. The overhead person, that was supposed to be in the classroom on Wednesday, showed up on Friday. The total time this overhead person was in the classroom was less than two minutes. This is the same overhead person that felt that Prophet's behavior had improved in our classroom and made arrangements to have him permanently assigned to the room. Sadly, this overhead person arrived after lunch and missed Prophet's eruption.
It's Monday morning and as I enter the building I passed the BigB who says to me, "I'm really trying to find a substitute for your classroom." I thank her for the effort and head to the classroom. It's around 8:30 when my cell phone beeps and I see that a text message poured in. I opened the message and there was a picture of this large wave glistening in the sunlight and bearing down on three women. I checked the text that goes along with the picture and all it said was, "I'm in the middle." I thought I'd text back either my Leftside story or my Prophet story just to be hateful but chose not to. I work with a great teacher and I'm hoping she is thoroughly enjoying her time in Hawaii. After looking at the test picture Gnu sent to me, I decided to start the day with a geography lesson as I'm thinking the scholars are probably clueless as to the location of Hawaii. I pulled out, from our social studies drawer, a map of the United States and traced on it Gnu's route to an from Hawaii. The outbound trip went from Indianapolis, to Dallas, to Phoenix, and then on to Maui. The inbound trip went from Maui, to a city in Oregon, to Chicago, and then to Indianapolis. As I studied the map I noticed that the distance from the California (that is even farther west than Utah) coastline to Maui is only about two inches. That didn't tell the true story of Gnu's location so I set up my iPad and using Google Earth, centered the satellite picture right over Hawaii. When the scholars settled down I started my geography lesson and as expected, they were clueless as to Hawaii's location. In fact, I'm confident in saying this was the first time they saw a picture of an island. Academically and behaviorally, the day went well. Except for Prophet's constant disruptions I survived day four. For the record, the number of days that an unlicensed teacher led the class stands at four. The number of days that a licensed teacher led the class stands at zero.
Shortly after the scholars departed to go home an instructional assistance from our Pre-K classroom walked into the room with an adult that looked to be someone's grandmother. This instructional assistant asked me if Gnu was still on vacation and I replied, "yes, for two more days." The instructional assistant then told me that the person with her just finished as a substitute teacher in her room and did an excellent job. I introduced myself to the substitute teacher and then explained to her what type of classroom she was standing in. I then told her if she was interested she should talk to the BigB on her way out. The substitute teachers response to me was, "I'll think about it."
I'm combining Tuesday and Wednesday as things went well. TheSUB arrived at 8:30am and said to me, "you set the agenda and whatever you need me to do I will do." The day went amazingly well. We worked together on the distribution of work and everything on the daily lesson plan was completed. I was so impressed with TheSUB that I walked over to the BigB's office to inform her as to how my day went and suggested that she schedule TheSUB for the rest of the school year at our school.
It's Wednesday afternoon and I'm within two hours of surviving without Gnu for six days when things turned a bit ugly. TheSUB was working with the third grade scholars and I had Grr! and Prophet with me. Prophet lost his focus and headed to the front table. When he sat at the table TheSUB said to him, "you need to go back and sit with Mr. Schultz." Prophet looked up at her and in the matter of a few moments laid the N-Word, B-Word, and F-Word on her. TheSUB stood up, took off her glasses, glared down at Prophet and calmly said, "you have no business being in this classroom." Dear overhead person that permanently assigned Prophet to our classroom because his behavior improved, did you just hear what a substitute teacher said about Prophet?
I received a text message later in the day from Gnu informing me that she arrived safely back Indianapolis and would be in the classroom early on Thursday morning. I already have a title for my next blog post. It will say, What The..... As you can read, I cleaned that up a bit but I'll give you a hint. I'm upset, my part time editor, part time consultant, and full time spouse is upset. In fact, three other classroom teachers voice their outrage at what transpired upon Gnu's return. I also feel confident that the school teachers that read this blog next week will also be upset. How upset am I? I sent an email message to our school corporation's main office questioning if the proper protocol was followed when placing a new scholar in our classroom.
That's it. I'm out. Thanks for continuing to read my blog. Talk to you next week, if I still have a job.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)