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.
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