It's Going Down the Drain Slowly

Although it hasn't happened in a while, I get real excited, if not down right animated, when it does.  When it happened previously it appeared in the local media and I took it upon myself to comment on it with a letter to the editor of the local newspaper.  This time it happened in social media and, as in the past, I'm about to comment.  As I was putting together my thoughts on how to proceed I recalled something my daughter told me when she was the managing editor of a student newspaper when she was in college, "you should never piss off a member of the media that buys ink in fifty-five gallon drums."  Obviously, times have changed and I don't need fifty-five gallons drums of ink to write this blog.  All I need is fingers, keyboard attached to a laptop, a blog, and an attitude because once again my school corporation has come under attacked by someone who has had little or no involvement in this school corporation for maybe a decade.  What this person has, from what I can figure out, is a communication channel that goes directly to some malcontent who doesn't like change.  So, let me take a few minutes to tell you what my view is of my school corporation.

1. The school corporation changed leadership during my first year in the classroom.  Our new school superintendent was immediately faced with a thirty-five million dollar deficit.  In less than two years, after thoroughly reviewing the disaster that he inherited he pronounced that the school corporation now had an eight million dollar surplus.  The naysayers immediately attacked by questioning his accounting practices.  He response was to open the books for all to see.  The naysayers tucked their tails between their legs and retreated.  Does this sound like a school going down the drain slowly?
2. The teachers, probably due to ineffective representation, had gone at least five years without and increase.  The new superintendent found the funds to give the teachers a raise.  Does this sound like a school going down the drain slowly?
3. Since the new superintendent arrived, instruction assistants, that would be me, have received loyalty bonuses.  So far I have received three of them.  That, to be best of my knowledge, never happened before.  Does this sound like a school going down the drain slowly?
4. Our new superintendent, along with a school board that focuses on change rather than doing the same old thing, implemented Magnet Schools in the school corporation.  Here are four of them, an innovative studies school, a school for the performing arts, a medical magnet school and a school for law and public policy.  Does this sound like a school going slowly down the drain? 
1. As a side note, I recently saw two theatrical productions in our school corporation.  One was the Nutcracker and the other was Shrek the Musical.  Both performances were impressive and greatly exceeded my expectations.
5. My school corporation recently introduced a school webpage.  This webpage is open to the public and contains both current events and events that will happen in the future.  When you look at the events mentioned on this webpage, I can't image anyone saying this school corporation is slowly going the down drain.
6. A Parent Involvement Educator position was recently created in my school corporation.  This person, and there is an excellent one at my school, focuses solely on getting parental units involved in their scholars school.  Monthly the Parent Involvement Educator sends out the agenda for the upcoming parental unit meetings.  I brought home a copy of the agenda for my part time editor, part time consultant, and full time spouse to read.  Her reaction was simple.  "You have all of this going on in your school, we certainly are not doing that much at my school."  Does this sound like a school going down the drain slowly?
7. Soccer was recently introduced into the elementary schools.  In the first year approximately twenty elementary schools started their first ever soccer team.  The number of teams playing soccer greatly exceeded everyone's expectations.  Does this sound like a school going down the drain slowly? 
8. In a couple weeks, hundreds of scholars from my school corporation will run in a five kilometer race in conjunction with the annual Monumental Marathon run.  At my school alone, we have around forty scholars participating.  Keep in mind, my school only goes up to the sixth grade.  Does this huge participation is a running event sound like a school going down the drain slowly?
9. At my school, we have a gardening club, a Spanish language club, and a running club.  We have what might be the most actively involve group of parents when it comes to after school activities of any school in our school corporation.  Does this sound like a school going down the drain slowly?

Paraphrasing, "your school corporation is going down the drain slowly my friend and has been since the early 90's in my opinion.  But look at the top people and you see why."  I look at the top person, I look at the school board and here is what it see, CHANGE, and the desire to move the school corporation upward.  There is no leadership problem at my school unless you are the union.  There is no leadership problem at my school unless you are some malcontented teacher who spends a good portion of the day complaining about anything and every thing rather than packing up your bags and taking you sorry attitude somewhere else.  I've been writing this blog for almost three years now and I think I've done a pretty good job at pointing our the bad as well as the good in my school corporation as well as my individual school and I can tell you this with no uncertain terms, this school corporation is moving in the right direct and you know how I know that?  I've been in it for almost five years and I don't need to do this, I choose to do this, because I like what I'm doing and I like the direction the school corporation is going.

Back to the classroom and Gnu is continuing to read mysteries in our reading block.  She recently introduced to the scholars short stories that follow the same theme as the game board Clue.  She blew up colored pictures of all the characters and handed each scholar a copy of the game board.  As she read the story, the scholar were required to take notes on what each character was doing as well as the various rooms that are visited during the story.  When she finishes reading the story she breaks the scholars into small groups and tasks them with solving the mystery.  It's been real interesting to watch the scholars as they discuss the story.  There are times were they are in agreement and times when they disagree and start debating each other on why someone is right or wrong.  So far, Gnu has read three Clue stories and the total time it takes to begin and end one assignment is around forty-five minutes.  That doesn't sound like much but when you take into consideration that Gnu has managed to keep nine scholars with emotional handicaps on task for that length of time it is really impressive.

He is the part that makes me continue doing what I do.  With the reading block on mysteries completed Gnu asked each scholar to take a seat and be ready to answer a question.  She went on to say that the person that can answer this question will earn extra points that can be added to recess or choice time.  That obviously got the scholars attention as everyone was seated.  "Can someone tell me why we just spent so much time reading mysteries and following along on what Mr. Green was doing in the Study with Miss Scarlett and why there was a candlestick holder in the room?"  The question was met with silence.  Even I could not come up with an answer to the question.  After a short pause to let the scholar think, Gnu said to them.  How did you solve the mystery?  Hands went up, "we found clues and gather evidence."  "Exactly," she said.  "And when you couldn't decide who the criminal was, what did you do?"  "We went back and got the book and reread the story to find out what we needed to know."  "You actually picked up the book and reread the story?"  "Why?"  "So we could solve the mystery."  "That is the perfect answer," she said to them.  Gnu continue, "in a few months each of you will be required to take a reading test, either IRead3 or ISTEP.  When you finish reading the passage and start to answer the questions, keep the game of Clue in mind.  If you come across a question and don't know the answer don't just guess at the answer.  Instead, put your detective hat on and reread the passage just as you did with these mysteries.  If you do that, you are going to pass these tests.  Gnu just spent the better part of two weeks reading mysteries just so she could get to this point with the scholars.  It's a simple point, reread the passage but the message was powerful.  As I was sitting in the back of the room I thought to myself, you are really working with someone special. 

Time for a scholar update.  One update puts a happy smile on my face.  The others, well you'll see.  We have one departure so that will put us down to nine scholars, one girl and eight boys.  Oil is departing to a new school.  We are not sure if this is a parental move or just a parental unit that listens to her young scholar who constantly declares, "I hate this school," every time he has to do any academics. So, no matter the circumstances,  this scholar is going to a new school, again.  Oil's departure is one of those, "don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out," departures.  He was a challenge for Gnu and I with his oppositional defiant disorder.  As I mentioned in the past neither Gnu nor I do will with this disorder.  Moving on, someone, possibly the Department of Children Services has decided to remove Tourette from a grandparental unit to his original parental unit.  Caution flags went up immediately when Gnu and I heard this news as Tourette has strung together a couple of good weeks when it comes to behavior so changing parental units didn't seem like a good idea to us.  One his first day with his original parental unit Tourette's behavior changed and not for the good.  Gnu recognized pretty quickly that he didn't take his medication.  The next morning Gnu gave me an update on Tourette's change of parental units.  She stated that while Tourette got home safely, as he leaves just after lunch and is a bus rider, his brother didn't fair as well.  Why?  The parental unit that both of them just moved back with forgot to pick him up.  School ends at 3:30pm.  At 5:30pm the school began calling the parental unit to come and get her scholar.  Apparently she forgot he was in school.  For the record, this scholar is in kindergarten.  Last one and probably the toughest one for me.  EM and his family are on the verge of homelessness for what I think is the fifth time.  From what Gnu knows, his parental unit was forced out of the home due to unsanitary living conditions.  For some reason, a parental unit with six young scholars though that it was necessary to bring home a few dogs as pets.  I'm good with pets but if you have pets and they mess in the house you have to clean up after them.  Apparently this wasn't happening so they were evicted.  When you know that this parental unit does not work, you'd think she would have plenty of time to clean the house.  Sadly, cleaning must not be a priority so EM and his family are house hunting again.

I'm presently sitting on my screened in porch on the back of the house and it is going down the drain slowly.  No, not the school corporation as some misguided individuals think, but the sun.  It's cooling off fast so I'm moving inside.  I'm going to leave you with this, someone in my school has been experiencing a string of days where there is a feeling of being sick in the morning.  I'll let you think about that for a little while.  Thanks for reading along with an old guy that has a view from the back of a room and is part of an ever improving school corporation. 

 

It Got A Little Tense

Fall break is officially over and I've been back in the classroom for one week.  When I last posted a blog I chose to start fall break on a happy note rather than a sad note so I guess I need to discuss the sad note first today.  Before I do that, a little bit about fall break.  My part time editor, part time consultant, and full time spouse and I spent eight days visiting as far west as Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah, plus hiking in three national parks in the high desert of southern Utah.  The adventure started in Salt Lake City where we actually spent a day and a half with as far west as Utah.  A side note for those that are confused.  As I've said before, I don't use any real names so, when you read "as far west as Utah," that is the name of a real person who lives in Utah.  We first met as far west as Utah outside the Coliseum in Rome when we were vacationing in Italy a few years ago and we've maintained a friendship ever since.  We spent a good part of a day in Salt Lake City visiting the national headquarters of the Mormon Church which was an absolutely fascinating experience.  From there we headed to the national parks.  We visited Arches National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, and Zion Canyon National Park.  The scenery was amazing and our hiking in the national parks covered between twenty-five and thirty miles at elevations that are definitely not found in Indiana.

It was Wednesday before fall break at approximately 1:25pm when the collision occurred.  We were in our physical education specials classroom and the scholars were participating in a game of tag.  There were around twenty-five scholars involved in the game and running was taking place in the confined area of a basketball court.  I didn't actually see the collision but when the PE teacher was walking out of the gym with a scholar with a nose bleed I knew something bad had happened.  As the PE teacher was walking past me I asked him if he wanted me to take the scholar to our first aid room so he could continue with his class.  He agreed, so I walked the scholar to the first aid room.  In addition to a nose bleed, the scholar also had a small cut on the inside of his lip so there was a fair about of blood.  Our school does not have a nurse and to the best of my knowledge there is no one trained in first aid in our school that I could contact for help.  That left me two options, tend to the scholars injuries or leave the scholar to sit quietly in our first aid room by himself and hope the bleeding stopped.  I chose to assist the scholar.  In doing so, I lost track of the time.  When I had the bleeding stopped and made sure that the blood that was all over the scholars face was cleaned off I returned to the gym.  As I walked in, the general education class that we rotate through specials with was lined up at the door waiting to leave.  When I looked for my scholars I didn't see them so I asked the PE teacher where they were.  He informed me that they left to return to their classroom.  That was a little disappointing to hear because the PE teacher or any other teach never just lets scholars return to a classroom without an adult escorting them.  With the scholars not in my sight, I was moving quickly back to my classroom.

As I approached the classroom there were loud voices coming from within the room.  Huey was up and moving about and Gnu was maneuvering to corner him.  Apparently something happened in PE when I was out of the gym doing first aid that carried over all the way to the classroom.  I was about halfway across the classroom when Gnu put Huey into the approved hold and was trying to move him into our timeout room.  As I approached Gnu I said to her, "let me take over."  Her response was aggressive. "I've got this.  Where were you?  Why were these scholars allowed to leave the gym and enter the classroom by themselves?  I was in a meeting and this is what I walked into when I return to my classroom?"  Gnu was angry and her anger was directed at me.  I've been in this classroom for four and one quarter school years and never has there been any angry exchanges between the adults.  This was the first one and fortunately I recognized that I needed to stay under control.  "A scholar was hurt during gym class.  I took him to our first aid room to help stop the bleeding from his nose and mouth.  I thought I did the right thing in helping this scholar" is what I said to Gnu.  My response was met with silence.

It took a while to get the classroom settled down then Gnu started our math block and the day ended peacefully.  Around 3:35pm Gnu left the classroom with the scholars that ride a bus home and I stayed in the classroom to put everything back in it's proper place.  As soon as I was finished I left school and headed for home.  When I walked in the door my part time editor, part time consultant, and full time spouse knew something was wrong.  "Tough day," she said to me.  My response was one word, "yes" and I took a seat in our living room.  I sat there for several minutes before I heard, "so what happened?"  As soon as I told her she said to me, "you don't need to take it personal.  You know you work in a tough environment and sometimes emotions get to the adults just like they do with the scholars.  Let it go, you know Gnu didn't mean it."  I was home for about an hour and a half before I completed my own de-escalation process.  About thirty minutes later my cellphone rings and it's a text message from Gnu.  "I just wanted to apologize for what happened.  You are so important to this classroom and I just wanted you let you know that."  My response was, "we are a team.  We work in a difficult environment and some times things happen.  That will not change us from being a team, a real good team.  See you in the morning."

On Friday morning, our last day of school before fall break, and Gnu walked into the room and said to me,  "I'm so excited, the BigB2 has assigned an inclusion teacher to our room.  This teacher will arrive everyday at 1:00pm and take responsibility for the independent math station."  "You're kidding," was my response.  "No, and I'm so excited because we will be able to get some much more done."  At the end of the day Gnu and I walked out of the school together.  Gnu was flying out to Florida on Saturday morning with her gentleman caller to spend some time on the beach.  I have five days off before packing to head as far west as Utah.  I knew when I arrived home discussions would immediately start about what I was going to do for five days as my part time editor, part time consultant, and full time spouse will be in school.  Saturday and Sunday went about in a normal fashion.  On Monday morning I heard my part time editor, part time consultant and full time spouse leave for school but I chose to remain in bed for a little longer.  When I finally got up, I walked down to the kitchen, turned left to head to the coffee pot, and there it was right on the counter and as big as life, my to do list. 

It's a beautiful day here in Indianapolis.  The maid of honor at our wedding and her husband are passing through Indianapolis as they head back to Michigan and we are meeting them for lunch.  We will be dining at a place called the Fireside.  They have a Sunday brunch and best of all at the Sunday brunch, they have $5.00 Bloody Mary's.  I'm pretty sure I'll order one, maybe two.  Thanks for continuing to follow the adventures of a teacher that I named after an African animal, Gnu, and an old guy that has a view from the back of the classroom.







   
           

          

Time Out

Although it doesn't seem like it, we are forty-five days into the school year, and it's time for a time out as it is fall break.  Gnu and I will have two wonderful weeks without anger, ADHD, ODD, and assorted other scholar maladies.  If you haven't already figured it out, it took me a while to get started on the blog.  Well, I farted around long enough so here I am on a beautiful Wednesday afternoon sitting on my screened in porch watching a white breasted nuthatch visit a bird feeder that is about twelve feet away from me and watching my neighbor cut his grass.  I had two thoughts on what to write about today.  One is fun stuff and the other not so fun, in fact it was one of the toughest days emotionally for me.  I'll go with the fun stuff and save the not so fun stuff for the next blog post.

Gnu is slowly transitioned from the Patricia Polacco books to fairy tales.  We finished reading a Polacco book called the Lemonade Club and started reading the fairy tale Cinderella.  In fact, so far, we've read seven different versions of the fairy tale Cinderella.  Before discussing the Cinderella stories I need tell you about the Lemonade Club.  Before reading the Polacco books, Gnu reads them while at home.  When she decided to read the book Junkyard to our scholars she asked me to read the book because she got a little emotional reading the story and didn't want to cry in front of the scholars.  When Gnu moved on to Lemonade Club neither one of us read the book in advance and Gnu again asked me to do the reading so she could work on lesson plans.  When I looked at the cover of the book I was certain this was going to be a story about two girls selling lemonade.  Wrong!  Not even close.  The Lemonade Club is really a club.  The club has three members, two school girls who are best friends, and their teacher who is also a girl.  One of the girls was diagnosed with leukemia and shortly after, in the story, the girls teacher was diagnosed with breast cancer.  The three girls would meet under a tree to discuss how they were feeling when dealing with cancer.  The conversations included chemotherapy, hair loss, weight loss, and the constant thought about dying.  It was a tough read for me.  If my memory serves me correctly, I had to stop four times so I could keep my emotions in check.  Why did I have to stop?  I'm a cancer survivor and I know about chemotherapy, hair loss, weight loss, and the thought of dying and it brought back some tough memories.  The story had a happy ending as both girls were cured of their cancer.  When I finished the book I looked up at Gnu and said to her, "did I ever tell you that I'm a cancer survivor?"  "Oh my God, why didn't you tell me.  I never read the book so I didn't know what it was about.  If I'd known, we would have read a different book."

Ok, on to Cinderella.  By the way, did you know that there are estimates as to how many versions of Cinderella there are throughout the world.  The estimates range from 350 to 1500 versions of the book and Gnu is progressing through them one at a time.  Right now we've gone through seven versions.  We started in France, went to the shores of Lake Ontario, Canada, moved on to the old west in the United States, traveled to Zimbabwe in Africa, then to Egypt in Africa, wandered over to China, and arrived in New York City, New York.  As Gnu moved from story to story, she'd draw a Venn Diagram on the white board.  She uses the Venn Diagram with the scholars to highlight the similarities and differences between stories.  She then pairs the scholars into groups of two, hands them some Post It notes, and working as a team the scholars have to come up with the similarities and differences.  Once they find what is needed, they take their Post It notes up to the whiteboard and place them in the appropriate spot on the Venn Diagram.  Every time she does this I watch in amazement at how well the scholars recall the stories.  I know I've said this numerous times before but I going to say it again.  The best reader in our classroom is maybe an average reader.  However, we do have a classroom of excellent listeners.  One last comment on Cinderella.  Of the seven books we've read, the class favorite is The Rough Faced Girl.  This is an Algonquin Indian version of Cinderella and it takes place near Lake Ontario on, I believe, the Canadian side of the lake. 

Scholar updates

MiniJ is in a downward spiral and it is so frustrating for Gnu and I to watch.  He has gone full circle, from a very angry scholar when he arrived in the second grade, to a scholar who behaved so well in the third grade that he was placed into a general education classroom, to an angry scholar again in the fourth grade.  What caused this change?  Gnu's best guess is a medication change that was required as MiniJ had been on the same medication for a couple years and after a period of time the medication needs to be changed.  Why change something that works is beyond me but I'm not the doctor prescribing the medication.

EM actually made it through the first quarter (forty-five) days of the year in a general education classroom.  Although he struggles regularly, he keeps going back.  Gnu continues to stay after school just about every day to help him with his homework.  A couple days ago I got called to the front office to see if I could convince EM to go to his classroom.  It was a struggle.  When he saw me he knew why I was there so he walked out of the school.  As I pursued him he kept walking away from me.  Eventually he made a full circle of the parking lot and headed back to the front door of the school.  Unfortunately, he had to walk past his parental units car so he climbed inside the car and locked the doors.  As his parental unit tried to persuade him to unlock the doors, I'd had enough and headed back to my classroom.  Eventually, EM made it to his class.

Grr! is going to have a surprise when we return to school after our fall break.  He is going to transition to a general education third grade classroom.  Grr! has had a great first forty-five days so Gnu is somewhat confident that he will make it. 

Last one.  On the last day before fall break Gnu decided to have a fun afternoon.  Johnny Appleseed had a birthday a few days back so Gnu decided to bring apples into the classroom.  I believe she had four different kinds of apples to taste.  She also used one of the apples to make an apple volcano.  But the real reason for the apples was to make apple turnovers.  As all of the scholars gathered at the front table and started the baking process it was fun to watch how Gnu divided the work load so that every scholar had a task.  My task, in case you are wondering was to preheat the oven, bake the apple turnovers, and while everyone was eating the apple turnovers with ice cream on the side, clean up the massive mess the scholars made at the front table, and do the dishes.  When my task was complete I got to sit down and eat the last apple turnover.  As I had the apple turnover in my hand, three scholars asks me if they could have it.  One by one I gave them my, don't come over here and bug me look, and they silently retreated. 

That's it.  There are one hundred and thirty-five school days left this year and I'm sure these days will have there highs and lows and like I have in the past, I'll tell you what my view from the back of the room was like.  Thanks so much for continuing to follow along.