Today is Friday, November 25th. So as not to mislead anyone one, the terrible weekend that is referenced in the title of this blog was last weekend and not the Thanksgiving weekend.
It's 9:15am on Monday, November 21st, and all of the scholars, with the exception of Tourette, are in the classroom. Gnu's first order of business on Monday mornings is to ask the scholars what they did over the weekend. I usually have mixed feelings about doing this as our scholars rarely do anything real special. They will say things like I went to Kings Island but that is doubtful which is sad. Why? The scholars will make things up just to sound like they did something special. The reality is that they come from parental units that are poor and for the most part don't do much of anything themselves. One by one the scholars told Gnu what they did on the weekend. When the scholars were finished I heard Gnu say, "Schultz, what did you do this weekend?" I just had one item to share, I got to baby sit my granddaughter. When I finished it was Gnu's turn. "To start out, my spousal unit and I bought a large pizza this weekend," Gnu said. "The pizza was sitting on a low coffee table when my spousal unit and I got distracted. When we came back into the room with the pizza we discovered that our dog has eaten the entire pizza. To make matters worse, the dog kept waking us up all night to go outside and go to the bathroom," Gnu continued. Hang in there, we haven't gotten to the terrible weekend part yet. Gnu speaking again, "I also broke the screen on my cell phone. I sat it on the edge of our kitchen table and I accidently backed into the table and knocked the cell phone on the floor." This got the scholars attention as they all headed to the front of the classroom to get a closer look at the cell phone. MiniJ, who is holding the cell phone and heading in my direction, "Mr. Schultz, Mr. Schultz, look what Miss Gnu did to her cell phone." MiniJ handed me the cell phone and the screen was definitely shattered but the cell phone still worked so it wasn't a total loss. Ok, dog at the entire large pizza, the cell phone screen was shattered and we still haven't reached the reason for the terrible weekend. Gnu speaking again, "and this weekend had to be the worst weekend I ever had. When I went to put on my pants they didn't fit right, I had trouble buttoning them up." Uh-Uh-Uh speaking, "that's because you are going to have a baby." I thought about adding to Uh-Uh-Uh's comment, something about chocolate or pretzels filled with peanut butter, but chose to remain silent.
In my last blog post I mentioned that Tourette was removed, again, from the custody of his parental units by a social services agency. When Gnu heard this news Tourette was serving a three day suspension from school. On day four, which was a Friday, Gnu was expecting Tourette back in the classroom. He was a no show. Apparently the social services agency was trying to find a foster care home for him but was not having any luck finding one. On Monday and Tuesday of this past week Tourette continued to be a no show in the classroom. When I asked Gnu if she heard anything about Tourette's situation she replied, "no." So as of this day, in the middle of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, Tourette and his siblings are stuck in no man's land all because of the total failure of his parental units. I asked that you keep Tourette and his siblings in your prayers and hopefully he'll be placed in a caring foster home and return to school this Monday.
Although you aren't aware, I just had one of those senior moments as I've misplace my notes that I keep for this blog. You'd think, with today's technology, I'd keep my blog notes on my cell phone rather than on a piece of scrap paper that gets crammed into my pants pocket. Ok, I just retrieved the notes. They were in the pants that I placed in the dirty laundry hamper.
Note #1. It's early in the day, the scholars have not arrived when our classroom telephone rings. Gnu was closest to the phone so she answered it. After a brief conversation she hangs up the phone, turns in my direction and says, "I'll be back in a few minutes." About ten minutes later my cell phone rings and it's Gnu. "I'm in so and so's classroom on the second floor, can you think of anything in our classroom that I can use to make a head scarf?" "Not right off," I respond, "but I'll look and if I find something I'll call you back." A short while later Gnu returned to our classroom and informed me as to what happened that a head scarf was needed. A scholar in this second floor classroom had a classmate that had head lice. When this scholar, who didn't have head lice, told her parental unit about the head lice incident, the parental unit, to insure that no head lice enter his house, shaved the hair off of his daughter's head as a precaution. With her head shaved, the scholar arrived at school the next day. As soon as she entered the school an adult yells at her to take the hat off of her head as you can't wear a hat inside school. The scholar removed her hat and every scholar near her sees her shaved head.
Note #2. Another email message arrived from our administrative czar regarding after school transportation. Please be advised that Scholar A, Scholar B, and Scholar C are car riders. It is important that you watch closely who picks up these scholars because there is a child protection order prohibiting certain parental units from coming in contact with these scholars. This is the third such email message in about a week and a half. When I was at the local Y last week a good friend of mine, AO from Vino, who reads the blog, commented on these email messages. To paraphrase, "this is serious stuff that teachers have to deal with. What happens to the teacher if something goes wrong and the child is placed with the wrong person?" Unfortunately, I don't have an answer to that question but I suspect that if something goes wrong that teacher's name would be all over the local media outlets.
Note#3. All of our third grade scholars will be required to take and pass the IRead3 mandatory reading test in either March or April of next year. If my memory serves me correctly, only about seventy percent of our scholars will pass the test. Knowing this, the BigB2 along with the LittleB sent out an email message to see if any of the teachers would be interested in working on Saturdays to prepare our third grade scholars for this test. Gnu, as well as other teachers, signed up to help. Note, they will be compensated for giving up their Saturday mornings. The first help session was last Saturday. When I asked Gnu how it went, she informed me that eighteen scholars showed up. She went on to tell me that eighteen was a good start but our school leadership was hoping for a head count that neared thirty.
Although it may be premature, the light at the end of the tunnel may be nearing for me. There are two different items, one at the school corporation level and the other at the special education department level that may cause me to either quit or lose my job. At the school corporation level there is a shortage of bus drivers and/or bus monitors. In order to combat this shortage the school corporation is considering a change in school hours and this may involve my school. Right now, I believe our school corporation has three different start times. To address the bus shortage, the school wants to move forward the start of the school day for my school and others. In doing so, the bus drivers who run the first routes of the day will have completed their routes and can now do a second route by picking up the scholars that attend my school. I don't have a problem with this but it will have an impact on my day. Right now my work day is from 8:30am until 4:00pm. With the later bus pickup, my day will start at 8:55am and go to 4:25pm. That would mean that I wouldn't get home until around 4:50pm and that will not work as it will negatively impact my workout time at the local Y. The other change, the one from the special education department, is the more interesting of the two. For some time now there have been rumors that the special education department wants to eliminate the self contained emotionally handicapped classroom (the one Gnu and I are in) and place all of these scholars into the general education classrooms. If you've been following this blog for a while you know how volatile the scholars that I work with can get. Although I haven't mentioned it a lot this year, the other emotionally handicapped classroom, the one directly above our classroom, has some of the most violent scholars I've ever seen. The scholars above me have knocked holes in walls, intentionally smashed laptop computers, seriously damage shelving units, and have literally kicked the walls out of the back sides of cabinets. Knowing what I know, I wonder exactly what the overhead personnel are thinking when they want to place such violent scholars into the general education population. It will be interesting to watch and more important it will be interesting to see if they will tell the parental units with scholars in the general education population exactly what kind of scholar they just placed in the same room as their scholar. If this change occurs, as far as I can tell, my job will be eliminated.
That's it for now. I know this blog post doesn't have a very happy ending so I will tell you this. Although I may not have a paying job at the start of the next school year that doesn't mean that I can't return to the school as a volunteer. Why? I like the school, I like the school leadership, I know the majority of the teachers on a first name basis, and most important, I like doing academics with the scholars at this wonderful school. I'm out, see you next week.
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