"A Hot Mess"

Today is Tuesday, January 17th, one day after we celebrated the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, and three days before our country implodes up itself. The implosion should begin around noon this Friday so I thought I'd squeeze in one more blog post before all hell breaks loose.

Email messages continue to arrive from the school's administrative czar advising the adults, that man the car rider line, about changes regarding parental units that pick up a scholar at the end of the day.  Here is the latest one and it again reinforces my belief that some of our scholars have no chance at living a normal life.  The email message read, please be aware that only the mother of Scholar A is allow to pick up the scholar after school.  No man is supposed to pick up Scholar A even if the man states that he is Scholar A's dad.  So you know, on this scholar's birth certificate, no man's name is listed.  As a reminder, for the gazillionth time, I don't make this stuff up.

Before I move on to tell you about the new scholar that joined Gnu and I a few days ago I thought I'd let you know about a very animated conversation that I had with one of those teachers that works at a voucher school.  The subject being discussed was the 21st Century Scholarship Program for students in the state of Indiana.  Briefly, a 21st Century Scholarship provides students up to four years of undergraduate tuition, and in some cases room and board, at any participating public college or university in Indiana.  In addition to the scholarship, each student will get step-by-step help to make sure they succeed in college plus support to insure that the student finishes all the degree requirements.

A free four year degree, got it.  What is the catch you ask?  Meeting the requirements is brutal.  First, you have to actually sign up for the scholarship as the state of Indiana will not seek you out.  Second, you need to carry a 2.5 (C+) grade point average.  Those are the requirements, all two of them.  Alright, back to the animated conversation with this voucher school teacher.  I'll be paraphrasing, "this scholar has an opportunity to get a college degree practically for free.  I've done everything I can get this scholar to sign up.  I tried to get the scholar to talk to his parental units about this matter with no success.  I tried to call this scholar's parental units but without success.  I tried to get the parental units to come to school and discuss the scholarship without success.  There is an opportunity for this scholar to earn a college degree for practically nothing and I can't get the parental units to agree to sign up for the scholarship. 

Is this crazy or what?  Now, quoting Paul Harvey, "here is the rest of the story."  The parental units have a cell phone but there is no money for cell phone minutes.  The parental units have difficulty getting to school for a meeting because they both work.  The parental units, with a scholar in middle school, who have lived in this country for years, failed to take the time to learn the English language.  There is a free ride to an Indiana college or university (Indiana University, Purdue University, Ball State University, or Indiana State University) that is available to this scholar.  There is an opportunity for this scholar to end the cycle of poverty for his family and the opportunity is going to be missed because the parental unit absolutely failed to adjust to their environment and learn the English language. 

On to our new scholar.  Although you don't know it, it took me forever to come up with a name for this scholar.  In the past, selecting a name was easy.  Usually it was something the scholar said to me, or how they looked, or what they wore on the first day of school.  With this particular scholar I kept drawing a blank.  After three days observing this scholar and consistently drawing a blank on selecting a name, I finally came up with a name.  I've decided to call this scholar Blank.  Below is an updated listing of our scholars.

Knapper - 4th grade
MiniJ - 4th grade
Uh-Uh-Uh - 4th grade
Big House - 4th grade
Tourette - 3rd grade
Grr! - 3rd grade
S&T - 3rd grade
Huey - 2nd grade
Whale - 2nd grade (part time)
Blank - 2nd grade (part time)

Fortunately Whale and Blank are part time and Gnu is not the teacher of record for these young scholars.  Blank is an interesting story and when Gnu explains it, it gets just as animated as the conversation I had with that voucher teacher.  Paraphrasing again, "Blank can't be in this classroom.  He doesn't have a special education label of any kind and he doesn't even have an individual education plan (IEP).  You just can't assign a scholar to an emotionally handicapped classroom without any labels.  His being in this classroom is probably illegal."

Blank is not new to us.  I first met this scholar in kindergarten when I was called to his classroom to remove him before he hit someone.  I met Blank again in the first grade for the same reason.  Although I didn't have to deal with him until a few days ago, he hasn't changed much.  For the most part he is rarely in his assigned classroom as he is too disruptive.  A couple days after Blank was assigned to our class, his teacher of record walked into our classroom shortly after the end of our school day.  Like that voucher school teacher and Gnu discussing the legality of Blank being in our classroom, Blank's teacher of record had an equally animated conversation with Gnu.  "Oh my God!  Oh my God!  This scholar is a hot mess.  There are close to sixty pages of notes tracking the behavior of this scholar going back a couple years and nothing was done about it.  If there was ever a scholar that belongs in an EH room this is one.  Oh my God, this scholar is a hot mess."

The sixty pages of notes comment caught my attention.  How can you gather sixty pages of notes about a scholar's poor behavior and nothing happens.  As Blank's teacher of record continued speaking, I found out.  The sixty pages of notes were hand written in sentence format.  When they were presented to the special education overhead person, this person rejected them because they were not in the correct format.  Apparently the notes, rather than being in sentences, had to be on a check list that listed the unacceptable behavior with an accompanying check mark indicating how may times Blank exhibited this unacceptable behavior.  When told by an overhead person to redo all of the notes into a check list format this overhead person was told, "no."  Once again, an overhead person, when given an opportunity to do something positive to help a classroom teacher, went into work avoidance, thought up some lame excuse to avoid the work, and placed the work right back into the hands of the classroom teacher.  I spent thirty-four years working for a management services company and, in a lot of those years, I occupied an overhead position, so I know what overhead people are supposed to do.  They are supposed to remove obstacles for their customers to make their job easier.  They are not supposed to do the opposite, create more work for their customers, solely because they don't want to work too hard.

Blank has been with us for a number of days now and it has been pretty uneventful.  I'm not sure how long that will last but at least he is off to a good start.  It's about 4:05pm on Tuesday and my four day weekend is rapidly coming to a close.  My objective over the next two and a half days is to build a fall out shelter similar to those built in the1950's in preparation for the implosion that will occur at noon this Friday.  If I survive the implosion I'll post another blog next week.  Now, where is my shovel as I need to dig a deep hole in the ground in a very short period of time.