Fourteen - Only Two Expelled

Friday, May 25, 2018

I started reading an education blog called Chalkbeat Indiana a couple years ago.  It arrives in my email inbox just about every day of the week, excluding weekends.  This education blog basically searches all of the media outlets for education news and in just about every one of their blog posts I find something interesting to read.  A few days ago Chalkbeat Indiana posted an article about a principal in a school in Colorado.  I shared the quote from this principal with my part time editor, part time consultant, and full time spouse and then I got to watch the fire works explode.  Here is the quote, "I will take lower tests scores any day of the week.  I don't need to have the best scores if families and kids feel welcomed and included."  I knew that the article and the word "feel" hit a nerve when I saw the first roman candle fire its ball of flame up into the air.  Paraphrasing my part time editor, part time consultant, and full time spouse. "Once again we are talking about feelings.  I hear about feelings from parents and students way to often and when it comes right down to it, I don't care how they feel.  There are days when I don't feel like going to school but I do.  There are days when I don't feel like teaching but I do.  So when I hear about feelings here is what I have to say, I only have one objective and it is to do everything that I can do to get a student prepared to enter high school.  So, if I hurt your feelings I don't care.  Just stop whining, sit down, and get to work."  

I going to revisit our school lockdown procedure again.  Yes, I know I just talked about it but the circumstances have changed.  Here is a quick review.  Lockdown, pull down all of the window shades, turn out the lights, move all of the scholars in the classroom to a position when they can't be seen through the window in the classroom door, lock the classroom door, and if this is a real situation pray that one of our ODD scholars doesn't go off about having to sit on the floor.  Medium lockdown, all of the scholars are to remain in their respective classrooms.  No one is allowed in the hallways.  Soft lockdown, every scholar, to include adults, are to remain inside the school.  You can't leave the building.

So, why am I repeating all of this lock down information?  You are about to find out.  Oh, I just remember something.  On six separate occasions, as I walked up to the front entrance of my school, I found the main door to the school propped open with a door stop.  That's right.  The main door to the school is propped wide open which renders our school door security system worthless.  What you are about to read are statistics from Chalkbeat Indiana.  They are about school gun incidents.  In 2016/2017 there were fifty-six school gun incidents across the state of Indiana.  In the same time frame there were twenty-eight school gun incidents in the county where my school is located.  Also, in this time frame, there were fourteen school gun incidents, and only two expulsions, in my school corporation.  You read that correctly, only two of fourteen scholars expelled for bring a gun to school.

Now you are about to see some serious fireworks.  Whenever I'm sitting in the classroom, where I have a view from the back of the room, I am totally defenseless.  Sure, I can pull down the window shades, turn out the lights, and lock the door but who am I fooling.  I sure as hell don't think an active shooter is going to walk down the hallways of my school, see all window shades down, lights out, doors locked, and think, "there must be no school today, so I guess I'll just go shoot up something else."  No, that is not what is going to happen.  Here is what may happen.  The shooter is going to use his/her weapon of choice and blow the door knob clean off the door and make an entrance into a classroom.

Now it gets even crazier.  I came up with my own way of defending my classroom.  I've mentioned to other adults in my school about my plan several times and I'm sure they think I'm nuts.  Well, I'm not nuts.  I'm a Vietnam Veteran and I know this.  When you are in a hostile environment and you arrive at a new location the first thing you do is put up your defensive perimeter.  Well, I know my defensive perimeter, it is the classroom door and I need to defend that door and one day I figure out how I can do that.  When you exit the classroom door, immediately to the left, about six or so feet away is a fire extinguisher cabinet.  Inside that cabinet is a CO2 fire extinguisher.  That is my defensive weapon of choice.   

I think it was this past Tuesday when I was walking down the hallway with Knewer on our way back to the classroom.  As I approached the classroom I looked at the fire extinguisher cabinet to check on my defensive weapon of choice.  The fire extinguisher cabinet was empty.  When I mentioned that the fire extinguisher was missing to Knewer she said, "Fruit was in one of his defiant modes, opened the fire extinguisher cabinet, grabbed the fire extinguisher and squeezed the trigger."  Now I'm defenseless again as I'm anticipating that the school year will be over before that fire extinguisher is returned to the fire extinguisher cabinet.

Today, just prior to writing this blog there was a news flash on my cell phone.  "There is an active shooter in a middle school in the county that is immediately north of  where my school corporation is located.  Two people have been shot.  The shooter has been apprehended.  This shooting is too damn close for comfort and I can't defend myself. Adding to this frustration, the consequences for squeezing the trigger on a fire extinguisher and forcing the school to it taken out of commission is nothing.

Saturday, May 26, 2018

As you recall, my first release was regarding head lice.  Today, I do release number two so you know the frustrations that I had to deal with regularly this school year.  This young scholar arrived in the classroom mid-year.  This scholar doesn't have, to the best of my knowledge, an emotional handicap label and that means that he does not belong in our classroom.  Unfortunately, this young scholar was relocated to Knewer's classroom so his actual teacher of record could teacher without constantly telling this scholar to stop talking and stay in your seat.  For the sake of time, as again, this is getting rather lengthy, I'm only going to site this one example.

Knewer came up with this wonderful writing assignment for all of our scholars and it had to do with monsters.  Briefly, the writing assignment was to come up with a monster, give it a name, and then list off the characteristics of your monster.  When the introductory part of the writing assignment was finished Knewer told the scholars that they had to write a persuasive letter to convince someone to buy their monster.  You could tell by the reaction of the scholars that they liked this writing assignment.  Knewer then started breaking up the scholars.  Some went to Low's desk, some went to her desk, and the last scholar to be assigned to an adult was Blank and he was assigned to me.

I've worked on several writing assignments with Blank so I was not surprised when one of the first things his monster would do was kill something and then eat various parts of the body of its victim.  I can't decided if this scholar is seriously disturbed or just being a smart ass trying shock me.  Although this scholar may just being a smart ass, he is not going to shock me.  All I do is say to him, "that is an excellent idea, put your thoughts in a complete sentence, and then write it down on your worksheet."  After about twenty minutes the timer goes off and the scholars rotate and Blank is now with Knewer and the eruption is only a few minutes away.

At Knewer's table the scholars work on a folder to keep their writing assignment neat and orderly.  This is a cut and paste station and Blank sits down and gets started.  With scissors in one hand and a work sheet in the other hand, Blank started cutting.  Talking loudly, "I cut it crooked, it is ruined, can I have another piece of paper?" Knewer looks at the paper and says to Blank, "it is not ruined, it looks fine."  "No, it's ruined," and the paper is crumbled up and tossed across the room.  "Can I have another piece of paper?"  "No, you'll have to just go on to the next part."  Blank is now up, "I hate this F...ing school, I hate this F...ing classroom and he starts heading toward the classroom door but Low is up and blocks the door. With the door blocked Blank gets on his hands and knees and crawls under the sink that is in the classroom and moves our green recycling container in front of himself to use as a barricade.  Low moves the recycling container and orders him out from under the sink.  Blank gets up and starts again.  "I'm not doing any more F...ing work and heads back toward Knewer's side of the classroom, opens a storage cabinet door, sits down inside the cabinet and closes himself inside the cabinet.

As I said earlier, this is just one incident with this scholar and I could list several more but I believe you get the idea of the kind of crap a teacher, instructional assistant, and a volunteer have to deal with way to often when you have four ODD scholars in your classroom.  Are you ready for the kicker, there were no consequences for these actions.

There you go.  Release number two is in the books.  There are two more releases
to go, plus I've been weighing my options for next year, and I'm close to making my decision.  Hints are available as to what I'll be doing next year.  If you want a hint, you'll have to send me a dollar.  That's it for this week.  Thanks for following along.  



               

They Looked Into My Soul

Wednesday May 16, 2018

During the past couple of weeks I've talked to teachers that I've know for six years now quietly in the staff lounge.  When these conversations took place I only talked with one teacher at the time and only when we were the only two people in the staff lounge.  Something has changed in this wonderful school and the change is so dramatic that I struggle with going to school and as you noticed recently I was perfectly content to stop writing this blog.  Fortunately, I broke one of my cardinal rules when I told T4 about this blog.  If it wasn't for T4, who told me that I needed to keep writing because I let people know what teachers have to put up with in the classroom everyday, I wouldn't be sitting here in my favorite blogging place on a Wednesday evening.

The first teacher I talked to is someone that I was paired with on the school's crisis team during my first year in this school.  For whatever reason we really got along and, like me, this teachers wore her emotions on her sleeve and wouldn't hesitate to tell you what she thought.  So the day I asked her what has changed in this school over the last two years that the school is getting such a poor rating from the state of Indiana she quickly replied the test (Indiana Statewide Testing and Educational Progress) got harder.  While this statement was accurate I wasn't sure if this was the true reason for our low rating because the test got harder for every scholar in every school.

On two other occasions I asked teachers the same question.  One of the teachers was pretty vague with a response so I asked a follow up question.  Do you think our leadership change has anything to do with our drop in rating?  I knew right away that I should not have asked that question so when there was no response I let the matter drop.  The other teacher I talked to responded that she thought it was the scholars and their total lack of respect for teachers and when the scholars started whining to their parental unit that the teacher is mean, the parental units got involved with the process and side with their young scholar.  For the record, here are my thoughts.  The test did get harder but the crux of the matter is the scholars.  There is a sizeable percentage of our student body that is rude, disrespectful, arrogant, will not hesitate to tell a teacher exactly what they think, walk out of the classroom, and there are no consequences for their actions.  When this type of behavior is tolerated there is only one direction the school can go it, down hill.

Right in the midst of my enquiry as to why our school rating has dropped significantly for consecutive years this little tidbit of information was relayed to me.  Our school, because of low performance, is being audited by the state of Indiana.  So what does that mean?  I'm not exactly sure but I can venture a guess.  Following the audit one of four things could happen.  First, no changes as the auditors stated to stay the course.  Second, the state may make recommendation on what needs to be accomplished to improve our rating.  Third, there may be a leadership change.  Fourth, and the really big one, the state may take control, remove the entire leadership team as well as all of the teachers, and start over.  

So, what does this have to do with Knewer and her special education classroom full of scholars that have been labeled emotionally handicapped?  Nothing.  Knewer was told the auditors will not even enter our classroom.  I was good with that decision and then low and behold this second little tidbit was dropped on me.  The auditors asked to speak directly to a select number of scholars in our school.  Do you care to make a guess as to which of Knewer's scholars was invited to sit down in a conference room full of adults?  I won't keep you in suspense.  It's the scholar with the biggest anxiety issues in the classroom, Grr!  It took me a couple seconds to process this bit of information and then I thought to myself, "Grr! is easily the best student in our classroom to do this and I was confident that he would do a real good job."

It was right at 2:30pm on Tuesday when TheBigB walked into our classroom to get Grr! for the meeting.  As Grr! was leaving I asked TheBigB how long Grr! would be gone.  She informed me it would take about an hour.  That was disappointing as I would be home by the time the meeting was over.  At about 5:00pm on Tuesday I sent a text message to Knewer to see how Grr! did in the meeting.  There was no return message.  It was around 8:00pm when my cellphone beeped and I knew it was a text message and hopefully from Knewer.  It wasn't.  Instead, it was Low.  "Knewer is taking a personal day tomorrow."  I'm really struggling in the classroom now so this is not exactly what I wanted to hear.  In fact, I was really irritated.  Things are not going well in the classroom right now so the last thing I wanted to hear was that the teacher would be out without a substitute.  So Low knew I received her message I replied back with one word, Okay.

It's now Wednesday morning and I'm annoyed as I walked into the school because I know that this had the potential to be a really shitty day.  As I stepped through the classroom door FBG was sitting in the chair normally occupied by Knewer so my spirits were lifted.  With my lunch put away I was about to sit in my chair where I have a view from the back of the room when I noticed Grr! sitting at Low's desk finishing up an art project.  So, rather that sit at my desk, I walked over to Grr! and sat down next to him.  As soon as I sat down Grr! looked up at me and said, "good morning, Mr. Schultz, so how is your day going so far?"  "I just walked in the door Grr! so my day is going well.  Tell me about your big meeting yesterday."  "Well Mr. Schultz I thought I did pretty good."  "Did they ask you any questions?"  "Mr. Schultz, there were three men and three women in the room.  When someone asked me a question all six of them stared at me like they were looking into my soul."  With Grr!'s description of his big meeting I went from annoyed to laughing in a matter of a few minutes.

Sunday, May 20, 2018

So Mr. Schultz, tell me how your school year is going right now.  You asked, so I'm going to tell you. It will be my little release and, at the same time, you will get a taste of what teachers face when they have a view from the front of the room.  This blog is getting pretty long so I'm going to spread this release out over a couple blogs.  Here is the first taste of classroom reality.

This dates back about two months.  The day had just started when Knewer walked to the back of the classroom and handed me a note.  "Hiss has head lice," the note read.  I looked up at her and nodded but didn't say a word.  As the day progressed I noticed Hiss scratching her head several times including when she was sitting about three feet from me at my table.  For two more days Hiss kept scratching her head so I asked Knewer if she'd talked to Hiss' parental unit about the head lice.  Knewer said she did but the parental unit, for reasons unknown, was not addressing the issue.  Slightly agitated that three adults and six scholars are in the classroom with another scholar, a product of PPP, who has head lice, I headed to see TheBigB to express my concern.  "Hiss' parental unit is not addressing a head lice issue.  Can we contact the parental unit and tell this person to keep Hiss home until the head lice issue is addressed?" "We can't send Hiss home because head lice is not contagious.  You just have to deal with the parental unit until the matter is addressed."

A week or so passed by and I was returning to the classroom after walking Fruit to his bus.  As I stepped into the classroom I noticed FBG and TheBigB in our classroom timeout room with a very irate young scholar from a general education classroom.  This young scholar, in a fit of rage, was aggressively banging his head on the wired messed window inside the time out room.  Every time this scholar went to bang his head on the window, TheBigB would place her hand on the scholars forehead to lesson the blow.  To help out TheBigB I walked across the classroom and picked up a pillow for TheBigB to use so she didn't have to keep putting her hand on this scholar's sweaty forehead.  When I went to hand the pillow to TheBigB she said, paraphrasing, "I don't want that near me, you've had head lice in this classroom."

The pillow was refused due to the potential for head lice but for four, maybe five days, a scholar walked around the classroom with head lice scratching her head, sitting right next to adults, sitting right next to six other scholars and we just had to deal with it.  Let's see here.  There was an immediate concern about touching a pillow in a classroom with head lice but no real concern about three adults in the classroom who for days had to deal with a head lice issue first hand.  Feel free to share your thoughts.

That's one release down with more to follow.  See you next week.  Thanks for following along with an old gray haired guy that has a view from the back of the room and is struggling to make it to the end of the school year.              

     












       

T4 And Others

Tuesday, May 8, 2018

It's 7:59pm and I'm sitting in my favorite blogging location, the screened in porch that is on the backside of my house.  My brain keeps telling me that I need to get started writing again but I'm easily distracted.  Directly in front of me, approximately seventy-five yards away, is a backyard basketball court and there is a game going on.  To my right I can see that the sun is about to set but also in that direction there is a cardinal calling.  At about a forty-five degree angle from me as I look left the humming bird feeder that my part time editor, part time consultant, and full time spouse put up over the weekend is very active as the humming birds just migrated into my neighborhood.  Also to my left, approximately fifty yards away, a rooster is crowing.  No, I don't live in the country, I live in the city next to a neighbor that has chickens.  The rooster that is crowing right now is quite interesting with its all black body and a feather style on top of its head that looks like one of those old school white tennis balls.

Let's see, I just wrote eight sentences.  In Knewer's classroom that would earn me an A.  When writing this blog what you just read is me stalling.  I checked the calendar on my cellphone and it has been exactly fifty days since my last blog post and I'm sure many of you have figured out some time ago that I'm struggling as the school year winds down.  Up until two days ago I was perfectly content with not writing this blog but then something happened.  The first happening was a text message, paraphrasing, "I haven't seen any blog posts in several weeks, when are you going to post one?"  Right after this text message poured in I was sitting in school talking to T4 and for some reason I broke one of my long standing rules, don't tell anyone at school, with the exception of two of my former colleagues, that I write this blog.  Why I broke this rule is an unknown but T4 knows about the blog, asked if she could read it, I pulled the blog up on my cellphone and showed it to her, and then I gave her the blog address.  A day or so later T4 asked me when I was going to post the next blog.  I told her I wasn't sure.  Paraphrasing again, "you need to keep writing the blog.  You really describe what it is like being a school teacher in this school.  People need to know what the teachers have to put up with every day in the classroom.  You are telling it like it is and you need to continue writing."  On the same day that T4 told me to keep writing another message poured in, this time from As Far West As Utah.  The message said, "it has been weeks since I've seen a blog post."  That was three messages in a matter of a few days so I got the message, lets get started.

Thursday May 10, 2018

I'll start with a scholar update.  Knewer's class lost one and gained two.  The departure, and unusual one, was Hiss.  Knewer was told that Hiss' parental unit was going to move and it would be outside the district boundary.  For three days Hiss was a no show so I cleared out the inside of her desk, put what I thought was personal items that may be retrieved at some point in her cubby, and then cleaned off what was easily the filthiest desk I'd ever seen.  With Hiss' stuff cleared out guess what happened?  Two days later Hiss walked into the classroom.  Knewer thought Hiss was there to get her personal items but, no, she was staying for the whole day.  The next day Hiss showed up again and Knewer started to make enquiries.  The parental unit had indeed move outside our district boundary but decided it was too much trouble changing schools so the parental unit just let Hiss keep coming to Knewer's classroom.  The parental unit was promptly told that Hiss can't return.  So, as it stands right now, Hiss is gone, maybe, as she never did take all of her personal items with her.

Hiss was only gone a couple days when the first of our two new scholars arrived.  This young school, AreYouSure, came from a second grade general education classroom in our school.  I didn't recognized him as one of the usual hell raisers in our general education classrooms but it didn't take me long to figure out why he was in our classroom, Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) and a foul mouth.  The last new scholar to arrived was Brush.  This fine young scholar, fourth grade, came to us from outside our school district.  Like AreYouSure, Brush has an Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) and a foul mouth.

To refresh you memory, because this slacker stopper writing for fifty days, here is a complete list of scholars.

Grr! - fourth grade
Tourette - fourth grade
Brush - fourth grade
Huey - third grade
Cue - third grade
AreYouSure - second grade
Fruit - first grade

Knewer is still the teacher of record for all of these scholars.  Low, the instructional assistant, FBG, behavioral specialist, and the old guy with the gray hair and beard who still occupies the table where he has a swell view from the back of the classroom, are all working with these seven fine young scholars.  So, where to next?  Two choices, school lockdown or millennials.

I'm going to start with school lockdowns given the somewhat recent school shooting down in Florida. Like probably every school in the country our school goes through lockdown training.  When the announcement comes over the school intercom that we are going into a lockdown position what we do is pretty simple.  Pull down the window shades, turn out the lights, position all of the scholars somewhere in the classroom so they can't be seen through the window in the classroom door and then lock the classroom door.  Sounds simple until you consider that there are four scholars in Knewer's classroom that are ODD and the likelihood that one of the four will go into a defiant rage because he doesn't want to sit where he was instructed to sit can quickly put the entire classroom at risk.

Moving forward, and please keep the school lockdown procedure in mind.  Twice in one day this past week an overhead intercom message directed everyone in the school to lockdown.  No problem, we know the drill except for one thing, this lockdown was labeled a medium lockdown.  My first thought was, what is a medium lockdown?  I looked at Knewer and Low and they just shrugged their shoulders.  So, what did we do?  Nothing, we just continued with the lesson plan.  Approximately one hour later someone came of the intercom again.  This time the lockdown was labeled a soft lockdown. The adults in the room again made eye contact, nobody knew what a soft lockdown was so we continued with the academics.  "What we got here," from the movie Cool Hand Luke, 1967, "is  failure to communicate."

So, a quick review on lockdowns.  We have three procedures, lockdown, medium lockdown, and soft lockdown.  All three apparently are designed to keep the scholars safe if a shooter is on the school property or worse has entered the school building.  Am I feeling safe, hell no and here is why.  By 9:30am every school day all of the adults are in the building, ninety percent plus of the scholars are in the building, I've just parked my car, got out, and walked across the parking lot heading for the front door of the school.  As I approached the door I'm reaching for my school identification badge that is in my right front pocket.  With identification badge in hand, I looked up and saw that the front door of the school was standing wide open as there is a door stop in place.  Are there any adults in sight, NO.  Is there anything to prevent a complete stranger from entering the building, NO.  Slightly agitated I bent over, picked up the door stop, walked into the building, turned to enter the main office, located a pit of no return in the staff lounge and deposit the door stop in the pit.  Now we are talking about a serious safety issue and to make matters worst, I've collected six door stops as of today.

Friday May 11, 2018

On to the millennials but first a little financial review.  I'll keep it simple, our school corporation is faced with a financial shortfall that totals in the millions.  There have already been discussions about budget cuts that may include teachers, instructional assistants, and all other support personnel.  An astute person, say a first year teacher, or a second year school teacher/leadership person, or a third year teacher would take notice and think, "I don't have a lot of time on the books in this school corporation so maybe I should stay on top of my game to avoid a RIF (reduction in force) pink slip."   Keep that in mind as I move forward.

Teacher A - total amount of time in the classroom, less that one full school year.  For those of you familiar with a RIF, this is a prime candidate.  So what does this teacher do?  The classroom is too stressful, my students are acting horrible, I'm stressed, I'm taking some time off.  In fact, I'm taking multiple days off, I'm taking the whole week off.

Teacher B - total time at this school, less that two years in an overhead position at a school that is facing a declining enrollment.  All of this mandatory testing is too stressful, I need a break.  I'm taking four days off.  Then I'm coming back to school, working one day, and then I'm taking another day off.  If you think this overhead position is a prime RIF candidate, raise your hand.

Teacher C- total time at this school, less that three years.  The National Football League (NFL) draft is coming up and you know what, I've never attended, in person, an NFL draft.  That has to end, I'm going to travel to Dallas, Texas, sit in the new AT&T Stadium, and watch the draft live.  Let's see, in order to do this I'll need to take off three days from school.

They are millennials, all three of them.  During the five school years that I was a paid instructional assistant I think I had less that five occurrences of absenteeism.  These three millennials missed more school days in a matter of a couple weeks that I did in five years.  The school district has a financial shortfall totaling in the millions of dollars.  The school has a declining enrollment and here is the kicker.  From what I can tell it doesn't even bother them.  It's no big deal.  Hey, I have the time and I'm going to take it.  I kept the best part for last, if they get a RIF pink slip I can hear them know. What?  What did I do wrong?  I only blew off handful of days, what is so wrong with that?  You know what, you people are just mean.

That's it.  The fifty or so day drought is over.  More to follow.  Oh, and one last thing.  "Keep it in the vault or next time you can punch holes in you own tennis balls."