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.
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