Friday, January 25, 2019
Today I had my semi-annual wellness check up. My instructions via a text message; appointment at 8:45am, arrive fifteen minutes early, have insurance cards with you, have proof of identification with you. I arrived at 8:27am, early. Checked in. Sat down in the waiting room well before 8:45am. "Mr. Schultz you can come in now." I took a seat in exam room #4 right at 8:45am and was told the doctor will be right with you. I'm thinking to myself, "right on schedule, I should be out of here in about fifteen minutes and I will arrive in the classroom right on time."
9:00am still waiting. 9:15am still waiting. Getting irritated, pulled out my cellphone and checked the news. 9:30am still waiting. Even more irritated, this is taking too long, maybe I'll just go home when the wellness check is over. 9:40am and I hear, "high Mr. Schultz, my name is so and so and I'm here to check your blood pressure." The first person in the room is fifty-five minutes late, I'm seriously irritated, and she is going to check my blood pressure. Anyone care to guess how high it was?
Finally the doctor enters the exam room. "Good morning," shakes my hand, "how are you doing?" "I feel real good." "Has anything changed that I need to know about?" I recently stabbed myself in the palm of my right hand with a pencil and the lead from the pencil is still stuck in my hand but I chose not to mention it and just said, "no." "Ok, let's check your blood work results, cholesterol level is very good, triglycerides level is very good, PSA level is very good, blood pressure is high but your history of blood pressure checks indicates that this may just be an odd reading. Have your blood pressure check a couple times and if it stays high let me know." "I check it monthly at the CVS and if it stays high I'll contact your office." "That will work. The last item to talk about is your Body Mass Index. You are a 32.2 and at this level you are considered obese. You need to lose about seven pounds." I'm already irritated because he was almost an hour late and he just said I was obese." Note to self, don't check your blood pressure again today.
The school day is now over and I'm home. At about 4:30pm my part time editor, part time consultant, and full time spouse walked in the door. She took a couple minutes to unload her school stuff and then said to me, "how was you check up?" "All my blood work was very good but my Body Mass Index was 32.2." "What does that mean?" "According to the doctor I'm in the obese range." "You've got to be kidding me. What are you going to do?" "Lose seven pounds is what the doctor said." "How much does your doctor weigh?" "A hell of a lot more than I do." "Then I wouldn't be to worried about it."
I received a text message from TheBookClubLady shortly after I posted my last blog. The message stated, "you didn't mention the School Quality Review (SQR) in your post." She is right. I had totally forgotten about it so I asked T4 if the results were back. She said, "yes." The results are back and ……….. pausing for effect just to keep you waiting, the results came back and they surprised me.
A brief review of the SQR process. For three consecutive years my school was given an "F" rating. Because of this rating the powers that be sent this group of dour faced people to our school to evaluate us. After the evaluation the SQR team and others within the school corporation had options as follows: do nothing as the school is on the right track, make change recommendations, replace the leadership team, replace the entire faculty and literally start the school over with an entire new staff. Anyone care to venture a guess as to what is going to happen after three consecutive "F" grades?
Okay, I stalled around long enough. Ready? NOTHING! We continue doing what we have been doing. And here is the real surprise. During our SQR process there were six or seven other schools in the exact same position that our school was in and the results of their SQR was the same as ours, do nothing, stay the course.
The truth is about to be told. When T4 told me the results, and I did my best to not show it in my facial expression, I was really surprised. I was certain that something had to change. For three consecutive years this school, that I've thoroughly enjoyed going to for seven years, received an "F" rating. That is not good. So, I guess we stay the course, take the ILEARN state mandated test in a couple months, and then wait to see what our next school rating will be.
Before I move on to the seismic activity that occurred in our school I have this interesting item to share with you. From the start of the school year, all the way through Christmas break, we had a classroom without a permanent teacher. That was resolved shortly before break and when I returned to school on January 7, 2019, I met the new permanent teacher, NewT5. In a short period of time this newly hired teacher turned a classroom that was historically loud into a quiet learning environment. I was so impressed with what she managed to do that I even mentioned it to her.
We are now two and a half weeks into the school year following Christmas break when T4 walked up to me and told me that NewT5 just quit. "You're kidding me. I thought things were going real well in NewT5's classroom. What happened?" "One of NewT5"s scholars told her to......." I'm not sure of the exact language used except for this, the word ass was used by the scholar. "What did NewT5 do," I asked. "She went to the school leadership, told them what was said, and waited to hear what they were going to do. NewT5 didn't like the response from school leadership, told leadership that there was no way a scholar was going to talk that way to her, and quit right there on the spot." Welcome to the teaching profession where a scholar can direct a vulgar slang expression at a teacher and the scholar survives without consequences and a teacher walks out the door and again, after only two and a half weeks, we are without a T5 teacher again.
The fourth grade classes just rotated. T4's scholars are with OtherT4 and OtherT4's are with T4. I'm sitting at the half round table in the hallway grading a math test that T4's scholars just completed and the grading process was moving forward slowly. When I finally finished I walked into the classroom, put the tests and their results on T4's desk, and took a seat at the hexagon. I wasn't sure what transpired in the classroom as I was out in the hallway but I do know this. T4 picked up her throne chair that is normally off to the side of the room and placed it in the center of the room right in front of the hexagon and took a seat. She then told the scholars, in a somewhat animated voice, to have a seat at their desk. In typical fashion, a segment of the scholars were slow to understand, "take a seat," so T4 had to repeat herself and during the repeating process I sensed that the seismograph needle just wiggled a little. Paraphrasing and you better hold on as T4 is about to address the scholars.
"Do you see these tests. The results are bad. There are only two scholars in this classroom," she named them, "that passed this test. Two, so what is wrong with the rest of you?. We are doing multiplication and division using these numbers; 0, 1, 2, 5, 9, and 10. What is so difficult for you to understand? 0 x 5 does not equal 5. 1 x 10 does not equal 1. You've taken this same test multiple times and you still can't recall, after being repeatedly told, that 0 x any number is always 0. 1 x any number and the answer is the number. 1 x 10 is 10. 1 x 100 is 100. 1 x any number you choose and the answer is not 1. Why is that so hard to remember? When you add two numbers, 6 + 2, it should take you one second to say 8. Why does it take you so long to come up with this answer? Why do some of you have to count on you fingers? Every one of you can easily remember your user name and password when you log in to Fortnight or any of the others games you play so why can you remember the easiest of the multiplication problems?"
I was within ten feet of T4 and I didn't say a word. I just listened an the longer she spoke the more animated her voice became. I'm sitting here right now trying to come up with the proper descriptive term to use to describe how she was feeling. Was she angry, disgusted, frustrated, disappointed, I'm not sure. But I do know this, she got her point across and in doing so I think her little animated talk hit 4.0 on the Richter scale.
The truth is about to be told for the second time today. I'm confident in saying that there are staff members in this school who would not have been happy with the talk T4 had with her scholars. They would have suggested that she needed to be kinder. Kinder? I've seen being kinder for over half the school year and this is what kindness got, scholars who consistently fail to make even the slightest effort to memorize multiplying by the simplest numbers. This is not the time for kindness, this is the time to be direct, to the point, and T4 did exactly that. Brothers and sisters, can I have an amen.
I don't need to do what I do, I choose to do what I do and do you know why I choose to do what I do? In the front of the classroom is a damn good teacher, I enjoy working with her, but watching her hit 4.0 on the Richter scale was tough. When the scholars were lining up for lunch T4 walked past me and said this, "Schultz, we need to pick it up." "T4 I'm not going anywhere. Come Monday let's get to work and do what can be done to move these scholars forward."
PS - early in the blog post I said to the doctor, "I feel real good." That has me laughing right now. Quoting PhD(*)Sparty, the best behavior therapist I've worked with, "Mr. Schultz, good is how food tastes and not how you feel." I can't stop laughing.
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