I Raked Some Leaves

Sunday, April 28, 2019

Let's start with a little bit of education news that I came across will enjoying my morning cup of coffee before I head off to school.  Here is the first one and it comes from a site called Go Banking Rates, "These jobs aren't worth the cost of their degrees"  In the top ten is elementary school teacher.  And the lowest life form there is, the politician, continues for form blue chip committees to study teacher pay with little or no results.  And teacher unions continue to threaten to take action with little if any action is taken.  Teachers, damn good teachers, have left my school and it saddens me.  At the end of the school year my school is going to lose another damn good teacher so I have this to say to the politician and unions, quoting my mother, "It's time you people either shit or get off the pot."

Before I bring up my second bit of education news let me remind you of this.  AnotherT4, both of them actually, failed to last even a quarter of the school year.  They both left abruptly and then I read this from a site called Chalkbeat.  There is a movement going on to eliminate the CASA (Core Academic Skills Assessment) test.  This is a test that teacher candidates must pass prior to admission to a teacher education program.  The requirement to pass this test ensures that teacher candidates have a proficiency in basic reading, mathematics, and writing.  And they want to eliminate this test so that teacher candidates that are NOT proficient in basic reading, mathematics, and writing can enter a teacher education program.  This falls into that category called, "what the hell are you people thinking."

I decided, although I felt guilty for doing it, to take a day off (a Wednesday) and go rake some leaves.  Well, actually not some leaves but a lot of leaves out of flower beds and other landscaped areas.  In the midst of raking these leaves, with a slight rain dropping from the clouds, I stopped to take a break, and to take in some fluids.  With my blue tinted Gaterade thirst quencher in my hand this idea popped into my head.  I'll make a selfie video of me raking leaves and send it to T4 and have her show it to the scholars.  In the video I stated, "I'm old, I'm tired, and it's starting to rain so maybe some of the fourth grade scholars, that I help with math every day, would like to come out and help me rake up these leaves."

It's now Thursday morning and I thought I'd have a little fun with the scholars.  When I walked into the classroom the scholars started saying, "Good morning."  My response came quickly, "Don't talk to me.  I had all of those leaves to rake, I'm old, I was tired, and no one came to help me.  So for the next ten minutes I'm not helping with math and don't even talk to me."  As soon as I stopped running my mouth T4 said to me, "you better change that to about two seconds."  When I turned to look at T4 I saw them coming toward me.  The scholars, bearing gifts, as it was volunteer appreciation day and they wanted to thank me for all the time I spent at school helping them.  There is a picture of the gifts on the right side of the blog.  In the silver tin was brownies.  All of the flowers and other objects were made by the scholars while I was raking leaves.

They can frustrate you so much.  They can be unruly, disrespectful, defiant, and test my ability to control my emotions and then it's volunteer appreciation day.  There are thirty scholars in the room and every one of them was so excited at the opportunity to thank me.  And once again I say to you, "Now you know why I keep doing what it do."

The state mandated IRead3 test reared up it's ugly head the other day.  T4 brought it up and what she told me had me shaking my head.  I'll start with the good part and then move onto the shaking my head part.  Eleven of our fourth grade scholars had to retake the IRead3 test because they failed it the first time.  Of the eleven that took the retest, three passed it.  That is progress, for some of our scholars, huge progress.  That is great news, all attributed to OtherT4 as she is the language arts teacher who has everyone on the right track to continue making progress.  Then the progress breaker landed in OtherT4's lap.  We lost AnotherT4 and three classrooms were consolidated into two classrooms with thirty scholars each.  What we have now is a lose, lose, lose situation.  OtherT4's eight scholars that still need to pass IRead3 will get less attention so they lose out.  The new scholars, dumped into OtherT4's classroom, do to an inability to hire and retain teachers, will not get the attention they need so they lose out.  And the biggest loss of all, the potential for someone in a position of authority to question OtherT4's teaching ability if these scholars failed to pass IRead3.

He is the saddest part of all when it comes to IRead3.  In June the eight scholars that did not pass the retake IRead3 test get another chance.  If they don't pass the test in June this scenario could play out.  The scholars failed the IRead3 test in the third grade and were not retained.  These same scholars are now in the fourth grade, have taken two retakes of the IRead3 test and still failed to pass it.  So what happens to them.  Are they retained in the fourth grade or do they move on to the fifth grade.  I'll give you a hint.  The chances that the June IRead3 retake test results would be made available to our school by the end of the school year are about zero so the scholars will probably move on.

One more bit of information and I'm going to call it a day.  A new scholar arrived in T4's classroom a short while back.  This further adds to a classroom that is already over crowded.  When the scholar arrived T4 asked him, "What school did you come from?"  He said he came from another school in our school corporation and that got my immediate attention.  Why?  My seven years of experience tells me that when scholars changes schools in the same school corporation, especially this late in the school year, the reason there was a need to change schools is not a good one.  Hopefully I'm wrong about this and, I guess, we'll find out soon enough.  

Thanks for following along.  We are only a couple days short of May and do you know what that means?  Camp is just around the corner.  God, what was I thinking.