Victory!

I have emerged victorious! The enormous, skyline-of-New-York-style piles of textbooks and workbooks have been sorted. Textbooks have been checked in and graffiti has disappeard under erasers and white-out (except for one egregious example which I just gave up on and removed from the catalog. When the profanity is on the cover, there's not much white-out can do). I have sorted through the workbooks, and the ones with writing in (call it two-thirds of the total) have been thrown away.

All that actually remains is to take the untouched workbooks back to the textbook room and divide the written-in ones into two trash bags so the bottom doesn't rip out when the janitor tries to lift it.

I can see the surface of my desk! I can see the door while sitting at my desk! I was beginning to doubt that this day would ever come!

You can't make this stuff up

This came in via e-mail from my friend Tori, who works over at Failing School here in The District.

From a student who is a parent: “And they can be frustrating but you can’t just be beatin’ on ‘em. You gotta talk to them while you beatin’ on ‘em. say *slapping motions* ‘Boy, what you did? Why you doin’ it?’”

Eraser Hell

So I've finished with the textbooks from yesterday, except for the ones with inked-in profanity. Those can wait until I've finished everything else. And I begin checking the workbooks. You see, some of these workbooks have been used, but some of them haven't. Is there any indication of which ones have and haven't been used (except for the one, lonely, shrink-wrapped bundle)? No, no there is not. Does someone have to flip through each and every one to determine which ones have been used and must be discarded and which ones are still pristine and available for use? Yes, yes someone does. Anybody care to hazard a guess who?

But that's not the worst part. Oh, no. The worst part is that some teacher, whom one would presume had at least the intelligence of an amoeba, considering he or she managed to graduate from college, took a book which is not a workbook. Which is designed to be copied by teachers to provide their students with enrichment worksheets. And gave this book to a student to use as a workbook. Then, compounding the iniquitous nature of his/her crime, had the student write in pencil! Now, instead of just writing the book off as a loss, I get to erase the penciled responses on 37 pages....

Now that I flip through, I notice that the Unknown Teacher used pen to check of the student's work on several pages. Maybe this is enough to justify me in discarding this book. Must check with the Textbook Lady for The District...if only I had noticed this before my fingers started cramping from holding the eraser.

Textbook Graffiti day

Thanks to our beginning-of-the-semester teacher shuffling, we have a new middle school reading/ELA teacher. She has decided that she does not like the textbooks in her room; she think's they're too low level for her (ESS) students.

After much travail, last Wednesday I got a set of textbooks checked out for her, put them on a cart, and took them to her room. "Where do you want these?" I said. She asked if I could leave the cart while she found a place for them; she would get it back to me as soon as possible. "Sure," I said.

Shortly thereafter, her aide brought that cart, plus one additional cart, back to the library, piled high with textbooks, workbooks, and other miscellany. Apparently these were in the classroom, and the new teacher does not feel any need to keep them, as she doesn't plan to use them.

So I have spent all day Friday and all day today checking books in and noting the charming statements written in them, some in pencil, some in pen. I've erased the pencil ones, even the ones I didn't think were gang-related, just on the grounds that I'm too naive to be able to tell, and nothing should be written in the textbooks anyway. I need to go talk to one of the clerical staff who supposedly has some magical spray-on white-out that will take care of the ink. I almost wish I had a digital camera or a scanner, just to start a collection of poorly spelled profanity. "F*** all you haters with an a(backwards s here)es d***" is so bad it deserves to be preserved for posterity. Alas, for the low level of technology.

Unfortunately, even if the room hadn't been in the possession of a completely different teacher last year, there's no way to tell where these works of art have come from. Here at The Alternative School, students are not allowed to check out textbooks, since the administration feels (quite rightly) that any student who earns a trip to Alternative School can't be trusted not to destroy, sell, or just keep a textbook. So the teachers have a class set which each class can use while in the classroom. I guess homework doesn't get assigned out of the book. And I don't get to vent my righteous fury on the defacers of textbooks. *sigh*

Desensitized?

Sometimes I wonder if I'm getting desensitized, but in a good way. When I first came to The Alternative School, I was terrified of confronting the students. I did it, but I was so scared. I would have to go have the shakes in private afterwards. This was not made any easier by the fact that some of our students are perfectly capable of lying to your face about what they just did, even if you were looking right at them while they did it.

Today, I had to take points from a (middle school) student who wouldn't give me his point sheet. He refused, so I took him to the assistant principal, where he finally gave me his sheet. He then called me a nasty racial insult before returning to class (but out of earshot of the assistant principal, of course).

And I was okay. Not happy about being called a nasty name, but I was okay. I didn't shake, I didn't panic, I just reported it to the assistant principal and wrote up the referral.

I guess desensitization can be a good thing, sometimes. And sometimes doing the thing you're scared of really does make it better, less stressful.

Enchanted, Inc. by Shanna Swendson

I've been promising book reviews since the beginning. I guess I ought to finally get around to it. So I'm starting with a book I read recently, Enchanted, Inc. by Shanna Swendson.

I loved this book. Loved it, loved it, LOVED IT! I knew from the moment I read the premise that I had to read this book, and it did not disappoint. I plan on owning this book, and all of the sequels.

Katie Chandler is a small-town Texas girl who's drowning in New York City. Her common sense and competence just leave her open to abuse from her boss. And she just can't adjust to all the weird things that she sees, things native New Yorkers don't even blink an eye at.

When Katie gets a job offer from MSI, Inc., she finds out that there is more to life in New York than most people see; magic and magical creatures do exist, and she can see them.

I'm not going to say anything else about the plot because it's just so much fun discovering it. If you really want to know, you can go check out the author's web site or the reviews on Amazon. I will say that this book could easily fit in a high school library. Katie is young enough to resonate with high school girls who are starting to anticipate life on their own. I plan on sharing this book with my sisters who are in high school; I think they'll like it as much as I did.

I hear the whistle blowing....

Yesterday was crazy. I mean full-on, spring madness, why-would-you-do-that crazy.

As may or may not have been previously mentioned, when students walk down the hall here at The Alternative School, they are to walk in a straight line, not talking. This happens with various degrees of success. So yesterday morning, the middle school girls were doing a MARVELOUS job of this. They were behaving so well that I stopped a whole line of them on the way back from breakfast and gave them bonus points for doing so well (more on the points system later).

While I'm doing this, a line of boys goes past on the other side of the hallway. One of them is talking (the fact that it was only one is slightly miraculous). I say what I usually say in these circumstances, "No talking in the halls."

His response: "Well, you shut up your mouth then" or something to that effect.

Now my back was turned, so I didn't see who said it. One of the other staff on morning duty did, however, and she pulled him out of the line. It would have ended there, except he decided to mouth off to her, too, and the principal happened to be passing through at that time. Buddy Boy got sent to boot camp. So he goes (grumpily) and lines up on the wall with the other kids in boot camp. When the teacher in charge of boot camp comes by and talks to them, he tells her "F*** you."

This all happened before school officially started that day. O.o

From what the teachers told me, the kids continued in this vein all day. The assistant principal came on the intercom twice that day, once in the middle of the morning, once in the afternoon before dismissal. In the afternoon he said something along the lines of "We have expelled 8 kids today who didn't think we were serious. Middle school students in the gym, I can hear you from here, I can hear the whistle blowing, and if there's anyone down there who doesn't want to behave properly, we can send you home to think about it for 7 to 11 days."

This morning we had twice as many kids in boot camp as usual. Is there something about this time of year? On the bright side, the kids who aren't in boot camp are keeping their heads down, at least in the halls. We'll just have to see how it goes.

Practice, practice, practice

PE classes at school are always rowdy, especially the classes during 6th and 7th hour. Part of this is because the gym is not a regular classroom; there are no chairs and desks, and this break in routine makes the kids think it's okay to run around. The other problem is that the coaches have to have two PE classes in the gym at the same time; twice as big an audience for these kids as normal.

6th and 7th hour are so bad, the coaches are just despairing by the end of the day. One of them has told me repeatedly "I just can't take it anymore." So today, he did something different.

They came into the gym, scattered widely, talking loudly (two big no-nos; as an alternative school, students are supposed to walk down the hall in single file lines, with no talking). So he made them go out, line up, and come back in quietly. And of course there was talking, so they had to do it again. And again. All hour.

Unfortunately, the rest of the teachers can't get away with doing this. But I have some hope that the PE classes won't be quite as bad after this.

What book are you?

You're The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy!

by Douglas Adams

Considered by many to be one of the funniest people around, you are
quite an entertainer. You've also traveled to the far reaches of what you deem possible,
often confused and unsure of yourself. Life continues to jostle you around like a marble,
but it's shown you so much of the world that you don't care. Wacky adventures continue to
lie ahead. Your favorite number is 42.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

The Magical 6th-grader

Yesterday, I discovered a 6th-grader with a magical power (who shall hereafter be referred to as Poltergeist Boy). Keyboards and computer mice (mouses? meeces?) come unplugged in his presence, without anyone seeing him touch them. When he is moved away from the computers, somehow it stops...doubtless a previously unexplored poltergeist phenomenon.

The good thing about working in Louisiana? A four day weekend for Mardi Gras. Man, am I ready.