Mean Teacher II

Sometimes them liberals are funny. And a little bit right, too.

Shhhh. Don't tell no one.

posted by Holley Wilson Mayville @ 3:06 PM 0 comments

So, it turns out that spending $X in three days for the SIFE center is nothing. This time ' round I was given less than two days, and $X+106,093 to spend. In other words -- slightly less coy and algebraic ones -- I had to figure out how to spend over $111,000.

So, I went to the SIFE center with a few catalogues and said to the teacher, "Okay, you and me gotta figure out how to spend this money."

Then I spent the next hour and a half trying to convince this lady that really, when piles of money are on the table and we've got less than a day to spend it, it is NOT the time to be frugal. I am BEGGING her for ideas for spending the money and she is repeatedly saying, "Oh, I'm sure we can do just fine without this..." or "Well, I'll just get one of those, that won't cost too much..." I pleaded and cajoled and suggested and bullied and came away with a list.

So me and my peptic ulcer went home, took a few cleansing breaths, and spent the REMAINING $110,000 all by ourselves.* And do you know what happens when I do this? I know! 'Cause it's happened before. When the big truckload of goodies I would've DIED to have in my classroom they are all so SHINY and FUN is dumped on her doorstep, do you KNOW what she's going to say?

"I don't have room for all of this."

Don't get me wrong. I'm thrilled and delighted the sweet lil' refugee chilluns are getting such fantabulous goodies. If I didn't have 50 other classrooms to worry about, I'd spend all of next fall just playing with all the goodies myself (in fact, if the shipment drops before summer school starts, I very well may spend June doing just that, the stuff I ordered is that nifty). But the past two days of tooth-pulling has just further cemented my belief that MONEY IS NOT THE ANSWER, PEOPLE.

Money's nice. Having books and manipulatives and supplies and computers and whatnot is nice, and not having books and pencils and chairs and windows, as is known to happen in some districts, is unconscionable (so had to go look that word up). But the success of the class rests in something else entirely.

Two other things, in fact: the effort of the students and the quality of the teacher (effort of the teacher is important, but I've got a tale or two about teachers who kill themselves with work and stay up 'til all hours -- and tell me all about it -- who still suck total ass. But that's another post.) Fortunately, I think the SIFE center has an excellent teacher and that the kids could not be in better hands.

If she'd had a lick of sense, she would've said, "Shit, just give all the money to me."


*Actually, other people helped me spend the money on some computers and some large, expensive reading series, and all I was personally responsible for making specific selections with was about $15,000. But still, $15,000 is an assload of money. Besides, my Mom always says, "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story."

posted by Holley Wilson Mayville @ 9:49 PM 0 comments

There is a special subset within the English language learner population that we refer to in this district as students with interrupted formal education, or SIFE. The majority of these students are Montagnard, Hmong and Somali Bantu refugees, although there are a few Hispanic kids who fit the definition as well.

Students from other countries who are fourteen and older are generally placed in 9th grade upon initial entry into the district, then bumped up, if possible, if and when records and transcripts arrive from their last school.

Part of the definition of a SIFE kid is that he or she has had five years or less of formal schooling. Most SIFE kids have zero to two years. They come into high school unable to decipher the alphabet, read numbers, or perform basic mathematic operations, as well as not being able to speak English. Also many arrive unfamiliar with the infrastructure of school -- plumbing, electricity, etc.

On the upside, they're generally in the US legally (I'm of the opinion that immigrant children, legal or not, had no part in their decision to come here, and therefore the question of their entitlement to public education is not only moot, it's pretty fucking mean-spirited, especially when you consider that children of illegal immigrants are actually in the vast MINORITY. But for those of you who don't agree with that opinion, no worries, the kids who are the topic of today's discussion are as legal as apple pie.)

Anyway, it's clear these kids have extremely unique needs. This year we finally created an "orientation center," a semi-self-contained class with special teachers dedicated specifically to the SIFE population, and housed at the high school that has almost all of the SIFE kids in the district (let's call it "Nearby High"). It's a great (and absolutely necessary) idea, and all the high mucky-mucks in the district are very impressed.

Meanwhile, a month or so ago we got official word that, due to alternate allocation of the summer school funds, there would be only the most minimal of summer schools programs offered this year (for kids who haven't passed the gateway tests to allow them to rise to 9th grade, and for seniors who only need one or two more credits to graduate). ESL has always had an immense program each summer offered to all ELLs throughout the district. Last year ESL summer school was housed at seven different schools and served two or three thousand students. But, since it's not a program for kids who need credits, it's considered an enrichment program and it got the axe this year pretty much from the git-go.

Then the ESL department chair at Nearby High and my boss simultaneously put in proposals for a summer program at Nearby High. The department chair wanted a program for SIFE kids and any other ELLs struggling in Nearby High's ESL program. My boss wanted summer school for all the SIFE kids in the district.

My boss's proposal was the one that got the green light. On Friday the 17th. And it was agreed that the summer programs department would provide $X money for books and supplies, as long as we could get the orders in before the budget closed. On Wednesday the 22nd. $X is not a lot of money, but it was still a lot of work to come up with how we were going to spend it (my job).

And we have these awesome little Excel order forms that do all of the math (subtotals, totals, shipping cost, sales tax, all!) as you fill them in. They are beautiful and awesome and I busted ass to fill them in for four different vendors. And I sent them in nanoseconds before the deadline.

And the secretary who processes these orders e-mailed me back, telling me I was using the wrong form. Attached was the right form, which was a Word template. I was so irritated my eyeballs nearly burst. Word templates are fiddly at best and recalcitrant bastards the rest of the time. Not only that, they don't do math. It wasn't the end of the world, because I had already gotten the math done on the Excel forms, and it was just a matter of tediously hand-copying, but still... grrrr...

So I redid the orders on the right fucking forms and sent them in. Try as I might, I couldn't get all X of the money spent, and had actually spent $X-300. No big whoop -- at least it wasn't over.

This Tuesday I got another e-mail from the secretary. Telling me the cost of my order had run over. By hundreds of dollars. Somewhere in the passage of time, our budget alottment had transmogrified from $X to $X-1200. My poor eyeballs didn't know what to do. I called my boss. Wasn't it $X? I asked. Yes it was, she said. Don't we have $X written down somewhere? Yes, yes we do. Well, WTF?

Forget it, she sighed. It's not worth the fight.

Well, if the orders weren't fixed, the poor deprived SIFE kids weren't gonna get shit, so I went back in and cut out some stuff (and just between you and me, I had actually way over-ordered a few items, so the new orders did not reflect any real deprivation to the program... but STILL!) And the extra bitch of it was, I had to do the new orders on those stupid Word forms and do the math BY HAND, which is frankly dangerous. Have you seen my checkbook? Have you watched me keep score in a Scrabble game? Not pretty.

Then my boss forwards me an e-mail in which she sent a copy of the original SIFE program proposal, including the statement that we'd get $X for materials, to the summer programs director with the query, "Do we have this right?" And the summer programs director, who had disapparated $1200 of our budget on a cranky whim, wrote back "Oh yeah, that looks fine."

This being after the new orders had been turned in.

Don't you want my job? Doesn't it sound INTERESTING?

Meanwhile, the ESL staff back at Nearby High refuses to get the memo that this program is NOT exclusively for Nearby High ESL students it is, instead, for ALL districtwide SIFE students. That it is NOT Nearby High ESL Department Chair's summer program, it's my boss's program. Everyone in my office has explained this to everyone at that school and, I swear to God, they act like they've not even heard the words.

Which wouldn't make me so bug-eyed except for this: these are kids with serious issues and major needs. Fucking around with these children does not need to be done. People stomp around this town wondering why test scores aren't up and nobody's learning, and the plain truth of the matter is that it's because all us assholes running the show feel a need to get off on our power trips.

Unfortunately, in this district student need does not drive the machine, bureaucratic nonsense does.

posted by Holley Wilson Mayville @ 11:58 AM 1 comments