I lost my work ID months ago, and, while I'm totally down with the philosophy that we should all display our badges for the safety of the children, the hard, cold reality is, I so can't be bothered to spend a morning in line at the security department to get a new one.
Anyhow, lack of an ID badge has resulted in a lot of skulking on my part, as I have to visit 17 different high schools and very few front-office secretaries know me on sight (and my fellow educators know what type of personality tends to man the desk in the front office).
So I was trying to rapidly skulk through a front office today to go say hi to a pal in the counseling department, when the secretary pulled me up short. I apologized and explained who I was and where my badge wasn't.
She was cool about it, "I just saw you out the corner of my eye and I thought you were a student."
I laughed, "Oh, well
that's okay, you can mistake me for a student all day long, I don't mind!"
She eyed me over the top of her glasses, "Honey, have you
seen some of our students?
Nuts.
Happy Teacher Appreciation Month! (Late.)
Most edumacator types have been enjoying a designated Teacher Appreciation week during May, and so I'm a little behind on this. I did not benefit directly, myself, other than recieving three copies of a form letter from the superintendent of my district, which was more annoying than personally moving, what with all the extra paper to throw away.
Anyhow, folks have asked me more than once through these blogs what the ideal Teacher Appreciation gift is, and I have always answered "Barnes and Noble gift cards are good," and they are, but it's a boring and uncreative answer.
Well, my girl Anna (who made it to the top 10 finalists for Teacher of the Year in the second largest district in the state, gooooooo, Anna!) had a much more interesting Teacher Appreciation Week.
This year she has a class of strong personalities, as she charitably describes it, and they got a little out of hand while she was attending the Teacher Appreciation Luncheon and a sub watched her class.
Upon returning and discovering the poor behavior of her disciples, Anna promptly read them the Riot Act, then made them write letters explaining themselves, which further had to be signed by their parents.
Every letter came back the next day, signed. And Anna got some excellent gifts, including:
- a magazine organizer decoupaged with photos of her students and quotes from them about her
- a prayer
- tequila
Now all three of those are
damn good gifts.
"English 10 --
Your paper, project and presentation will be due -- 100% finished,
Jose N., on Wed. Jun 7 at 7:15 a.m.
NO EXCUSES other than death."
This article, via
Drudge, tells of
a teacher at a Latino charter school making racist comments about students of Mexican extraction. Can a teacher really be that stupid? Or, can seventh graders really be such sophisticated spin artists?
Honest to toast pointlets, if you believe any school-related article coming down the pike (you may have noted another of today's Drudge headlines, regarding an assistant principal asking teenage girls about sexual acts) folks in the education industry are about as dumb as a box of rocks.
Personal experience dictates, however, that students know the power of the "race card," and aren't remotely afraid to lay it down, if they think it will get a desired reaction (or distraction).
Also, I could've sworn Kristyn Hartman reported for our local Fox affiliate. When did she defect to Chi-town?
I'm a foodie! I'm a teacher! I'm a repressed Anglophile! So you know I'm just spooging all over myself for
Jamie Oliver's new show on
The Learning Channel,
Jamie's School Dinners.
Oliver not only can slap together some yumalicious meals (I learned a thing or two from
The Naked Chef), but his socially conscious notions are as
useful as they are
ambitious, and I have a lot of respect for what he's doing.
No Child Left Behind includes a component requiring that all classes be taught by "highly qualified" teachers. At long last, this is not empty rhetoric, but a defined parameter that absolutely must be met -- which you'd think was a good thing, wouldn't you?
Leave it to the Federal Government to fuck things up.
All over our district, teachers' names are popping up on principals' desks tagged as NOT "highly qualified."
Are they first-year teachers? No, they are not.
Are they lateral-entry teachers, who do not yet have certification? No, not at all.
Are they teachers certified in one area, but teaching in an area in which they are not certified? Nice guess, but nope.
Are they crappy teachers with action plans who couldn't teach their way out of a wet paper bag, as evidenced by ghastly standardized test scores? Hahahahahahahaha, of course not, silly!
All of those people are fine, and pop up on their personnel records screen as "highly qualified."
The teachers who
are on this list are: our most experienced faculty and certified in the areas in which they teach (as well as several others, usually) and many of them also have their National Board certificates (which should give you a good idea what
that piece of paper is worth).
And no, it's not a computer glitch, they really aren't "highly qualified," as defined by the Federales. And, if my office doesn't do some follow-up procedures with them before the end of the month (and we are, no worries) they really would be in some deep shit.
Why are these people in this mess? Because they were given their certification before the state required that they take the Praxis II, a standardized test of pedagogy within a specific content area. That's right, they are not "highly qualified" because 20 years ago they didn't take a test.
