3 Fires... 7 days

Yeah I think that says it all. We had a fire last week, a fire Monday and a fire today. This has basically meant 2nd and 4th period haven't done work in like a week. To add to that they had predicted a huge storm on Friday and there was ice everywhere BUT DC, but nonetheless about 1/2 the kids were out if not more.

So yeah my US Govt. class has been moving forward in 1st period but everyone else is stagnant.

On top of that, on this coming Friday we have parent teacher conferences, which aren't a waste of time but are being held from 12-7 so no class once again. And I mean tops I have had 12 parents come in, and now that I have fewer students I doubt that I'll get as many. But I am calling several parents each day leading up to it in order to maybe get them to show.

Fire!

There was a pretty big fire on the 6th floor of the building today in the janitors closet, they actually used the sprinklers up there apparently. I didn't see or smell anything so I have no idea what happened. But apparently the teacher who found the fire said that he could tell from behind the door that he could feel the heat, but the door was still locked. So either a kid pushed something under the door to light the fire (i.e, firecrackers) or chemicals just caught on their own somehow behind a locked door.

The teacher who pulled the fire alarm noticed that nothing happened when he did. So basically the fire alarms in our building were no longer working. (They are hopefully working now... since it would be illegal I'm pretty sure to have students in a building with no working fire alarm. I heard about the fire first from students who ran around yelling "there's a fire there's a fire!" Then finally on the PA system they announced that we should go down to the ground floor.

After that they told us to all go outside, and it was pouring rain and freakishly cold so two other teachers and I sat in my car to at least keep out of the rain. We were there for like 40 minutes or so I think, not sure. About 3/4+ of the students left during this time.

Afterwards, when they let the remaining few students back in we went into the auditorium and were eventually given an announcement that all the students were to go to the cafeteria to finish lunch (since that is when the fire started). Then they were eventually brought back to the auditorium at 1:30. After that we just had to sit in the auditorium until 3:15. Nothing happened, nothing was going on, we just sat in the auditorium and nobody could leave. Big waste of time.

Apparently there were legal reasons for not just excusing the students and going home ourselves, but I have a hard time imagining what they could be for students who are 15 and up.

Anyways at least only 1 of my periods was wasted and not two.

Rant

First off 10 minutes have passed and I have 3 students out of 15. Not making me happy.

Secondly, we will never have a productive collaboration meeting with these teachers. Apparently I do need to go to a school where people think more like I do about what RIGOR is. And maybe the fact that we need to try and standardize it a bit so we can know what it is, because this staff clearly doesn't know much about it.  I can't work here forever, a few years and only if we get a new staff who are young and/or progressive and/or open minded along the way.

Ok time to go... I'm in a bad mood already. Stupid Wednesday.

My day today

On a random note, a mom yelled at me today over the phone. She said she was coming here to talk to me, but maybe she won't. She's mad at me for failing her child for the 2nd advisory (though I let her pass the class overall) w/out apparently informing her of the fact that her child was failing. This is probably true, so I decided to just back down since I had no real proof that I had told her her daughter was failing. THAT BEING SAID he daughter failed 3 out of 4 classes (the 4th being PE) that advisory so maybe instead of yelling at me she should yell at her daughter. But what I learned is that I need to update parents regularly and not necessarily by phone (which is really hard and ridiculously time consuming). Other teachers sent out regular notices by mail (which doesn't cost anything since the school pays for postage). So I'm going to come up w/a template and then I can just make copies and send it out to the children's parents when they're failing. That should work.

Otherwise 4th period went really well today. We are working on creating thesis statements for history papers (which can be really really hard depending on the topic) and coming up w/the whole "so what" issue. The kids are doing good jobs for the first attempt and tomorrow we will work on writing the rest of the essay. They'll do rough drafts over the weekend and have to have edited it once themselves then we'll edit it again in class and then they'll write their final drafts as homework! yipeeeee things are looking good in one class at least. Also I had to implement the 'point system' in my 11th grade class starting tomorrow. I hate the point system it is so childish, but it works, there is no doubt about that. So they'll get the point system. If that doesn't stop them the next step is a seating chart. After that, notices will be sent home with alarming regularity, and the worst offenders parents will be called. In my 12th grade class we worked on writing outlines, it is surprising how few of them they've ever done, half the kids didn't really know how to write one at all, and only knew some bizarre format for English that wasn't really an outline but more like 'things every english paper needs to cover.' Anyways, that seems to have helped them a bit I hope (as long as they actually USE the outlines of course). Here's hopin...

Benefits and Drawbacks to being a "small learning community"

Now in general small learning communities are a truly great idea. That being said there are some things that can get really annoying about them, so I'm going to list some of the pros and cons as I see them.

Pros

1. Students and teachers really get to know each other
• Aside from the obvious benefits this can also lead to greater overall control of the student body because everyone knows everyone (pretty much).
• This means students are less likely to slip through the cracks
• It is really easy to catch students skipping, etc.
  
2. Collaboration becomes far easier in the core subjects because students can be grouped together allowing classes to be coordinated
3. Classes tend to be smaller
4. Students get more personalized attention
5. I am the (un)official chair of the Social Studies department*(see note)
   

Cons

1. A lot of times fewer classes can be offered (the solution here is to have several small learning communities in a larger school building together so that there can be cross pollination when it comes to electives)
2. Teachers have to teach multiple classes (What I mean here is that I teach 3 different classes across 3 different periods, unlike my friend who only had to teach one class three different times last semester)
3. I have to be on multiple committees (I am on the recruitment and awards committees - I was assigned them)
4. Less able to have sports teams and clubs (this can also be solved by having multiple small learning communities grouped together into larger groups overall)

*Note: I went to a social studies committee chair meeting yesterday afternoon and it was actually pretty cool because it wasn't actually professional development. Instead we were talking to the head of social studies in DC and he was asking questions about how we should test students, how to get kids from middle school to high school, and other interesting stuff like that. A lot of the department chairs were really cool and it is a meeting that I would like to go to again if possible and something that I would like to participate more in if possible. This might be the way to get my whole wanting to be involved with policy thing out while still being in the classroom. Maybe I want to try and become a department chair at a larger high school or something (though I'm sure that would have plenty of drawbacks)