Late night ramblings. I was planning to skip a blog entry tonight, but at the last minute, I changed my mind. I am going to try to keep this brief, so I might start rambling a bit.

1. I am almost finished reading the book "Red Lighting", it was okay. I think I am more of a fantasy fan. I did like the author's writing style. I also liked the fact basis of a lot of the space stuff. However, the story really did not grab we in the "I can't put it down" way.

2. Today, the kids were hyper to the max. I did have a bit of good news this morning on my way walking to school from the trainstation. Hyper kid 1's mother was returning from dropping of Hyper 1, she told me that he would not be in school today.

3. Today I had a meeting with the parent of the student who resisted me when I tried to stop him from fighting a girl classmate. Long story short, I wanted to hit the AP with a brick.

At the meeting, the AP explained the reason for the meeting was that the child (Chatter Box - CB) would have a superintendant's suspension, whenever the paperwork went through. She said that in all likelihood, the suspension from school would occur sometime next year. But that is not what upset me.

As a rule, I have tried very hard with what very little power I have, to keep my students from getting to comfortable with being wild and disruptive. One of the ways I do this is by not allowing them the luxury of know if they will pass or fail until the very last minute. Once kids "know the answer", they tend to lose all interest (or effort) in working.

CB has been one of the worst students this year. He does almost zero classwork, zero homework, and seems to be as spoiled as the day is long. This is a kid who throws temper tantrums when he does not get his way. When all was said and done about the incident, the parent was primarily concerned with whether or not CB would be going to the next grade. Without consulting me, the AP just blurted out that CB would most likely be going to the next grade.

I've spent the last few months putting the fear of failure into my students, and in a seemingly eager desire to please the parent the AP did not consider for even a minute the impact of telling a wild child, talkative child, excessively playful child, and an almost "no working" child that he would be going to the next grade. This is a kid that I would have betted (and I am not really a grambling man) that this kid would have to repeat the 3rd grade. The last thing I wanted was for this kid to in one of his usually "so I don't care" moments, to add "so, I don't have to do work, I'm graduating. Luckily, I was able to recover my "authority standing" later in the day. During workfolder review and portfolio preparations, CB called out, "my portfolio is empty. I didn't get any work returned to me". I called back, "that is because you don't do any work". Then it hit me. I continued...The principal said what she said because she was an administrator. Her job is the keep who (parents or students) happy? CB fell for it. I continued with the AP has not seen your work, do you really think the AP would promote you to the next grade. It worked, from chatting, playing, and not working, I got CB to rethink (a little bit) his disruptive ways.

3. My copy machine. This morning I carried my old copy machine down to the main office for FedEx pickup. I unpacked my new(but refurbished) copy machine. And I am embarassed to admit the problem (I think). The drum that was recently bought had shipping protection tabs that I'd did not know needed to be removed. I think that was what the problem was.

Time to go....

Post Date - Friday, June 15, 2007 12:25pm