Another week of procrastinating. This time it finally caught up with me. But before that, a quick update.

Tuesday, November 6th Election Day
Today was Election Day. The students were not in attendance, but the school was opened to the public as a polling station. For teachers, today was a professional development day. A fairly wasted day. Teachers were divided up into the groupings of the new reading program.

*First "training" session, was math. The math coach was in charge of training, but was not prepared. He showed up with nothing but the letter to the staff that he'd just typed up. The letter basically repeated what was written in a previous memo to the staff written a few days ago. The math coach is nice, but often he seems to like the sound of his voice. He likes to use big words, and he likes to talk. His "training" was basically chatting with the group about this and that. Finally, AP2 took over the training with a "what works and what doesn't T chart". I thought an honest response would be useful to the discussion. Unfortunately, Queen Bee walked in to observe.

My comment was that we have so many different assessments, that I end up not really looking at the results because as soon as one is given and graded, another one is around the corner. I'd mentioned that I recognized the need for a variety of assessments, but what good is an assessment if time is not set aside to analyze the results and formulate a plan of action....

I should have kept my big mouth shut!

Queen Bee and AP2 started having a heated (but nice and professional) discussion about "what he meant". After about 2 or 3 minutes, they turned to me. I just said that both were correct. Queen Bee asked how many math assessments we had this month (3), and how many questions in the last in-house assessment (10). The result, was the belief that 10 questions really isn't a lot to grade. I just nodded keeping my mouth shut. I wanted to say that that thinking implied that teaching is done in isolation. Forgetting about the other areas that take up the teacher's time:

The new reading program with all of the minute details, the math program, the hands-on science program, the test prep program, city-wide assessments (E-CLAS), checking homework, keeping bulletin boards updated monthly, conferencing with individual students, assessing students as individuals, differentiating instruction for the students.

To be honest, for me, I have only managed a few of the list above at any one time. Each time I have a plan to do one thing, something comes up, and I push one thing aside to tackle the next thing. Sorry, I am getting sidetrack. Basically flexibility is something that I need to work on.

Anyway, the "what's right/wrong" math training ended. The next training was a closer look at the new reading program. According to AP2, the training was suppose to be led by the literacy coach 2. But since she(LC2) was still working with her first session group, AP2 decided to show us the new materials for the new reading program. Strange. I was a bit lost. A little background.

The new reading program started about mid October. It took me a bit of time to get use to the anthology text and the materials that did not match the training materials. It turns out that the materials that we have been using were the old materials of the program. Since the new materials hadn't arrived, Admin made an executive decision to use the old program, but forgot to mention that to the lowly staff, or they did and I just was not paying attention. Anyway, the new materials will be arriving over the next few days. The old materials were based on an anthology text, but the new materials are based on paperback trade books. What will happen with the old materials when the new materials arrive. There was only a couple of shrugged shoulders. By the end of the "training", Lit. coach 2 arrived. There was some mistake, according to her, she wasn't supposed to do a training session. The training time was supposed to be teachers working independently in their classrooms with organizing and planning with the new program materials. However, she stayed to answer questions AP2 could not answer. AP2 is in charge of the test prep materials. LC2 is the one in charge of the new reading program. After a bit of Q & A, it was time for the next "training".

The third training starting "a bit late" was led by AP1 (looking at student portfolios). AP1 asked a couple of teachers to share what a student's portfolio should contain. AP1 provided feedback as to what Admin is looking for. After the two portfolio presentations, AP1 asked us to do a written feedback about what we would use in the coming weeks. She said that the purpose of writing was that we would receive a copy of what we wrote, but I think she will probably forget, sometimes she can be a bit forgetful.

Next on the agenda was "report cards" with no explanation, none of the teachers I asked seemed to know what that meant, either working on report cards, or finishing report cards. The third "training" ended about 12PM. When I asked about the location of the next training session (report cards) since the nicely written agenda had lunch at 12:30PM. Since the trainings were a bit off schedule, the fourth session was unofficially cancelled. AP2 just told me that if nothing specific is given then I should just work in my classroom. I decided to use the staff copy machine in the science lab. This year, I told myself that I would try to use my personal copy machine for emergencies only, but so far I've been using my personal copier like it was a heavy duty machine. Also, Across the Hall has gotten comfortable with asking to make a few copies every now and then. My hints about expensive ink and drum replacement no longer have much effect. But since she is a nice person and I enjoy her company, it doesn't bother me too much. Anyway, I managed to make all of my copies for the week. And I did a bit of running here and there, before I decided to eat lunch. I decided to pass on the usually "Principal's lunch special (cold cuts and lunch [potato, mac & cole] salads. I had a Healthy Choice meal. It was about 1:10PM when I was about to sit down for lunch, when AP2 made the following announcement over the loudspeaker:

"All teachers, report to their afternoon training locations at 1:15PM."

I was told that according to Admin's watch, lunch started at 12:15PM. I was so annoyed that I decided that I would eat lunch and arrive late to the "training".

For my group, afternoon training session was the grading of the city-wide ELA practice test. Then about 2:50PM, Dr. Data (a former high school teacher with a PhD hired to be a data analysis) announces that teachers will have to find time to input the grading students received for each extended response question. I was annoyed to put it mildly. My plan was to be out of the building at 3PM or 3:30PM, the earliest I've ever be out this school year. I was also annoyed that I was the one who mentioned twice that the teacher's directions mentioned that the individual gradings for each questions would need to be uploaded to the testing site. I mentioned it the first time it was suggested that teachers needed to read the directions...and I did. I also mentioned it the day of the test. A total waste of breath, day, time, and effort. For the remaining half hour, Dr. Data kept for lack of a better word "schmoozing" the crowd about how technology has arrived and how we need to not be afraid of it. Then she wanted us to scribble down the website address. I just got fed up. I (politely) asked her to write down the necessary information. I was thinking in memo form, but she misunderstood, and scratched down the website address on a piece of paper. I had wanted the address written down because I don't have good luck with web sites or email addresses. In the end, I spent about 30 minutes trying to find the website because Dr. D forgot an "s" in the address. Dr. D is actually a very nice person, but that incident just annoyed me.

Oh and during the last 15 minutes of training, the "Spanish" teacher passed out evaluations for each teacher. I think I will have to drop the quotation marks from Spanish teacher. This year, he seems to be doing a bit of Spanish in his lessons I've been told. He made note of each person he hand delivered an evaluation to. And...each evaluation required that the recipient wrote down his or her name on the evaluation. About 3PM, AP2 announced that all evaluations had to be submitted to Mr. Spanish. And being a "dutiful" teacher....he walked the various rooms collecting the evaluations.

I was out of the building about 6PM.

Well, I was going to just summarized a few days but it is late. I will do the summary another time. This three day weekend I need to finish my students report cards. I also want to do my lesson planning.


Post Date - Sunday, November 11, 2007 1:28AM.