Keep Your Fingers Crossed!

I've felt that my content area instruction has been my strongest area this year. Thanks to new text adoptions for social studies (last year) and science (this year), I have tons of resources and readable texts. I make graphic organizers (composed while looking at the tests) that we complete as we listen to the audio CDs (is that redundant?) of each lesson. I frequently pause the CDs as we discuss the new information and connect it to previous lessons. I mean, really, I'm doing a bang-up job. And that's why it's been so discouraging that my students, by-and-large, are consistently failing the tests.

Today, though, my class crossed the Rubicon of testing success and actually studied for this test. Nearly half of the class scored an A or B; only 3 students failed. Is this success attributable to the low grades that went home on last week's report cards? Probably so, but also I think it was because after weeks of hearing me say, "Be sure to study your notebook. Your notes are a great study guide for the test," it has finally sunk in. Whatever the reason, I was as happy as I can be while grading the tests. They made me feel successful. I really needed this before I went in front of everyone at the awards assembly and gave my lone honor roll student his award. Sigh.

Accidentally, A Good Lesson

There's a great teacher in our district who has made a Power Point for everything imaginable relating to the curriculum he teaches. I thank the stars everyday that he teaches my grade and has put all of his creations on our sharing server. He has made Power Points that are oh-so-handy for benchmark reviews, and, incredibly, a Power Point for each and every lesson in the Science and Social Studies books. I don't always use them, but they're a nice tool to have in my teacher toolbelt. There is one set of his Power Points that I have used daily for the past 3 years and that's the set he made to review our weekly reading vocabulary and skill/strategy.

Typically, I've used these Power Points to introduce the new vocabulary set each Monday, and then I run through it everyday to do a quick vocabulary review. However, this week I was out on Monday and Tuesday for training (probably more about that later). If I'm out, my laptop is with me, so my sub couldn't use the weekly Power Point. If you're a teacher, you know how it is when you've been out--you wonder how well your sub did at teaching and so you do a thorough job when you get back of reviewing what was taught (or not) while you were out.

That's what I was doing yesterday when I found out, quite by accident, that maybe there's a better way to use these Power Points. My students had been working with the vocabulary words for 2 days. On this, the first run-through with the Power Point, I found that I was able to really take them to a higher level of thinking by asking them to predict what the picture would be. They knew the definitions, but I was asking them to apply the definition and brainstorm what would be a good picture to illustrate each definition. I was gobsmacked at how well this worked for them. For the word "vain", they came up with ideas that clearly illustrated they knew what the word meant--predictions like "a woman putting on make-up", "a TV star", and "a model". Then they laughed aloud when the picture was shown--a silly, girly peacock who was holding a mirror in her hand. Next week, I'm going to introduce the words on Monday without the Power Point and then use it on Tuesday and see if it works again. If nothing else, it will shake me out of the rut I seem to have fallen in with my vocabulary instruction. I think anything that becomes a routine becomes forgettable (and yawnable).

And, so it goes. Being away from my class helped me learn something useful. Life's like sometimes. :)

Two things are going on

Thing 1: I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. Last week, I again replaced questions on the reading test with questions from another source (the previous basal, which had the same story). Rotney made a 70. My favorite part of this (gotta get some joy from the extra work) was his written response to one question, which bore absolutely no relationship to the question asked, but did answer the question I discarded. Can you say, "Gotcha!"? I sent home his report card, with a modified 70 (D) in place of the 65 (F) he had actually earned. I don't think I'm going to get thanked for my trouble since he didn't make the honor roll (also, he made some C's so he wasn't going to make it anyway). I've emailed the EA to send her the social studies study guides and my long-range plans, but haven't heard a peep in response. Today my princiPal told me to cc the emails to her, so that the EA knows she's in the loop on what I'm doing. And, so I wait. Anxiously.

Truthfully, thinking about Rotney and grades, this is my lowest ability class ever--only one child made the honor roll, and I did everything I could to increase their grades. I dropped the lowest test score, gave them some softball grade opportunities that they disregarded, and prayed that they would get their acts together. It didn't work and it wasn't even close. Sigh. If I hadn't done what I could to remedy the poor scores, lots of students would have gone home with D's and F's. As it was, lots did go home with C's and D's. And I've heard not a peep from the parents. Wake up, folks! You can make a difference in your child's achievement.

Thing 2: I haven't been at school much lately. I was out on professional leave on Thursday, I took a half-day of sick leave Friday, and I had more professional leave today and will have it tomorrow. I hate being out of my class so much! I hate writing sub plans! I hate being sick with a cough and not sleeping much and not being able to take a couple of days ( or even 1 whole day) off to recover. And, now I'm off to write yet another set of sub plans. . .

The Other Conference

Ten minutes after the conference with the crazy EA, I had a wonderful conference with the father of a boy in my class. Dad has had custody for less than 2 years and no contact with the kids before that. When my student, a real sweetie, lived with mom he missed 90 days of his 2nd grade year and nearly all of his first grade year. He's not unintelligent but he is behind. He had 4 C's and 2 F's on the progress report I printed for the conference. I showed these grades to dad and waited, tensed and hunched, for a verbal assault directed at me begin.

I was so wrong. Dad turned to son and congratulated him for his effort. He said that he sees son is still having some trouble areas, but that those 4 C's showed his effort. He thanked his son for trying so hard to do his best. It was all that I could do not to sob (but I did wipe a tear from my eye.) Dad spoke to me about his own growing up--his father died when he was 8; his mother was useless and he's been on his own since he was 14. He said he had made some bad choices in his life but that he was going to be there for his son and younger daughter because no one had ever been there for him.

His son is one of the hardest workers in my class. His home life isn't perfect--his dad works nights and his dad's aunt takes care of him. Evidently there's a lot of people at this home but none are able to provide educational support because none can read much at all. So my sweetie tries to get all of his work completed at school where he can get help if he needs it.

It strikes me how different this is from Rotney's situation. Rotney has more people helping him than he can probably count, all determined to educate him. But he doesn't participate much in the process--just rushes through his work because he'll have to redo it at home anyway. Rotney's not trying to please anyone because it's not his fault when he doesn't succeed. According to his family, it's mine for not caring (code for not greasing the skids enough for him to slide onto the AB honor roll.) By contrast, Sweetie Son tries to achieve because he knows how much it pleases his dad. He also feels a great deal of personal satisfaction when he does well on an assignment--Looky, Ms. Matters, I made an A!

I would give my paycheck back to have a classroom full of parents who care as much as Sweetie Son's dad. And I definitely don't get enough to deal with the ones like Rotney's EA.

It's been a long 2 weeks

I've been getting an ever-increasing amount of pressure from Rotney's educational administrator. (What else do you call a non-custodial family member who is in charge of his education?) As you (my fictitious reader) may recall, she's very unhappy that he's not making A's and B's. During the week when I met with her three times, she had three different family members with her. Presumably, their purpose was to tell me (repeatedly and ad nauseum) how important Rotney's education was to them. Well, they actually mean it's supremely important to them that Rotney make the honor roll--they couldn't care less that he actually acquire some skills along the way. This was proven two weeks ago when the EA actually did something that totally BLEW MY MIND.

We use a reading basal in our district and two weeks ago we had a fairly difficult selection to read. Our skill was inferring and most of my literal-minded students struggled mightily with the weekly test. Not Rotney. He completed the test in five minutes, refused to go back and check his answers when I suggested he do so, and made the highest grade in the class--a whopping 95%! He averages D's and F's on these reading tests so, to put it mildly, I was intrigued. I called him over and asked him if he had ever seen a copy of this test before, and he admitted that he had. Further questioning revealed that his EA had somehow gotten copies of the reading tests and was teaching him the answers. Even the written response portions of the test were nearly identical to the suggested answers in the test book.

After consultation with the lead teacher (acting assistant principal), the principal, and the district elementary education curriculum supervisor, it was decided to not enter a grade for this test. It's cheating, but not by his own instigation. Although it wasn't discussed, we must have all felt the way I did--I'm not calling crazy, intense EA to accuse her of cheating--so we let it go at that.

We took a week out of our basal instruction for benchmark testing. The tests showed that Rotney's grades are pretty much in-line with his benchmark results--if anything, the grades are higher.

This past week, I decided to not give the test from my kit, but instead wrote a new test. On Monday, I asked Rotney if he was studying this week's reading test again and he happily told me "yes". I then told Rotney that he would be taking a different test that week, not the one that his aunt had. I might as well have lit a fuse on a nuclear bomb. (yeah, I know that nuclear bombs don't have fuses, but the phrase works for me. Thank you, anyway.)

A series of emails between me and the EA, each of us not daring to poke the hornets' nest about the reading test, began on Tuesday. Finally, on Thursday, she directly asked about what I had told Rotney on Monday and denied being capable of obtaining an assessment book. (HOW did she know it's called an assessment book?) I sent her a very polite reply about what Rotney had said and invited her to a conference. BOOM!

I, nearly immediately, received an extremely vituperative email. It was quite difficult to read because of the plethora of grammatical errors, but the gist was that I was against Rotney and always had been. And that she would be bringing her family to the conference.

So, I lawyered-up in the way that teachers lawyer-up. I had my Special Ed co-teacher there, as well as the lead teacher, principal, and the district elementary ed curriculum supervisor. This last member of the rally-around-and-support-me-crew totally took the wind out of the EA's sails. Well, not totally--she did state that she was happy the district person was there, because she had been advised to take the matter to her next, but she was definitely surprised to see her. She spent the next 40 minutes taking shots at me, my co-teacher, the lead teacher--it was like an arcade shooting gallery. Except I was able to refute what she said and even able to produce an email to Rotney's tutor that she said I refused to answer. Hah! Take that!

Nothing was resolved at the meeting. District person offered a transfer back to the school that had modified his grades to A's and B's last year, but transportation isn't available. They requested he be moved but the other inclusion class is full up, and sending him to another classroom isn't an attractive option. So I am still yet his teacher and stuck with the worst EA ever. Oh. Joy.