Why is it that the first week back from a break is the longest week ever????

The week was rough. Long. Insane. Exhausting.

Monday was a long day . . . we had an incident occur over the Feb break with five of our students. Four of our senior boys gang raped a junior girl at a party and another one of our senior boys watched it. The kids were all wound up and chatty about it. In my Current World Affairs class, one of the kids brought it up as a "Current Event" and I told them that the police reports were off limits for discussion for Current Events. All they wanted to do was gossip about what happened and I refused to discuss it with them. This isn't the only time they've done this in class. A few weeks ago, one of our bus drivers was arrested for domestic abuse - he beat the hell out of his son with a baseball bat. I have his son in one of my classes. The Current World Affairs class tried to "discuss it" and I shut they down and said NO! It's not appropriate. They just don't get it . . . . .

We had a dept meeting on Wednesday and it got a little nasty. We were discussing common assessments (midterm and final exams) and members of my dept are totally against it. I understand their perspective but this is the world of No Child Left Behind . . . . we have NO choice! We are being told by our Superintendent and Principal to accomplish this task. Just do it. Get over it. End of story. Most schools in this country have been doing common assessments for years. Every school I've ever worked at has common assessment for midterm and finals. People began turning against each other in this meeting. I just sat there and shook my head. Afterwards, my colleagues on the freshman team and I went downstairs and commented on how relieved we are that the four of us like working together and are open minded and willing to do what needs to get done for this common assessment stuff.

I had a melt down on my housemaster aka Asst. Principal on Friday about my SPED co-teacher. I have officially hit the wall with him. I got pulled out of class for a meeting on Thursday so they had a sub for me plus he's supposed to be in the room. When I returned at the end of the day, the sub wrote down all these horrible stuff about my kids and how some kids left the room and didn't come back, some were disruptive, etc. I was curious about where was my lovely SPED teacher so the next day, I confronted him and he told me two different stories. One story was he said he had a meeting. The other story was the sub told him that she didn't need him and he could leave - which story is it? And, since when does a sub tell a teacher what they should do? I need to point out that he's also under the assumption that when the regular ed teacher is out of the class, he doesn't have to be in the classroom - a few of the SPED teachers think this way but from what I'm told, it's NOT the RULE. The other huge issue I have is that every one of my students on an IEP in the co-taught class is failing my class. I do the best I can with the accommodations but this man does nothing. It's HIS JOB to follow all the IEP's too. He doesn't even know the kids or even their names! Sitting in the back of my classroom and falling asleep is the name of game for this teacher. My housemaster told me he's going to interview the other three history teachers in the freshman house to see if the SPED teacher does the same thing in their classes. Off the record, they tell me he sleeps and does nothing in their classes too. I'll be curious to see if they tell the truth about this guy. I understand that they don't want the guy to lose his job but this is about the kids not getting their legal rights. By law, these accommodations need to be met. Unfortunately, most of our parents don't understand the IEP (due to language issues) so these kids have no advocate for their education. So I guess the advocate would be me. I'll update soon.

And, I'm working all weekend at the doggie store. I really need a vacation!

So, that's the scoop on the past week. Makes ya want to run out and become a teacher, doesn't it???