Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Two weeks, four days, and counting.

SO I have a partner teacher. She's very sweet. She's supposed to be in charge of the 6-7 special ed kids I have in my first two classes. However, she's not a math teacher. This means that I have to make extra copies of everything, including keys to worksheets and tests, because she can't do them. I have to grade all the tests because she can't grade the work, only the answers.

Did I tell you she's very sweet?

She's not happy about the arrangement. She is normally a social studies teacher, and was very alarmed when they put her in Algebra. She can't help me teach, because she doesn't know Algebra. She's supposed to be a special education teacher, but she can't help the special ed kids. She wants to do more, but she can't. She feels bad about this. She's retiring next month. Meanwhile, she wants to be useful.

So finally, I asked her to grade some quizzes for me. Multiple-choice ones. Sounds easy, right? I mean, you look, the key says C, so if their answer isn't C, you mark it wrong. Except that I didn't give her the key and she didn't want to bother me, and she doesn't know enough about Algebra to make one. So she decided to try to "help" me more by doing some other stuff, like consolidating my files. Without asking me.

I told you how sweet she is, right?

She showed me the result: very large files labled with each period that had all of their work in it. All of it. She'd taken the papers that were graded and not recorded, turned in but not graded, and recorded but not yet passed back--and put them all in one big file. Mixed them all together. Aieee.

"Um, Eleanor? Um, did you notice that some of the files said, "IN" and some said, "OUT"?

"You mean I mixed all that up? Oh, dear...you must be furious with me!"

Sigh. I decided that I was going to have to fix this myself. What else could I do? I can't let her have access to my electronic gradebook, to see which ones are recorded and which ones aren't. Besides, there's only so many deep, cleansing breaths that a person can take before they go postal and scream out, "Get the eff away from my files!"

Meanwhile, I'm supposed to be writing 5-6 pages of "reflection" on how my year went for my annual evaluation because apparently, now, it's now my job to tell my supervisors how I did. (I have decided that, since it's up to me, I did awesome.) I was going to spend the morning writing my reflection, which is due Thursday morning, but instead, I sorted through the very large snafu.

I'm so glad not to have to do this crap again next year. I'll still have crap, but it will be different crap, and new crap is sometimes interesting. For a while.

Oh, and have I told you how tired I am of gangsters and their posturing and their stupid baggy damned pants and their stupid grafitti and their stupid blue and white everything? Well, I am.

...

15 comments:

  1. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
    Congrats on not palm-heeling that well-meaning yet unbelievably stupid person in the nose.
    Are you sure you can't fit a margarita somewhere in your points?

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  2. Crap like this makes long races seem easier.
    Really.
    The next time you are hurting during a race, think of the classroom. A difficult day in the classroom.
    Suddenly you will be happier! I promise you!

    And the "Gansta" look...my tongue hurts from biting it.
    Once I said to a kid "I want to see you run in those pants"-
    I hope he doesn't know what my car looks like, as it may mysteriously get "tagged".
    Sad thing is, they are pasty, flabby, out-of-shape kids and we could kick their asses.

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  3. I bow down to your self-control. I would have lost it.

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  4. Anonymous7:51 PM

    You're not allowed to be mad at people named Eleanor. I think that's a rule or something. Ditto for Cosmo, or Dorothy, or Evelyn.

    Old people rules.

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  5. I'm pretty sure that murder is legal in that situation.

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  6. I did some tutoring in a San Francisco high school a few years ago. It's a public school and they don't have uniforms but the entire school district has the following dress code:

    Dress policy includes tops, pants, shoes & outerwear that are black, gray, khaki, & white. Head gear outside only.

    It is posted on signs in the halls and strictly enforced. No questions. It has done wonders for discipline.

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  7. Breathe! Relax! Count to 100.

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  8. We used to have that. Hunter green, navy, white, and tan. Collared polo shirts. Then the district grew, and new people moving in starting complaining bitterly that the dress code was putting them out of pocket. Whine, whine. Eventually administration and the school board caved. Now it's pretty much anything goes. I've seen G-strings on 8th-graders.

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  9. What I mean to say is, there are 8th-grade girls wearing low-rider jeans, and when they sit down, their g-strings stick out.

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  10. Oh. My. God.
    I would have poked here eyes out. Sweetly.

    I love self evals. I have to do one for myself every year that NO ONE looks at. I have turned in the exact same one for the past 12 years, not changed one word, just the date. Apparently they agree - I AM perfect! We also have to set goals each year, the fulfillment of which determines the amount of my raise...... now who in their right mind would set goals they couldn't achieve and set themselves up to receive less than their full raise?? Duh.

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  11. I don't get the "dress code eating a hole in the pocket book" complaint. In Rio Rancho, we still have a dress code and while it irritated me at first that my kindergartener couldn't even wear striped, brightly colored shirts, it's not like the clothes cost any more than any other clothes. You still have to buy your kid clothes as they grow, right? Why not buy solid colored polos? Besides, stores know the dress code and around August all of this stuff goes on sale for astonishingly cheap amounts.

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  12. Shinola on a S*^!T STICK!! UGH,I have had almost the same thing happen here at work. Gotta keep on smiling, afterall, her name is Eleanor....

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  13. Okay, Skip to the very end. What's with the blue and white everything?

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  14. You are awesome! hang in there-its almost over!!

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  15. The Surenos Crips are the dominant gang in my classes. They only wear blue and white. They won't even use a red pen. They either wear all white, or blue and white, or sometimes shades of grey. They'll often carry blue and white bandanas.

    ReplyDelete

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