Finally.. a relaxing weekend.. sort of
It's been a crazy couple of weeks. Report cards went out on the 17th and we just finished parent-teacher interviews yesterday. March was an insane month.. I did not teach one full week at all this month! I had a parent ask me yesterday whether everything is ok because she thought that perhaps I was sick or something with all the different supply teachers my class has had this month.
It has not been good for the kids and I've been experiencing teacher-guilt for being away so much. It did however provide many opportunities for me to collaborate with colleagues, to visit another school to observe another teacher teach (and to realize that there ARE students out there who DO listen and pay attention! It was crazzzzzzzzzy to sit there and hear the teacher count down from 5 and see all eyes on her and nobody chatting.. I was in awe.....), and to get some much needed work done.
Parent teacher conferences went extremely well this time and I'm soooooooo happy. Many of the parents were very supportive and were actually quite pleased with the kids' results this term. Most of them showed improvement in all areas.
The other piece of good news is that I finally got word on a classroom composition grant that I applied for in November. I now have a teacher who will work with my class each Wednesday from now until the end of the year. She works with another teacher the other 4 days of the week. I can use her however I would like - have her take over the class for the day, have her work with small groups, or have the both of us co-teach. I'm still not quite sure what I'd like to do yet because I really have to be able to really trust her in order to leave my kids with her one day a week from now until the end of June. Our philosophies (such as classroom discipline and expectations, how we see learning and teaching, etc..) also have to very similar else things will be difficult.
Anyhow, the last month has left me drained of energy. I'm truly exhausted from all the late nights (this past week, there was not one day that I got home before 8pm or later.. 12+ hr working days...).
Blogmania
Our school (or perhaps me) is under a blog "attack". We've got about 11 blogs in total! I began a new one for our citizenship facilitator who is currently in Uganda. He wanted me to post his journal entries on our school site but I felt it would be so much easier if he just posted them on a blog.. so another blog was born.
We also have one for our school news which automatically updates to the school website. Since most people are technophobes (some have a hard time just with e-mail), I thought it'd be easier having them post to a blog. The hard part is getting everyone setup with their school accounts. We are actually going to hold an after school session on how to activate their accounts and how to start posting sometime next week.
Each blog is being monitored through goggle analytics and the blogs that ARE active DO have activity. That's so encouraging!
Alright, this post is all an excuse not to go to bed.. I've been so exhausted all week because of all the millions of things going on at school and because report cards go out tomorrow. There has not been one day this week that I have not been to school. It's pathetic. I spent the entire afternoon there yesterday!! One hour always turns into two or three.. or five. SO, GOOD NIGHT.
A Good One
I had a collaborative release day today and my colleague was reading this aloud to me and another teacher. I was pretty steamed at first...
Teachers' Salary
Teachers' hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or 10 months a year! It's time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do--babysit!
We can get that for less than minimum wage. Right? Let's give them $3.00 an hour and pay them for the hours they actually work, not any of that silly planning time.
That would be $19.50 a day (7:00 AM to 3:30 (or so) PM with just 25 min. off for lunch). Each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children.
NOW...How many do they teach in a class, 30? So that's $19.50 x 30 = $585.00 a day.
However, remember they only work 180 days a year!!! We're not going to pay them for any vacations.
LET'S SEE....That's $585 x 180= $105,300 per year. What about those special teachers and the ones with master's degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage, and just to be fair, round it off to $7.00 an hour. That would be $7 x 6 1/2 hours x 30 children x 180 days = $245,700 per year.
Wait a minute--there's something wrong here! Average teacher salary $50,000/180 days = $277/per day/30 students = $9.23/6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per student.
A very inexpensive baby-sitter and they even try - with your help - to EDUCATE your kids! WHAT A DEAL.... And the parents don't even have to buy us pizza!
Make a teacher smile; send this to someone else who appreciates teachers.
Procrastinating...yet again...
As you know, I've been marking their writing for the last few days.. actually, EVERYDAY this week (ARGH!). I've still got two pieces of writing to mark.. may not mark the last one, but I have to mark their writing assessments. Brutal. So I thought I'd post a blog entry :P
I forgot to mention that I was out on a collaborative planning day last week. It was originally to plan some global education lessons that could be implemented at the grade 3-5 level. Sometimes, things just happen and everything falls into place. Saying that, I received an email from a teacher-friend who is now serving in the Canadian forces in Afghanistan. I had originally told him that I'd get my students to write him and his soldier colleagues some letters. He wrote me saying that instead of writing letters, could we send some supplies for the children? He told me that he saw so many children who were living in poverty, not having so many basic items such as shoes, soap, underwear, etc..
SO, I brought this up during my collaborative time and we set forth to quickly plan a supply drive. I did up a package of lesson plans, guiding questions, book list and even found a video that could be shown to the children at our school about the children in Afghanistan. (Found on Youtube: Part I Part II)
This all comes in nicely with the theme that was set forth by our citizenship facilitator, Cory Richardson. I mentioned a couple of posts ago that he is working on a project called "Stitch Uganda Together". (If anyone is interested in finding out more or making a donation, let me know and I'll send you more information). I'm not sure I talked about exactly what he is doing, but he is trying to raise money to purchase sewing machines for a group of Orphans in Uganda (they live on a farm called Opak farms) where they will be making hammocks and selling them in order to become self-sustainable. He's been working with our grade 5-8 students and they have been creating a ton of wonderful things - decorating their own t-shirts, making "wind chimes", hammocks, etc. I'm not really aware of all the mini projects he's doing because my kids are not involved, but I have seen some of the things they've created up and around the school. He made this "wind chime" out of a piece of driftwood and hunt an old fork and a couple of "crystals" on it and hung it from the ceiling over the stairs in the grade 3-5 wing. Something so simple, yet it "beautified" the school. The kids were actually learning over the banister because they really wanted to play with it (it got taken down for fear that we'd have a kid fall over the banister and down the stairs but it will be hung up again in a safer location). Anyhow, there will be a link to all this (Afghanistan and Uganda projects) from our school website someday in the near future.
I probably also forgot to mention that I revamped the school website over the holidays. Lots of positive feedback. I'm also very encouraged because people seem to be actually looking at it and wanting to use it to pass on information to students and the community.
Alright. I really should get back to marking. Enough procrastinating. Ciao.
Breaks my heart...
I've been marking my class' journals. Each Monday, I ask them to write about their weekends. I really should be checking them more often .. it gives me a sense of what they are experiencing at home..
Some of the entries that are on the verge of making me cry:
"This weekend, I went to my Aunt Karen's to babysit my 2 cousins, Madison and Julia. Madison is 2 and Julia is 10 months old. The reason that I went over is because my Aunt Karen was going crazy because of my god father, Anthony. So, she went out to the bar to get drunk. Then, on Saturday, I went home and Anthony was mad because he thought that me and my mom were going to babysit the kids again, so he was mad."
This is the same child whose mother decided that on her birthday, she wanted to not have her son around.. I mean, I can somewhat understand wanting to celebrate adult style, but .. her son obviously knows she wants a "break" from him. He's also the one who was supposedly ADHD since Kindergarten, and recently discovered that he's Asperger's. He also had a miserable Christmas holiday as his step siblings all got this video game or something and he was the ONLY one that didn't get one. His stepsister spent the remainder of the holidays taunting him about it. :(
Another entry: "On my weekend, I played Poker with my brother and my dad and my dad's girlfriend."
Short and simple but oh so disturbing. A third grader playing POKER!?!?!? WHAT!? He's a bright child.. very quick in Math, but very weak in reading and writing. He's got the sweetest little face, but he's had a lot of problems in school. He has had his moments throughout this year, but I've heard he's improved a great deal since last year. He told me that his MOTHER told him that his 19 year old brother went to a strip club for his birthday and that his older brother is not going to finish school. *Sigh*.
Some entries make me laugh, but these ones, are just plain sad.
