One crazy day

Wednesday, January 31, 2007.

This is on the heels of, Tuesday afternoon, a bunch of students coming and talking to me about how four boys in the class are giving them problems.

(1) Tired, I vaguely manage to stumble out of bed, not really eating breakfast, and I pull in the school gate at 7:57 as it is being locked. I have no idea what I am going to teach.

(2) The principal arrives for my official annual evaluation around 8:30. Remember, I have no idea what I'm actually doing on this day. Not entirely true, I guess... we always do a warmup and go over homework. When we finish that, we go to the ESL reading textbook and just do the next story, which I haven't read at all, and don't have the teacher's guide with me for.

(3) Principal, at length, leaves. I switch classes to my mentor's classroom while he comes in to talk to them about TAKS writing strategies and I have to watch his kids for half an hour.

(4) I return, and take my students to library. Rest!

(5) Taking them out of the library, librarian tells me she was tired of four of them screwing around (as am I), sent them to social worker, social worker has notes for home, they have to go to counseling for behavior problems. Okay.

(6) Social worker comes to my class. Asks what I did to follow up on yesterday. Did I speak to the principal? I say I have scheduled a parent conference for 4:30 but I didn't speak to the principal. Didn't know I was supposed to. She offers to take all of them--the boys and the complainers, so about half the class--to the office. I say okay.

(7) Lunch. Another respite.

(8) After lunch, I lose a bunch of people for various intervals while the office interviews everyone. Eventually, they all get sent back to my class in time for the end of the day. End of day goes surprisingly smoothly and I dismiss.

(9) Students come in after school for tutorials. One of the boys who got in trouble, [z] comes in and mumbles something to me about "[x] and [y] are in the office because they were looking at porno or something." Huh????

(10) About 10 minutes later, boy [x] comes into the room, crying, and puts his head down. I do feel slightly bad, but not horribly so. Boy [y] comes in about 5 minutes later, not quite as emotional. Eventually they join tutorials. I'm pretty sure those are suspension letters, but for what? They read the letters to themselves... yep... "Nivel III...Mirando revista pornográfica". Suspended at home for a day.

(11) [x]'s parents come in for the meeting (that I arranged yesterday). Things have changed quite a bit since then. I just say "ehhh... a lot more has happened today" and start to explain. Principal comes into the hall in the middle and explains. Etc, etc.

(12) At some point, I go home. Principal does inform me that [z] actually told on [x], [y] and the rest. heh.

(13) Today, I teach class and it goes really well! But the suspension was only one day... so here comes tomorrow.

On the bright side also, I got the results of the observation today, and somehow it went really well.