Long day – testing

Testing testing – guess what! OD is NOT blocked by my school’s new firewalls! And so far, this works pretty well on my school chromebook. Just cannot add pictures in that are not in my Google Drive…. SO, I will just have to add a picture of my classroom to my drive. It’s messy, and the walls are covered in student work, and it is freaking dark outside and there is a GOOD chance there is a cougar on the property… But there is where I spend most of my life, and I am really glad I like it.

 

Today I have school, but I don’t have school. It is a conference day, and from 7:30 am to 7:30 pm, I am hanging out waiting to talk to parents. At this point in time I have been up for 13 hours, and been at school for 11 of them. I am to the point that I cannot do anything with my brain.

If my students were here right now, I would tell them “Sorry, I can’t brain right now,” and they would laugh and understand. AH, the joy of working with teenagers; they make me crazy, but they also understand my crazy.

For so many reasons, my school is very different. We are small, so I am a class adviser, and I basically do career/college advising, and graduation tracking for a class. I am permanent Senior graduation adviser, and I am now officially in charge of our Advisory classes, and will be not only rewriting the curriculum for it, but for creating and implementing a new tracking system.

All this on top of my regular job of teaching English 9, 10, 11, and 12, College Eng Wr 115 (and normally Wr 121 and Eng 104, except this year none of my students qualified for it), teaching 7th Grade English for the remainder of this quarter, and a College/Career prep course. Then, I am also the lead High School teacher because, as I tell my students “I am the adultiest adult in the High School” – and they laugh and understand… I am also the only female on the high school staff, and am just a bit of a control freak, but we also get a lot done as a high school team.

This year, we only have 14 seniors, but of those only 10 have the possibility of making it to graduation IF they start passing their classes. It is so frustrating to see such smart young people willingly sabotage themselves. I have talked to them so many times, and I still don’t get how refusing to turn in work in a class because they are mad at the teacher serves any purpose at all – all they do is screw themselves over… One would hope that by 17/18 they would understand Cause and Affect/Effect.

 

Well, it is 6:16pm now. I am done in 1:15… and I have three more conferences actually scheduled, so I better get on it…

Log in to write a note
November 20, 2017

I can’t imagine how hard it must be to be the teacher side of parent-teacher conferences!

November 20, 2017

Wow, you are carrying quite a load!!!!!!! Kudos. I also feel badly that now-a-days the media is so influential on young people, and NOT in a good way. But, hopefully your class will take it more seriously, soon. I am adding you, hope it’s ok.

November 20, 2017

Oh, to be young and self-sabotaging again! Keep up the good fight.

November 21, 2017

Oh wow, that is a lot of work! Good on you for managing all that, I know I couldn’t!

I am sure most of them do know what they’re doing serves no good purpose, but when you’re young there’s very little you can control. Choosing to do work for classes, or not, is one of the few ways they can make their voice heard …even if it’s not doing them any good, or serving the actual purpose they want it to. So it’s really less an issue of self-sabotage and more an issue of self-control. 😐