So my students like to chat with me. When there is time, they come over and just talk to me. So Friday, J said that his birthday was Saturday. (He was sick today — must’ve been some party! Well, actually, he wasn’t feeling that well on Friday.) So we talked about birthdays, and T said that hers is in the summer (June) but they never celebrate it (her foster family).
Later in the day, we tired the little angels out. They were getting squirrely from not being able to be outside and having to be careful once they’re there because of the thick mud. We’d decided that on Thursday afternoons, the different fourth grade classes would run/walk playground laps together, but the next two Thursdays it was too awful to do so (rainy, muddy, etc.). So on Friday I asked another teacher if she wanted to “practice” at 1:30. It gave our kids a chance to start getting back in shape. Y (ya gotta love her) says “But Miss! I like being fat!” So after a while we herded the pooped little angels back to the classroom with promises of water and that the bell was going to ring soon so they could go home. “Just think,” I told them. “You get to go home and take a nap! I have to stay another hour!” T said that no, she couldn’t, because she’s in a program. I asked what kind of program. Day care. She’s in day care until 7 every day after school (they get out at 2:06 except Wednesdays, when they get out at 1:06.) I asked her why she’s there until 7, and she said “Because that’s when they close.” So the child who was adopted by T’s foster mother gets picked up at 2:06 and taken right home, and the younger one is home, but T has to stay at a day care center until 7 every night. And yet, from what she said today, being there beats being home with the foster mom all weekend.
Then there’s B. He’s allergic to homework. And the truth. Today he didn’t have his homework done, for the ninth or tenth time since we returned from winter break less than a month ago. Last week I spoke to his father, and he’s grounded, but that had no effect. Part of the grounding is no doubt for lying. He told me that he couldn’t do the work because he was helping his father. We have phones in our rooms, so I told him to call his father and have his father tell me that. Well, his father said that he sat all the kids down to do their homework, and after doing reading, B insisted that he didn’t have any other homework (like the math he was avoiding). The father asked two or three times. Then B helped him for like ten minutes.
He’s also on detention until he can manage to turn in his homework five days in a row. He was up to three. So I made him write a note to the assistant principal who’s in charge of discipline matters. He left a lot out, but did say “don’t call my dad because I’m already in trouble!” Well, at the end of Christmas break I made these data notebooks, based on what I’d seen other teachers do on-line. So I added more (and more accurate) information to the bottom of B’s note, and put it in the data notebook, and sent him to the office. The notebook included two calendar pages showing which days he did and didn’t turn in homework (one for math, one for reading). Another two pages where his MEP scores. This is a new test we did at the end of October, which is supposed to be an AIMS predictor, and showed that where he was at for that point and time was that he wouldn’t pass the AIMS (which I could’ve told you without the test). All his math test scores for the year were there, and his two writing (essay) test scores (one each quarter). I also included in the note that this quarter he was dropped down to a lower reading level.
The office loves data. Here, with the notebook, I was able to show that he is not exactly on the path to success. She called me with him in the office and said that he said he’s only missing reading homework but did all the homework for my class. I pointed out that he lies like a rug and if she looks at the math page, she’d see all the times he didn’t turn in his math homework. So basically, he’s toast at the moment. But there’s still time for him to turn things around and pass the AIMS and pass fourth grade, and this is the point. He was behind before he came to us at the beginning of the year (and then went to a different school for a few months in the middle of the year), and can’t afford to just not feel like doing his homework.
I hate full moons.