This is my world:
A student’s brother was killed last (school) year in a convenience store parking lot by gang members. This weekend they’re having a car wash so that they can buy him a headstone for his grave.
Another student asked me at the end of the day if I had something for “this” — which turned out to be a scrape on her throat, where there was also a major bruise…from where her twin brother started kicking her face. It happened last night and the police came and took pictures of her face and throat. This was as calm as saying that someone did laundry.
Two students were absent yesterday, so they had to take the math test today. One was done very quickly — the one who is the one of the lowest students. That’s because he simply put a line through most of the answer spaces on the second page. That was simply easier than doing the multiplication on the test (stuff like 37 x 5). I made him take it back and answer the questions.
I get an email from the assistant principal who likes to torment me about math scores. Maybe I could talk to this other teacher to see how she gets high test scores. Um, of my students who didn’t pass, seven failed the third grade AIMS in math. So they were a year behind before we ever got to the multiplication, and I was excited that they all know at least some multiplication facts! That is great progress! Two more who failed would have failed the AIMS if they had been in Arizona schools and taken it. If you compare their pretest scores to their post-test scores, learning happened. I personally think going from a 15% on a pretest to 69 (or even 79, since only 80 and above are passing) is rather phenomenal, especially for students who are already behind and/or already have learning disabilities!
So I started to talk (vent?) to that other teacher, and before I’d barely started she said “You opened an email, didn’t you.” (um, yeah) She doesn’t open them. She sticks with the “my computer wasn’t working” story and slides through life much calmer for it!
I’m being bribed with chocolate chip cookies (homemade) to help with teaching the teachers how to use the same reading data web site that I’ve spent a lot of time trying to teach people to use. I got to name my price. Looking forward to those cookies on Tuesday!
My NaNoWriMo story is moving right along. The plot thickens. That’s good, because otherwise it sounds like an awful lot of whiny!
