Report Card Day

I actually got my report cards finished on the day we’re supposed to do them! Normally, I’d be up late Monday night since they’re due Tuesday, but instead, they’re all in their envelopes in the file cabinet, ready to be handed out!

I got to work around 7:10 or so, because I was on the set-up committee. Every report card day we have something — breakfast for the first one, lunch for the second, and then I forget what the third is. Either the second or third includes a barbeque. So I signed up to help set up at 7:30. There were three people hanging around outside the office (at least one had the official TUSD name tag on), and I saw them talk to a couple of people. Then when I went to get paper for the cafeteria tables, they were sitting calmly in the office, which was otherwise empty. I almost left but finally asked them if whomever they were waiting for knew they were there. No, they were waiting for the principal, but hadn’t gotten hold of her since their email to her bounced. So I called her on my cell phone, which was in my pocket, and let her know they were there. While I was on the phone an assistant principal arrived, so the P had the AP take them around.

The people were there to install a certain (ten?) number of sound systems, and apparently one is going in my room since all the other teachers in my grade said they didn’t want it. Then the teacher wears a mike hooked up to this amplification system, instead of the student who’s hard of hearing wearing a box on his or her chest. The sound is amplified for all the students. Not that we have any students in fourth grade at the moment who medically need it, but hey. This year’s fourth graders are notoriously chatty, so it’ll be useful I suppose anyway!

I had an epiphany of sorts this week. Let’s start with the part where if I have a reason to feel sorry for myself, I drag in other reasons as well. What good’s a pity party without a lot of party favors, right? So one day recently I look at my bank account, which suddenly the New York Times sucked OVER $300 out of to renew a subscription that I cancelled in APRIL!!!! I called them on the phone and had a fit, and they said I’d have my money back. Did they do that? Of course not!!!!!! So I called them back and the lady looked it up and said “OH, THEY CREDITED THAT MONEY TO YOUR ACCOUNT.” WTF??????? I don’t have an account! I want the money back that you stole from my bank account!!!!!!! So she said I’d get it in ONE TO THREE WEEKS!!!!!!!!!!!! So once again I’m financially screwed over someone else’s incompetence. It’s driving me nuts, cuz I feel like I’ll never be normal financially, like able to just stop at the grocery store on the way home if I want to!

So of course, this leads to thoughts of my second favorite thing that’s fraught with problems, my car. So while I’m thinking that these things only happen to me, and everyone else is living happily ever after, I notice on my way home a tow truck. Now of course my car is not on that tow truck because my car is at home and it was a carpooling day. But the existence of the tow truck, and subsequent thoughts of the existence of AAA and repair places, led me to one conclusion: I’m actually not the only person this happens to. OK, yes, this was news to me. But if all these things exist, then perhaps other people have things go wrong with their cars, too! In fact, dare I acknowledge it, but I’ve actually SEEN cars on the side of the road that aren’t mine, that are in distress! Of course, the epiphany was short-lived, because really. It’s just not right to let reality interfere!

Google Earth

I was playing on Google Earth, and decided to show you my school. Where the School pushpin is, that is my portable. There are two more behind mine, two more behind the one across from mine, and a whole bunch more in the empty space. The baseball field is much smaller now! But now you can see how far I go to pick up my kids each morning and after lunch’s recess, how far I have to walk them to the cafeteria, where the bathroom trailer is (it wasn’t there then), library, school office, and SFA room. The SFA room matters because I have to lug tubs of books all the way over and back for my SFA class. Now we’re on a six day cycle, so I lug every six days instead of every five. As you can see, I get a lot of walking in!

I started carpooling, either last week or the week before. I’m not sure if I mentioned that or not. But it was too stressful to keep driving in the right lane so I could pull over if the car died, and worrying about if I’d make it to work and then make it home each day. I ride with a special ed teacher (the one who was in charge of the after-school English program I helped teach last year) and a third grade teacher (the one who I worked together with on some writing projects last year). So we go into work one day this week, and the special ed teacher discovered that someone had broken her classroom windows and bombed the room with a fire extinguisher. Our portables have metal grates over the windows (the one at the window fire exit is removable) so that isn’t something we worry about (not that we don’t have other issues, but it’d take like an ice pick and heavy rock banging against it to get at our windows). And yet there’s no surprise. These things happen somewhat regularly! So they are talking about (finally!) putting in security cameras.

H234

Or is it H1N1? I can’t keep these things straight. Not sure if I mentioned that I had two kids in reading class who missed many days of school. When one of them came back, I found out he’d been out with Swine Flu. He’s still not actually healthy, and is coughing the two hours I have him. Mr. Q’s class had eleven kids absent today. I only had four out sick, one moved, and one on vacation. Even one of the teachers was sent home with it. One school here was going to close, since they had a 41% infection rate.

Our school has a couple of problems with illnesses. First of all, a portion of our school is the Special Ed program. Some of these kids are medically fragile. Some are in the nurse’s office every day for tube feedings. This is not a place that you want full of swine flu germs. I found out today that the nurse is taking the special ed kids’ temps twice a day. Another problem is that parents send their kids to school sick, plus they don’t want to pick them up and take them home if they’re sick. This is the scenario — the uncle’s cousin’s neighbor’s grandfather is sick, so the whole family stays home from school. The kid himself or herself is actually sick, and they’re sent to school. At least half the parents don’t have phones, but of those that do, many don’t come pick their kids up, so they’re in the nurse’s office the entire day. We got a note that says if they have the list of symptoms, to send them straight to the nurse’s office, even if they just got to school.

Now, there’s never an actual “good” time to get sick, but this week is the end of the quarter. Tomorrow is our math test. I’m wondering how many kids will be there to take it!!

In the meantime, one boy was out all last week. I’d see is sister and ask if he was sick, and she’d say she didn’t know. She didn’t really seem to dense to know if her brother was sick or not, so I talked to the office about it. A few times. On Monday they found out that mom moved. She took two of the kids and Dad took the other two, so I was talking to one of Dad’s kids (who are still at our school).

***

Speaking of viruses, the Conficker virus has been going around the school district’s computers. Many were too old to even accept the patches, which is when I discovered, to my shock, that there are actually computers older than mine in classrooms! Well, actually, not any more! After their constantly trying to do this and that, they finally yesterday came and took all of our hard drives. They brought back nice, shiny ones today and got our computers going. I went to check my school email using the Outlook program, and it’s a totally different-looking one from what it’s been. Well, briefly. Then for the umpteenth time in the past few weeks we lost our server, all internet, and all phones. A student had to call home, so I had to have her use my cell phone. The front pocket of my purse has better technology than the entire rest of the school!

***

Half of Thursday and all of Friday, I went to an OMA workshop. That’s our non-existent music program that was teaching the fourth graders to play the violin prior to this year. The workshop was great — all about integrating the arts into the curriculum. Schools that have a full OMA program are cold OMA Gold. I told them my school is OMA Tinfoil. It was nice to be at a workshop with people who wanted to be there and who like teaching, and to learn new stuff. Friday they served an awesome lunch. Usually workshops have a nasty lunch, and it’s usually some version of chicken. There was some chickeny thing there, sort of like an afterthought, but the main meal was Mexican food. Yum!

***

I AM NO LONGER A STUDENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yes, indeedee, it’s true! My official last day of class was yesterday, although I was finished with all my work on Saturday. The teacher said he’d post our grades by Wednesday at the latest. Once he does that, I can get a transcript sent to the school district saying I have a nice, shiny Master’s degree!!!! I started August 5 or 6 of 2008 and the only time off I had was a brief vacation at Christmas. You can take a week off between classes, but I’d rather plow through, which I did!

I’ve not seen any graduation ceremonies in Tucson, even though they have an on-campus program here. Maybe they just do December and June. At least, I’m hoping! The other choices are getting up way too early to drive to Phoenix or to Yuma. So I may just skip the Walk. They don’t give you your diploma then anyway, and there won’t be a single person in the room who was in any of my classes.

That’s mostly what’s new. I don’t write much because sometimes I’m busy and sometimes I think I’m just talking to myself! Oh, well.

Dad’s Navy pics

Vera Chichester sent my father a bunch of pics from his (and her deceased husband’s) Navy days aboard the USS Hyman in the early 1950s. Some of these I scanned twice, each time making sure it was in the scanner perfectly straight, but they still scanned at an angle. Cheap machinery!

Dad with “a Roman cop”

“McCaffrey”

“Poppy”

“Fall River, Mass.”

“Harcklerode, one of our team opponents.”

“…Budd & Nolan”

“Joe Stahlin”

Art Idem with my father

my father and Chi (Chichester)

Classroom pics

I took pics yesterday so you could more fully grasp my classroom in all its glory.

The inviting exterior:

Ceiling:

Walls and cracks:

(That’s the outside world you see through that crack of light!)

Floorboards and misc. beauty:

Our source of drinking water; note that there are dead ants in the little catch thingy.

Antique computer with floppy drive. The CD/DVD drive is just for decoration. It doesn’t actually work.

Hope you enjoyed the tour! Please visit the gift shop on your way out!

Conferences, etc.

As usual, conferences had high points and low points and subsequent weirdness. There is the girl whose mother didn’t return the form because she didn’t want a conference. Her SFA teacher talked to me today, and she’s the same in SFA as my class. (I expressed my appreciation that she has her those two hours.) There is the foster mother who didn’t come to the Wednesday appointment, nor to the one I rescheduled for Thursday. No call, no note.

And then there’s the third appointment that didn’t happen. No show on Wednesday. I rescheduled. No show on Thursday. So on Friday, the kid walks in DURING someone else’s appointment and says his mom wants to talk to me! I told him that I was obviously in another conference and he wasn’t allowed to be in the room. So he stood in the doorway, inside the room, yelling information to his mom! We covered that he had to leave and that I’d be free in 15-20 minutes, so she called over an hour later, after I’d left for the weekend. Thus I got the message on Monday. I called her Monday and did a telephone conference. I expressed my concern with his very low math level. She said that he has no problems with the homework; comes in, sits right down and does it, and she checks it and it’s fine. So I’m thinking that maybe he’s simply distracted during class (which he is), except that his writing of numbers and his name just looks very … low. But mom assures me that it’s not true. Fine.

Today I find out from one of the assistant principals that he was suspended for 3 days at his last school for fighting. I mention that there was a shoving incident at the beginning of the year, but no problem otherwise. She’s curious and is going to get more information. That’s at lunch. So she gets back to me — he as a MR designation! I forget what the exact designation is, because it took a while for me to figure out what she was telling me! He was in a normal class last year, but it turns out that’s because that school only had normal classes. We have a whole large special ed department. So tomorrow she’s going to talk to our person and see if he needs to be moved to special ed. I gave her the data I had — his two test scores (both 50%), his timed addition (he hasn’t passed the addition yet) and multiplication scores, but also pointed out his writing on those tests (I had some samples that hadn’t been handed back yet). So, he might be moving. Then again, if he goes to the class I’m thinking he’d go to, he’d probably be coming back to my class for science with the other mainstreamed science kiddos. I did point out to the assistant principal that the functioning levels of so many of my other students makes it hard for him to stand out the way he would in a more normal class! Which brings me to another conference.

I have kids with specific issues — one has a low IQ but not low enough for special ed, one is autistic, one is in speech but I think has another designation that I don’t know about, and one is in LD pull-out. Then there’s this other student. The LD pull-out teacher knows him, and I got the feeling he’d been tested or at least referred. I really wanted to find out at conferences what was known, had been done, etc. So I try to bring up the discussion with the obvious part — he can’t follow two-step directions (put the paper in your folder and your folder in your backpack). In fact, he can’t actually follow one-step directions without a whole lot of support. The way he uses/moves his body, his speech, his behavior, everything about him makes him stand out as a not-average child. So I mention the directions and mom is all upset because she’s never heard a bad word about him and only great conferences about how polite he is, etc. Yes, he’s polite, but that’s just a small piece of him. At that point I was stunned to realize that she thinks her son is perfectly normal. Yes, she eventually admitted that he doesn’t always follow directions at home either, but she sees no problem with him, which means that there’s really nothing I can do at this point.

***

Yesterday the subject of the building vs. the portables came up, and it was pointed out that the portables are substandard. Nice. It’s true, but I tried to stop thinking about it!

Tuuuuesdaaaaaay Afternoon

Parent teacher conferences technically start tomorrow, although I had my first one yesterday. One girl didn’t bring back her slip because there was no place for mom to mark that she didn’t want a conference. Can you guess which parent I most need to speak to?

I went around town this afternoon looking for the cheapest multiplication flash cards I could find. Got six at one place and six more at another. The dollar store didn’t have any, so I went across the street to another dollar store. Note to self — start at that one next time. A true dollar store, with plenty of flash cards. I also went to buy gas at my Mobil — which turned into a Shell since I last got gas a couple of weeks ago. It’s a good thing there’s a Shell there, because otherwise the nearest Shell station is … oh, yeah. Right across the street at the same intersection. One is at the southeast corner and the other is at the northeast corner. The northwest corner has a gas station belonging to the grocery store. The remaining corner is obviously some sort of slacker.

Even though it’s already Tuesday evening, I still have all the same students I had on Monday!!! Amazing, eh? Even more amazing, no one was absent today!

Noah’s Ark

Aside from kids coming and going, I’ve had other adventures this week as well. Thursday night I’m at the computer, and I hear a burbling sound — sort of like an aquarium. If I had fish, I’d be OK with hearing that sound, but I don’t. I traced the sound to the bathroom, where there was two inches of water on the floor! The toilet wouldn’t stop running, and water was just pouring out like a lovely little waterfall! Eventually I got it to stop (something in the tank was stuck), and used up every towel and flannel sheet (except one towel for my shower) to sop up the water. First I took my mop to the bathroom, and stood there. Little mop. Big water. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Just love the adventures of my life!

On the plus side, I got my airplane tickets last night!! Here’s the plan: Donna will come down here I guess that weekend. We’d celebrate (if they want) Christmas with the folks, and then go up to Phoenix and celebrate it with the other folk (i.e. my mother). The we fly out of Phoenix bright and early Tuesday morning. Getting the tickets was tricky — we can’t return via Chicago because planes only pretend to fly from Madison to Chicago. They never actually get to do it. I also needed a flight back that’s early enough for me to get a shuttle from the Phoenix airport back down to my house. I also didn’t want to pay $900 for a ticket unless it included foot massages and a great meal! No lie — there are actually tickets for that week that are as high as a bit over a thousand dollars per person round trip. And that’s not first class!

The Skokie years, 1969-1974

Including visits back to New Jersey in 1970 and 1972

Grandmother. OMG — in this picture, my grandmother is around 6 1/2 years older than I am now!!!

I always loved this picture of Liane.

Sandy Hunt and I, 8th grade graduation. My mother made that dress, because my school colors were purple and white. I really liked it, even though I think I only wore it that once.

Post-Skokie years:

These were my high school friends. The pics aren’t clear, but I still saved them all these years and can still pick out many of the people!

New Jersey years, 1961-1969

4th birthday

Going to Kindergarten in my lavender coat

Aunt Lee

Donna, one Christmas

the monkey bars I fell off of and got a concussion from!

The park always had all sorts of summer activities for kids. This was a bike event.

The Phoenix cousins — I don’t remember why I cut the bottom off, but I think it was to fit this into one of those large collage frames.