Closing in on Chaos
Dec. 3rd, 2004 10:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
omorkaSo that week was . . . not entirely unlike having to run a marathon while up to one's ankles in blackstrap molasses. Exhausting, frustrating, sticky, and vaguely unpleasant-smelling, but at least it was different.
We began with a faculty meeting - literally, during the first class period I was back at school this week. I really, really hate these "small-group" faculty meetings. One-quarter of the faculty is not sufficiently "small-group" to allow for the "dialogue" our CP says she wants. If she really wanted that, she'd visit the monthly departmental meetings. What is successfully does is tie up all the administrators and specialists for a whole day, instead of one after-school meeting, and keeps us from getting any grading or planning done that day, either.
The school has changed its tardy policy, on account of the old one sucked. Unfortunately, what they have replaced it with sucks at least as much. IMHO, it's worse, but I'm apparently outvoted - they actually did survey the staff before they made the change. One aspect of the suckage is that I lose 10 minutes of every off period writing "tardy tickets" for students who are caught in the hallways after the bell rings. That's 50 minutes per week.
I had bus duty for 20 minutes after school every day this week, but I signed up for that. The problem was that of the three other people who were supposed to show up, none of them remembered all five days and two of them were only there for two of the five. I did bus duty alone yesterday. At least I got a bit of schadenfreude out of it - the APs noticed. They even thanked me for being there on time.
We had a team meeting on Tuesday. This eventually resulted in my two idjit teammates getting their exam questions to me today. *whack whack whack* On the bright side of that one, Coach D's test questions are, in fact, improving over time. This is partially because he's copying my questions from the previous year, but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, ne? And he actually went and got a pretty good one from a textbook we don't use in class for the review.
I had six kids show up for tutorials on the same day. Two of them were only there for the first twenty minutes, and then left. Then three drama kids (including the one I've been calling Drama, who will now be Drama Guy, and another whom I hereby name Drama Girl, who in face, size, and manner reminds me a Hel of a lot of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
follybard) showed up. After they'd been there about twenty minutes (at this point, school has been out for an hour), Debate showed up, and proceeded to sit in the back, tipping my desk over onto the two left-side legs, without any paper or pencil, mostly kibitzing but occasionally solving a vector problem in his head. Then he managed to get into a political discussion with Drama Girl, which I tried to referee - unsuccessfully, as Debate managed to get me involved. He then stopped himself and declared that, in deference for those who were actually there for tutoring, he would "finish this conversation later." (The last time he said that, we didn't. Probably a good thing.) After a few minutes, he packed up and left again. The Drama kids then proceeded to chat with me about out theater program and its discontents, and left at about 4:40.
On Wednesday, I actually got an off period, miracle of miracles. After school, the chess club mostly played M:tG instead. Debate showed up, walloped most of the other players with a rather scary elf deck, borrowed a blue deck from another player and walloped them with that, too, and then left without saying anything to me at all.
Yesterday, we had a meeting with our secondary math coordinator for the district. Our API showed up for the meeting, which I expected. Our CP also showed up, which we had not expected! While I channelled She Who Complains, I was not the only one for once! DD, RJ, and (shock!) BVV also aired coherent, well-considered grievances. We also shared some of our successes, which I thought was surprisingly morale-boosting - this is a far, far better department than the one I was hired into. (And I'd like to think that some small part of that is, in fact, my doing, although I know much of it has been solid hiring by Mr. B and Ms. HR.)
(Have I mentioned that if I were on the same floor, I'd be seriously struggling with a crush on RJ? He reminds me, I swear, so much of me when I was at the same experience level - and it's so great to have someone airing the same concerns about rigor and challenge that I do! Plus, he's tall, intelligent, awkward, and cares about things.)
After the math meeting, I ran down to bus duty. Immediately afterward, I ran to the South Gym for the Mu Alpha Theta yearbook picture, which about a fourth of the club missed. I was irked. However, apparently some of the kids didn't get the e-mail; we may need to check our announcement list.
Then I ran up to the Library for the third installment of our Reading Strategies book talk. Now, I missed the first one because it was on the Thursday that CMA started, so this might not have been the case on the first meeting, which was run by an outside "expert" (:rolleyes:) from the district admin building, rather than our librarians, who ran the other two. But at both the ones I went to, a third of the attendees at this thing - a Reading/Literacy meeting, remember - were Math faculty, and no English people showed up. (Note to self: do the Staff Development rant tomorrow.)
Today, I had most of an off period. The secretary who runs our Graduate Center did ask for ten minutes of my time, but it turned out she wanted me to sit on a scholarship committee for some building scholarships in the spring. I said of course I'd do it.
Debate was absent today - apparently he was at a state debate tournament up in Austin.
The older sister of one of my students is a teacher here at the school, and she had the equivalent of a parent conference with me after school. At least she listened; I showed her what his grades were when he did the homework, and when he didn't, and she got the "that's so not what he told me" look. Yeee.
I have a staff development in freaking Rosenberg tomorrow. Why are the G/T Co-Op sessions never in HISD?
We began with a faculty meeting - literally, during the first class period I was back at school this week. I really, really hate these "small-group" faculty meetings. One-quarter of the faculty is not sufficiently "small-group" to allow for the "dialogue" our CP says she wants. If she really wanted that, she'd visit the monthly departmental meetings. What is successfully does is tie up all the administrators and specialists for a whole day, instead of one after-school meeting, and keeps us from getting any grading or planning done that day, either.
The school has changed its tardy policy, on account of the old one sucked. Unfortunately, what they have replaced it with sucks at least as much. IMHO, it's worse, but I'm apparently outvoted - they actually did survey the staff before they made the change. One aspect of the suckage is that I lose 10 minutes of every off period writing "tardy tickets" for students who are caught in the hallways after the bell rings. That's 50 minutes per week.
I had bus duty for 20 minutes after school every day this week, but I signed up for that. The problem was that of the three other people who were supposed to show up, none of them remembered all five days and two of them were only there for two of the five. I did bus duty alone yesterday. At least I got a bit of schadenfreude out of it - the APs noticed. They even thanked me for being there on time.
We had a team meeting on Tuesday. This eventually resulted in my two idjit teammates getting their exam questions to me today. *whack whack whack* On the bright side of that one, Coach D's test questions are, in fact, improving over time. This is partially because he's copying my questions from the previous year, but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, ne? And he actually went and got a pretty good one from a textbook we don't use in class for the review.
I had six kids show up for tutorials on the same day. Two of them were only there for the first twenty minutes, and then left. Then three drama kids (including the one I've been calling Drama, who will now be Drama Guy, and another whom I hereby name Drama Girl, who in face, size, and manner reminds me a Hel of a lot of
follybard) showed up. After they'd been there about twenty minutes (at this point, school has been out for an hour), Debate showed up, and proceeded to sit in the back, tipping my desk over onto the two left-side legs, without any paper or pencil, mostly kibitzing but occasionally solving a vector problem in his head. Then he managed to get into a political discussion with Drama Girl, which I tried to referee - unsuccessfully, as Debate managed to get me involved. He then stopped himself and declared that, in deference for those who were actually there for tutoring, he would "finish this conversation later." (The last time he said that, we didn't. Probably a good thing.) After a few minutes, he packed up and left again. The Drama kids then proceeded to chat with me about out theater program and its discontents, and left at about 4:40.On Wednesday, I actually got an off period, miracle of miracles. After school, the chess club mostly played M:tG instead. Debate showed up, walloped most of the other players with a rather scary elf deck, borrowed a blue deck from another player and walloped them with that, too, and then left without saying anything to me at all.
Yesterday, we had a meeting with our secondary math coordinator for the district. Our API showed up for the meeting, which I expected. Our CP also showed up, which we had not expected! While I channelled She Who Complains, I was not the only one for once! DD, RJ, and (shock!) BVV also aired coherent, well-considered grievances. We also shared some of our successes, which I thought was surprisingly morale-boosting - this is a far, far better department than the one I was hired into. (And I'd like to think that some small part of that is, in fact, my doing, although I know much of it has been solid hiring by Mr. B and Ms. HR.)
(Have I mentioned that if I were on the same floor, I'd be seriously struggling with a crush on RJ? He reminds me, I swear, so much of me when I was at the same experience level - and it's so great to have someone airing the same concerns about rigor and challenge that I do! Plus, he's tall, intelligent, awkward, and cares about things.)
After the math meeting, I ran down to bus duty. Immediately afterward, I ran to the South Gym for the Mu Alpha Theta yearbook picture, which about a fourth of the club missed. I was irked. However, apparently some of the kids didn't get the e-mail; we may need to check our announcement list.
Then I ran up to the Library for the third installment of our Reading Strategies book talk. Now, I missed the first one because it was on the Thursday that CMA started, so this might not have been the case on the first meeting, which was run by an outside "expert" (:rolleyes:) from the district admin building, rather than our librarians, who ran the other two. But at both the ones I went to, a third of the attendees at this thing - a Reading/Literacy meeting, remember - were Math faculty, and no English people showed up. (Note to self: do the Staff Development rant tomorrow.)
Today, I had most of an off period. The secretary who runs our Graduate Center did ask for ten minutes of my time, but it turned out she wanted me to sit on a scholarship committee for some building scholarships in the spring. I said of course I'd do it.
Debate was absent today - apparently he was at a state debate tournament up in Austin.
The older sister of one of my students is a teacher here at the school, and she had the equivalent of a parent conference with me after school. At least she listened; I showed her what his grades were when he did the homework, and when he didn't, and she got the "that's so not what he told me" look. Yeee.
I have a staff development in freaking Rosenberg tomorrow. Why are the G/T Co-Op sessions never in HISD?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-12-03 08:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-03 08:31 pm (UTC)I've yet to see Alief, Aldine, or HISD host, though, which pisses me off. Spring Branch, on the other hand, does so at least once a year.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-03 08:34 pm (UTC)Sorry I'm not gonna be around tomorrow . . . I"m solo-moming it, so I'm going to my parents' house to let them help wrangle monkeys!
See ya Sunday? Did we decide on a time? Has someone let Mr. Bergman know?
no subject
Date: 2004-12-04 08:01 pm (UTC)