Author: kathleen

So nice of the commissioner to allow restroom breaks.  Have they been in the schools and seen what their rulings have done?

Our district and/or school has interpreted the restroom break rule to mean that only one student can be in the restroom at a time or that they have to be escorted by an adult.

On the second floor, the hall monitors kept track — there is a boy’s room and a girl’s room clearly visible to the monitor.  If a student needed to go to the restroom, they stood outside the testing room door until the hall monitor gave them permission to go, and the hall monitored couldn’t if someone was already in the restroom.  By the way, that makes my head hurt.

We have a worse problem on the first floor, we only have two sets of restrooms and 4 sets of halls.  So on the first floor, the students stood with the hall monitor until they were picked up by the restroom monitor.  The restroom monitor would rove the school picking up all of the appropriately sexed students and then stood in the restroom with them while they went.  Of course, no one was allowed to talk.

Right now, with the restrictions we have, we barely have enough adults to go around to supervise students.  We have to have one crew to monitor the test, one crew to relieve the test givers, one crew for hall duty with relievers, and now a crew to do the restroom breaks — which takes at least 4 people.

<sigh>

Maybe I’m naive but I don’t think there is rampant cheating going on.  The only kids who really care are at Exit level.  The rest of the kids don’t care about their results so we really don’t have to worry about them cheating.  I also don’t think the teachers are cheating.  At least not in our building.

Every year I’ve had a class that drives me crazier than most.  It’s usually an afternoon class and it’s usually a large class.

This year its my 6th period class.  There are 26 students in the class.  They are loud and they have the largest number of students who are not passing. 

I have also had a few students transfer from other class periods in to that class, and they all agree I’m a different teacher during this class period.  I’ve yelled at these kids, I’ve slammed doors, and thrown packs.  I don’t do things like that during other class periods.

Every other one of my classes come in, sit down, turn on their computers and get to work.   The only people who get up are those who want to go to the restrooms, and they do it one at a time.  The other classes all wait to quit until the bell rings.

Not this group, they are screaming and they are running around the room. They quit 5 minutes early and start running around the room again. They interrupt me and each other.  Yesterday one of the students took another student’s iPod. 

I’ve been working hard to get them to behave as well as my other classes — it really does affect passing rate.  My passing rate is lowest in this class and highest in 5th period, who truly are my best behaved. 

Besides I don’t like being a crazy woman.

My latest technique has been to have a Power Point presentation on the wall, and have their screens blanked out and start with the Power point presentation immediately as soon as they are quiet.  However, they then tend to quit a bit earlier, but I’m working on it.

Right now, I’m listening to a Jimmy Buffet album – using my Zune pass and Zune software on my PC.  All day today I had my Zune plugged into my speakers at school, and while my students were working I was listening to music I’d downloaded on the Zune.  It’s great because I can keep it near to my keyboard and just press a button to turn it off.

I thought using one device was a really good idea for a long time.  I was using Napster To Go with my phone, and the quality of the playback sucked, selecting music was a pain, downloading was a pain, and finding the music to play it was a pain.

The Zune works SO much better.

Though, if they come out with a version that has bluetooth so I can use bluetooth speakers, I’ll be buying a new one and this one will be for sale.  In fact, I’ve just ordered a bluetooth transmitter from Amazon (Sony) and I’m hoping it will solve the problem.

I have some Jabra Bluetooth stereo headphones that I bought from Buy.com and really love them.  They are light weight, no wires, and very good quality play back.  I like them much better than any of the earbuds I’ve tried or even the over the ear type.

My pass renews this weekend and I’ll be able to “buy” more music which will be nice.  I am hopeful that the renewal process will be smoother – last month I got to school without “renewing” my music and very little of it was available for play.  That was a bit disconcerting.

And … almost forgot … really wish that Audible.com worked wirelessly like the Zune software does.  Or that the Daily subscriptions would work more seamlessly.

One of my twitter follower’s commented he thought this story was stupid:

Student Arrested For Classroom Texting – February 17, 2009

As a teacher I applaud it.   Here’s why.  I’ve been there.  I’ve been the teacher with a kid that wouldn’t behave and I believe it was handled exactly the way I would handle it.

a) kid is texting in my class

b) I tell kid to stop – they don’t – I ask for phone

c) I don’t get it, so I call security and have them deal with it

I finish teaching and no longer have problems with that child.  I have no idea what the consequences are because I’m no longer involved.

Now that sort of thing happened when I got the lovely position of teaching repeating Algebra I.  A special set of Algebra I classes for students who had failed it before.  Oh, and I had 30+ students in each class.  Blame Katrina for that part of the problem. 

That school year I held the record for the number of referrals.  Oh, and by the way I have the reputation of being a very strict and very good teacher.  I usually write less than 5 referrals a year.  I think I am at two now, and both times the kid walked out of the class on his own.

Here’s what happens now:

a) kid is texting in my class

b) I say: please put the consumer electronics away (avoids the not a cell phone argument).

c) kid puts it away and I get on with teaching.

Difference:  I am teaching Computer Science and my largest class in 28.

And by the way, I had the highest Classroom Effective Indexes in the school with the above group.

As a past winner of the STEM award for my district, I have to read this year’s applications.  I have done this for two years and I am always discouraged.

Please read the instructions.  I did.  And I was very careful to follow the rules.  If you want an award, follow those rules, and get someone else to help you read them.

I don’t know how the other evaluators handle this, but if you don’t follow the instructions, I’m automatically going to give you a low rating. 

In fact, two of the applications were from people who didn’t teach a STEM course.  Guess what, you got a 1.  One applicant single spaced their application.  Guess what, you automatically lost two points.  Worse yet, you didn’t answer the question correctly so you ended up with a score below a 5 on each count.

I also took off if you wrote past the one half page and what you wrote didn’t add to your essay.  Also, have someone else read the essay and use the spell check and grammer check provided by the word processing programs. I also took off for typos.

The good news is that there were several outstanding essays and best yet, one of them is a guy I know and really respect.  I think he’ll make the top 5 cut because he DID follow the directions.

When I wrote my essay and they asked what was unique about my classroom, I focused on the technology tools i used.  I was looking for that in the essays and that’s what got people points.  It’s a STEM award, and its to encourage innovation in the classroom.  Show you how you innovate!  Don’t tell me you use the principals of learning because we always do.

Here’s another question that the answers all dissatisfy me. It’s about evaluating students with tools beyond standardized test courses — I like to emphasis the tools that use the standardized test scores precisely because we and the students live and die by them.  Especially if you teach an AP class, you darn well be better using those scores to improve your teaching!

The moral of the story:  read the rules and follow them carefully and you’ll come out ahead!

I was asked on Twitter last night if I like Hillcrest.

Apparently the answer:  I’ve been there 16 years wasn’t good enough.

Oddly enough I’ve worked in the Hillcrest area most of my Dallas career.  I started out at Park Central – working for GSI — the original parent company of TI — yes, my paychecks had TI logos.  I had a brief stint up in Plano, which I hated, a few days in Los Colinas which was worse, but nice to be able to come home for lunch.  Did some free lanch dog training and grooming and then to Hillcrest.

There are lots of things I’d like to change.  First, I wish the janitors would get things repaired.  Right now the elevator almost works and I’ve been trapped in it three times since the beginning of the year.  I don’t mind it much but I don’t want our wheelchair bound babies trapped there.

I wish we could get modern HVAC.  Right now, we have two temperatures, really hot or really cold.  Nothing in between.

I wish my room was squarer.  Wish I had a better desk.  Well, I could have that, but i have to buy it and those things tend to disappear.

Sometimes I wish that our doors were not revolving doors for adminsitrators, but then again, we might have to put up with somone who wasn’t good.  Right now, we make them good and send them on to bigger and better things.

However, I love the neighborhood kids, and I really like most of their parents.  The rest could benefit from some parenting classes — especially the ones who believe their kids over me. Especially when the kid has a history of lying.  Oh, that IS why the kid lies.

I plan on staying on at Hillcrest until I retire.  The drive is good, I get to do what I want most of the time, though the Campus Technology gig is a pain.

Because of twitter I am at a unique staff development, may have found a teacher for one of our openings and am recharging a bit.

During winter break, I saw a tweet about Lego Woman’s build. it was not what I thought but was good.

I wanted to see visual studio drive the legos robot but that was not to be.

but I did see how to use traditional legos to get people to think about tough questions.