None of us know for sure, but from what I've gathered, it's a combination of the Journalism school dropping the requirement, and more incoming students taking AP history courses (which count for credit and remove the AMH2010/2020 reqs). But history was also affected more than any other major by the '08 economic crisis, and it still hasn't fully recovered from that. It's just difficult to sell the major anymore.
Back end cluster fuckery if I had to guess. We had all these sections that were supposed to be 26 students each, and it wasn't noticed until yesterday that one had only 10. Registrar fucked it up somehow. Had to increase the cap and then email people letting them know a new section had opened. The seats filled pretty easily though
I actually meant Buffy Summers, the character who was popular 15 years ago when your student was born (who I’m assuming she was named after). But I googled it and her real name was Buffy too.
Northwest Rankin had a fun incident at their football jamboree the other week. They have kept it incredibly quiet.
gf is pretty dispirited so far. he kids are reading at a 16% proficiency. one of them has already been held back twice and labeled a sexual deviant for trying to take upskirt pics of girls. two of her students don’t speak a word of english. one of the parents at her school threw a fit about having to sign out her kid and pulled a gun on the principal and her it’s sad how messed up some of these home life situations are and how these kids are already down the wrong path as first graders but she has small victories. the kid who has been held back has his days. she’ll take a piece of tape and stick it to her leg and make a tally of all the times he acts up or disrupts things or threatens to kill his cousin. had 26 on wednesday by lunch but on friday he only had 1. she sent him home with a letter to his grandma saying how much improvement he’s made and the kid was the proudest kid in the world. i am sure his guardians didn’t give a shit but still it’s the small things i guess the kindergarten and first grade teachers at her school essentially did the bare minimum and just passed them along to make them someone else’s problem. she’s in there every morning at 6 and working on stuff till 8 or 9 at night most days so it’s gotta be frustrating but incremental improvement is all you can really hope for sorry for rambling yall have a tough job and i couldn’t imagine doing it for any extended period of time bc it would be too depressing thanks
Back to work this week and students next. We have a new principal this year but she was AP last year so not many changes. She took us on a bus around to show different neighborhoods and where kids live. I really like that she did it because from Out of town it can fool new teachers about the types of kids and families we have because of the couple more prominent neighborhoods .
She’s needs to focus on overall growth instead of aiming for proficient/advance. That will go a long way towards overall improvement
yeah that’s her goal. just showing improvement. was just referring to bench mark of the class she has now
All about small victories, not getting bogged down on the L’s, and having a healthy hobby or something away from school to release it all.
she’s busting her ass for these kids and giving her best for them. tell her that’s all that matters overall
she did some teach for america stuff but this is her first year with her own class all year she had plans for first grade class but quickly learned they’re essentially kindergarten level so she’s having to play catch up readjusting her plans. it will settle down soon i am sure
Gotcha. Good for her putting forth the effort to prepare herself. But that's an insane amount of time spent on teaching. If I was her I'd hit up all the support on staff she can- other grade level teachers for tips, ideas and lesson plans, school psych for kids she's having trouble with getting to learn/behavior issues, ect. But remind her that being a positive adult role model is by itself a great thing for her kids to be around.
Got spoiled last year by having all my classes full of smart, well behaved kids. This year, they dumped all the shitheads in one period
Yeah Tobias my advice would be to tell her stop them 13-14 hour days. She’s going to quickly burn herself out. I did the same thing my 1st year. - Don’t take her work home. Some stuff can get done the next school day - Stay no more than an hour after school, seriously, go home. - Have her ask colleagues for any and all assignments they may have. Nothing wrong with poaching
PDs days this week Sitting in the school auditorium on these plastic shit cheap seats for another 2 hours Kill me
I get to spend the next two days in "strategy" meetings that will be all in Mandarin. Just get me to the teaching part pls
I’ve spoken to 7500 elementary students in the last three weeks. In Pearl MS schools today. Kids are nuts. It’s my job to get them absolutely pumped up and it is pandemonium.
Some joker goes through the hallways at the beginning of the semester writing "Great jobs for college students!" spam bullshit on all the classroom whiteboards. If you were teaching in that room, why would you not erase that shit first thing?? I want to go in the rooms and erase it but I can't really do that when it's occupied. The board is for learning, not your predatory advertising
transgender student didn’t make the volleyball team but they’re taking her on as team manager. she’d rather play but is over the moon she gets to be involved. i popped in during tryouts and she wasn’t one of the top 12 imo so i don’t think anything fucky is amiss. honestly pleasantly surprised with the way things turned out.
in my brief experience with transgender students it seems the adults are usually the ones that need education/support, oddly enough. we have a few staff members who are ready to show their ass when she ultimately decides to not use the faculty restroom and use the regular girls restroom like female students should be able to. the kids are generally not only tolerant but accepting. i have another transgender student who was getting harassed by a shit head and the entire 7th grade was ready to roll on the dude. he made it out safe but has basically been ostracized and labeled a transphobe by his peers. this is a public, title 1 school with over 1000 students. we’re in good hands.
This is awesome to hear. Keep up the hard work and continue to mold great, empathetic world citizens.
my impulse was to collectively dap my 7th grade for the way they rallied behind their peer but admin wouldn’t look so kindly on a staff member condoning mob violence i saw real fear that day
Biggest difference for me this year was implementation of rules and procedures. As a first year, I had no idea what that really entailed, and it led to chaos by spring. I cracked the whip hard to start this one, kids are scared to drop a pen in my class.
One of my classes is a weights and conditioning class for PE credit and from day 1 this girl was asking questions like "Are we going to do x?" and "Last year we did y" and I could tell she was skeptical. From the very beginning I implemented a dynamic warm up instead of static stretching and I noticed I didn't have buy-in from everyone. So today we had a lesson on the different types of stretching and the benefits of each followed by general "this is why we warm up with a dynamic warm up most days." She raises her hand and says "well I work out after school with a, like, for real trainer and he said the arm swings weren't good for this (pointing to her shoulders) because after the first day my shoulders and back were all kinds of sore from that stretch." I think I just stared at her for a few seconds trying to make sense of that. This is literally the stretch that made her sore:
-It’s like when I have new girls for the first week of powerlifting practice. No clue and nonsense - My veteran girls that have been the team before just look and shake their heads.
Grading online can be dangerous after spending so much time here. I want to put stuff like "LMAO" as my feedback
People that are super out of shape can get sore from anything. I'm not in fantastic shape but I can do something like throw a ball for a few minutes and not feel it the next day. Not so for people that never exercise
Scheduling 40 kids on your caseload and being itinerant, having to service 7 schools and travel 10+ minutes between some is the worst Shit sucks
Yeah this girl is actually in shape and clearly just doesn't like me/what I'm telling them to do. She runs track and is in great shape compared to most in the class.