Who Comes Up With These Ideas?

Today one of my teacher friends from the elementary school I use to work at asked me to come in and help her get some stuff accomplished. The school administration doesn't allow anyone to be in the building after 5:00 PM or on weekends and even though she comes in every morning at 6:30 AM (preceded by a 45 minute drive from her home) she was feeling overwhelmed. The powers that be had agreed to let the teachers into the school today and tomorrow to work from 6:30 AM to 2:30 PM, even though it is their fall break. This teacher has a difficult 1st Grade class this year and she says if she turns her back to put a paper in her file cabinet all heck breaks loose so she had a lot of piles that she wanted to get rid of. I enjoyed helping her out and getting caught up on all the school gossip. Talking to her, and the other teachers there, raised some interesting questions though.

#1 - This whole "no school access" on nights and weekends. The principal says it is a district policy, but my daughter taught in this district for the past two years and they were allowed to be in the school at any time and I live next door to an elementary school in this district that also seems to have teachers visiting during the weekend. Now, I know ideally teachers should only have to work their compensated hours and be able to get everything done, but really there are times when that is ideal but definitely not realistic. For example, what if the copy machine is broken for three days and when it gets fixed all 40 teachers need to use it to run off next week's reading seat work that is required to be copied because the district can't afford to buy the workbooks. How many teachers can make their copies in the 1 hour after school on Friday??

#2 - This school has a no recess policy. NO RECESS. NONE. There is way too much learning that needs to take place for us to give the 4 through 10 year olds a 15 minute break. Who ever came up with that great idea has never tried to get a 4 or 5 or 6 year old to sit still for hours at a time.

#3 - This year the state of Arizona has adopted a new plan for the English language learners in all of the schools. All of the non English speaking children in each grade are put in one class and the English speaking children are put in another one. The teacher that I assisted has the English speaking first grade with 23 students and the other first grade teacher has the non English speakers in a class of 17. The non English teacher is required to teach English for at least 4 hours every day. Apparently the rest of the day is spent telling the students repeatedly "No Spanish. No Spanish. No Spanish." At the recent parent teacher conferences one of the non English speaking parents told the teacher "It appears from your class picture that all the children in your class are Hispanic." The teacher said "yes, I have all the non English speaking children". The parent said "where are the English speaking models?" Hmm, a parent that doesn't even speak English can figure out that this is probably not a good idea. Who in the state of Arizona thought it was? The non English kindergarten teacher is also my friend. She has 20 Spanish speakers and a little girl from Indonesia. She told me there has been great progress in her class. The child from Indonesia can now speak almost fluent Spanish. However, it gets even better. If a child in the non English class makes enough progress to pass the English language test then they are transferred out of the non English class to the English class. The non English teacher loses her best student and English role model that she has worked really hard to make proficient and the English teacher gets another student. Apparently the goal is that by the end of the school year the English class will be at 40 and the non English class will be at 0. That makes sense doesn't it?

#4 - One of my jobs today was to remove all the name tags, number lines and alphabet models off of the children's desks. This teacher attended several workshops this summer, offered by the district, that encouraged the teachers to let their students write their own name tags for their desks and decorate them in order to help them feel ownership of their desk and their belongings. A month into school, the district came in and told all the teachers that had attended those workshops that this was unacceptable and that the name tags needed to be replaced with computer generated D'nalian name tags. Also, they must use this specific number line and this specific handwriting model. Perhaps this information could have been shared before school started and not after the desks were all "decorated". It would have saved a lot of time and a couple of blisters, not to mention money, paper, tape and laminating film.

#5 - In this school no student work is allowed to be displayed that is not COMPLETELY PERFECT. Perfect - no misspelled words, no imperfect letter formation, no teacher corrections of any kind. Nothing that is predominately "coloring" can be hung up. Also art work is not a valuable use of time and therefore cannot be displayed. The walls in this school resemble an office building and not an elementary school.

After 8 hours with my teacher friends I was reminded of all the reasons I can't get excited about being a teacher. I miss being around the kids, but I hate all the dumb rules and the fact that the rules change every year. I admire anyone who continues to be a dedicated teacher despite all the setbacks.

On a happier note, I did get a chance to sit on "Cloud 9" for a couple of minutes today, but it wasn't quite the same without the 5 year olds checking on my happiness level.

Today I am thankful for

a friend who pays me to help her.
chances to spend time with old friends.
razorblades.