Complaints About the Time-Space Continuum

So, it's November.  I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed and frenetic about all the stuff I have to do in the upcoming month.  It's always a tough time because I'm not very good at organizing my schedule so that I get certain things done ahead of time; instead, like many students, I depend on deadlines to push me to produce.  I'm beginning to realize that teaching is a profession that doesn't improve this tendency.  Because of all kinds of last minute issues that come up, planning lessons often occurs at the last minute, whether you intend to do so or not.  I think that's where I've been struggling to see progress in the classroom--I feel like there are days when not much is taught or learned, and I wonder if it has to do with poor planning.  However, there are times when there's not much to do about it.  For example, my CT has been required to go to two all-day workshops in the past two weeks.  Luckily, they didn't both fall on an A or B day, but still.  It's tough to think about that much time being wasted over the past couple of weeks, when there's had to be a lot of catch-everybody-up time already (due to a lot of student turnover).  And it is wasted time--the substitutes at Reagan pretty much let students have free reign.  (Two students wandered in our classroom the other day from a class whose teacher wasn't there and promptly proceeded to throw things at another student, start a fight, and cause the class to completely lose focus for a good 20 minutes.)  And they're testing for two days this week, which takes away from class time that they could be using to actually learn.

Maybe I'm just sounding negative because I've been listening to a lot of problems voiced by my CT about the school culture and administration.  Teachers were recently informed that they should not send students to the principal's office.  Reason?  The students already have to face problems at home that are scarier than anything they could encounter in a principal's office.  WHAT??  I do understand that we should be cognizant of our students' issues at home, and I'm also aware that some teachers will attempt to avoid confrontation by making principals deal with issues of student discipline.  But when you create a school culture that coddles students' behavioral problems, you're condoning bad behavior.  You're giving them an excuse.  Rather than saying, hey, I'm sure there's a reason behind why you're acting out, you're saying, hey, life is tough, so don't worry about it.  Instead of providing structure that may be lacking at home, and that the students may want, the school seems to be avoiding this issue, lest students may have a problem with it.  I understand that they really want students to show up, but they're lowering their expectations of students.  Also, they're making a broad generalization that seems pretty prejudiced.  So all students who come from a lower-income household have a bad home life?  A lack of money does not equate a lack of family support.  So anyway, I'm not sure what I would do as a teacher in this situation.  The administration recommends sending a "problem" student into another teacher's classroom to cool off, but this could cause unwanted distractions in that teacher's classroom.  I'm not really sure that there is a good solution, other than the fact that I'd try to avoid a blow-up from occurring by utilizing other classroom management techniques.

To address this week's articles about online literary communities and responses, I think that providing an online space for students to express themselves is a great idea.  However, the logistics could be a problem.  I know that it seems fairly easy for the students in the articles to have access to a computer and the Internet, but I don't even know where a computer lab is at Reagan.  There are two computers in the classroom, but for work on the computer to be helpful and accessible for everyone, I think that there would have to be a lot of explicit instruction on how to use the programs and time would be an issue.  There doesn't seem to be enough time just to get through the TEKS requirements, so I think you'd have to start at the beginning of the school year with regular instruction on technology use and a focus on online writing.  Ah, time.