final tales from the grading site

I did not mean for this to be so drawn out, but this one is just too priceless to not share.

Now, I am not one to jump and label teachers as complainers. Our job is tough. We often have to vent. We often get the short end of the stick. But occasionally, I have to shake my head and say, "Could everybody please shut the fuck up so we can all get back to work? I have shit to do." This was one of those occasions.

So, the chairs they had us sitting on were kind of uncomfortable. It wasn't unbearable. I just sat on the edge of my seat, or turned it sideways. Some stole other chairs from other places in the school. Other reasonable people brought pillows or things like that. But the majority complained and complained about how horrible they were. To be fair, one pregnant lady did tip over in her seat. To me, a reasonable solution would have been to bring her a special one. But naturally the DOE solution was much more unnecessarily complicated.

A few days in, they made the announcement that we were searching for other chairs. The next day, they stated with great jubilation that new chairs were coming in. The custodians wheel in the carts of chairs. Row by row, we stand up so they can pull out our old chairs and replace them with new ones. Once we look at them, it becomes immediately apparent that these are exactly the same as the ones we already have, except they are white instead of black. Now, more complaints come up. Rabble rabble rabble, these are no better! Why are you wasting our time?!?!

The worst part is, since the order had come through for the custodians to replace the chairs, the custodians were going to replace the chairs. They still went row by row, pulling out the old seats and giving us new ones. No one in charge told then to stop. No one they were supposedly helping even needed their help. And it was all another colossal waste of time and resources. There's a metaphor hidden in there but I can't quite find it.

More tales from the grading site...

The week and a half that followed my first day of "training" and test grading never really got much better.

First, we spent 15-30 minutes every day getting set up. That means I showed up at 3:30, people slowly trickled in, and we never got started unti 4:00. We also usually finished between 7:00-7:15 and spent the leftover minutes filling in our time cards. Now, I am not a math person, but at $40 an hour per 200 graders, that adds up to roughly several gazillion dollars wasted of us sitting around drinking coffee and doing nothing.

The best part is when the state required that the booklets of a particular grade had to be finished and sent in that night. Every time, they had to scramble and ask people to volunteer to stay late to finish grading. I volunteered along with a dozen or so people a few times. Once I stayed until 9:00 PM. Meanwhile, all I could think was, "Gee, if they had handed out the booklets at 3:45 instead of 4:15, that would have been another 30 minutes of manpower among 200 people instead of 15 of us busting our asses to get this done."

The worst part, for me, as an overachiever, was getting labeled as such. Yeah, in middle school I was a big nerd. I thought by the time I reached a point where I was working with adults, that label would fade away. Nope. This one guy at my table was repeatedly telling me to slow down. When we finished a box and I would raise my hand to have them pick it up, he would pull my hand down. He would tell me to stop reading so quickly. Etc. I mentioned this to my friend who works for the DOE offices and her exact words were, "The higher up you get in the department, the more you see that. Having meetings about meetings. People sitting on their thumbs, getting paid to do nothing. Teachers getting cushy office jobs because they are horrible teachers are keep getting pushed through the system. That sort of thing."

Again. It instills a lot of confidence in the organzation, don't you think?

Tales from the grading site...

Oh, state tests, you are so beautiful. You take up 2 weeks of my life, you make my kids crazy, and you are inane and boring. I spent months leading up to you, freaking out, knowing my "grade" as a teacher is based on you and my kids' ability to pass or fail is based on you too.

But none of that, no none of it, prepared me for the MIND-NUMBING TASK that is grading the written portion of the exams.

I have to break this up into many posts, and really there could be endless ranting. But let me start with this. Day 1: I show up bright and early at 8:30 AM on a Saturday. We proceed to sit around for 15-20 minutes. We then get a 30 or so minute introduction from everybody, none of which is actually explaining what we are doing. But that doesn't matter since everyone at my table is a veteran teacher with many years of grading under their belts. They quickly explain the process of filling out the forms for me.

We finally begin the "training" portion of the day, where we read through books on what answers can be accepted in graphic organizers, short essays, and long responses for the 4th graders. Then they read them out loud for us. Then we grade sample questions. Then they tell us what the grades should be for the sample questions. Then we argue about what scores were given for grades for the sample questions, which really doesn't matter because the state made up the booklets in the first place and that's what we have to go by. This takes the entire morning. We actually have to leave for lunch late (12:15) because it takes too long and we have to take a test verifying that we are following the mandated scoring guides that everyone was arguing about. The grading itself does not actually begin until 1:15, and then goes until 3:30, where we stop and go home. What a use of a day. A sweet, sweet, taxpayer funded day.

The kicker? I scored higher and did better on the training and test grading than anybody at my table. I was also way more articulate and cognizant about explaining how I got my answers and reached all the right conclusions. When it came time to choose a "table leader" to re-read scores and organize materials, they unanimously pointed at me. I have one third of the experience of the next least experienced teacher at my table. Two were near retirement. One had a child almost my age. Glad to know I am somehow the most qualified person in the bunch. That makes me have A LOT of faith in the system.

More to come once I catch up on all the sleep deprivation from working 12 hour days and weekends...

a million degrees

So the DOE, in an energy slash money saving initiative, made us turn off our air conditioning units in mid-September. It was still probably 80 degrees outside, but we didn't have enough electricity, so we did as we were told and turned them off.

A few days ago, I guess the temperatures got low enough for the custodians to turn on the heater. Unfortunately, the furnace is up SO HIGH that I can't teach in my room for fear of fainting. I've turned my thermostat all the way down, but that apparently does nothing, because the temperature gauge still has us clocked in at over 90 degrees. In my classroom, in late October. All of my windows are open and kids are falling asleep on the tables because it is so muggy in there.

So much for that whole "going green" idea.

class sizes

In a recent meeting, we were told, "We are very lucky, class sizes are really small at this school." They're right, actually, I only have about 25-27 8th graders in each class. You're not out of compliance until you're above 32. Even then, I think there's a way out of it.

Too bad two of our teachers have recently quit, thus causing the 5th grade to shrink from 3 classes into 2, and having all of the middle school teachers take on extra elective periods.

And really, we wonder why American kids can't read?

organizational failures

So I have been waiting for keys to my classroom since school started. I switched rooms from last year to this year, which, while a little annoying, is not that uncommon. (At least I had all summer to set up, much better than the fact that I switched MID-SCHOOL YEAR during my first year.) I've asked the custodians to make me copies, I've asked the office staff, I've checked with the principal, etc. So I've just been leaving everything unlocked all the time. But there's always nothing anyone can do, and I get sent to someone else to ask, because the teacher who had my room last year never left her keys before she moved to Antigua. (Which is most definitely part of the checklist you have to get filled out before you leave the building on the last day of school, so I'm not sure how that happened, but that's besides the point.) Finally I was sick of it, so I borrowed another teacher's keys last night (they are all the same for our floor) to go make copies. I spent a couple of bucks to get one for my room, one for the teacher's lounge, and even some new hasps for my cupboards since they still have locks on them that the teacher in Antigua must have the keys to. (Getting the custodians to actually come in and install them so my cupboards will be usable... well if it happens in the next month I will be SO happy.)

I walk in this morning, pretty much ready to do, and our secretary says, "Oh! Ms. A! We got your room keys!" And holds them triumphantly in the air. Like I haven't been asking for them for over 2 weeks.

I'm aware this story isn't all that funny, but it does illustrate some of the institutional nonsense that I have seen at every school I've ever worked at or even visited. This is a common, every day thing. You are chasing people around to get copies of some data chart you need to get filled out, show up for a meeting to discuss it, get turned away because your AP is in another meeting, get called back 10 minutes later, and then get told you did the whole thing wrong. Or you drive to the district office to pick up some forms, get assured you have the right ones by the staff there, and then are told to turn around and go back by your testing coordinator because they gave you the wrong thing. (Oh yeah, both of those things happened this week too.) Could we all just keep in mind that we have children to teach, so we probably have other shit to do that doesn't involve total nonsense?

To wrap the story up on a happy note, it turns out that our art teacher didn't have keys either. So the copies I made were not in vain, the couple of dollars I spent to do it were not wasted, and now we are all able to get in and out of the places that we work at every day. Excellent.