Spring Break

The few days before Spring Break, my students get completely crazy. They don't want to be here. I don't want to be here, but yet we both have to be here, so I usually try to make this week easy. We had an early out day in the middle of the week, plus an activity day today, so it wasn't that bad.

However, I have so many students who aren't in class. I received an email from a parent today asking "Since it's an activity day schedule, you aren't really doing any real class work, are you?" How do you reply to that in a nice way? Took me a while, but I was able to compose a reply. Wasn't exactly what I wanted to say, but it was something that I know won't get me in trouble (which at this point I'm trying to avoid at all costs).

With Spring Break comes a time for me to figure out if this education thing is something I really want to continue or if I should figure out something else to do. I see the future of education going down the tube and I don't want to be sucked down with it. There are changes happening here in my district that I don't agree with what-so-ever. Most have to deal with how I am to be paid in the future. It's alright for those teachers who have tenure and are somewhat "secure" in their jobs. But what I don't think people understand is what happens to those teachers who are just starting off. You're going to get more and more turn over because after 1 year of this, most newbies will probably say "bag it" and move on to something else. I wish I had that option right now but I'm not sure what else I could do. I've been told by many people to just stick with it, get my masters and then apply for a University or College position teaching at that level. Sure, possible but that means more education and more not agreeing with what is happening and having no real way to stop it.

I guess that is what this next week is for.

Guest Presenters

I like have guest presenters come into my classroom. It gives the kids someone else to listen to. Something of a different pace than having to listen to me all the time.

Now, usually the guest presenters that come into my classroom, I am the one that invited them; so I know what they do and how they present and I can tell them "thanks but no thanks" if I don't want them to come back and present again.

Unfortunately that isn't always the case.

My district sets up this "scholars" presentation. It comes from the United Way organization. Yes, the information is great and the kids need to hear it before they make the decision for High School, but the way that it is presented drives me nuts. We have problems with the presenters. They are almost never on time. They aren't educators (mostly), so they don't understand how to talk to the kids or engage with them so it isn't boring. As a teacher, I get bored. Yes, that is bad. If I'm getting bored, of course my students are bored.

Take today for instance. I'm sitting here listening to the presenter--who was 15 minutes late. So I had decided to start with the slide show because I didn't know if the presenter was going to show up. She showed up and STARTED OVER because she didn't know how to pick up from the slide that I was on and "didn't know if I had actually given all the information that was required". Excuse me? Really? I have to let you into my classroom because the district requires me to, but how dare you treat me like that. You're the one that wasn't on time. You're the one that is going over information that I already gave to the kids. They aren't stupid and we've gone over a lot of it already for our "Reality Town" experience.

We can't ask them to stop coming because the district wants it. We give all the feedback we can but it doesn't seem that the company listens to any of it. We keep getting the presenters back that the kids don't want to listen to (and frankly, neither do I).

It's just a frustrating situation.