Delivered As Promised

We got computers in the teachers cafeteria and a printer!

And, because of this I was able to write the following recommendation for one of my geometry kids:

JC is an intelligent young man with a marvelous sense of humor. These two assets combine to make him the kind of student every teacher dreams of teaching. He is always ready to share his work with others in the class, either by volunteering to do a problem at the board, answer a question or help a fellow student. His answers are quick and correct and he readily asks about anything he does not understand.

Although I am JC's math teacher, I know that he is well versed in other areas as well. I have heard him intelligently discussing many other topics, such as the election and our current economic situation. He was able to explain “recession”, “depression” and the “problems with printing too much money” with clarity well beyond his years.

I mentioned his sense of humor in the first paragraph because this is the one characteristic that sets him apart from others. He enjoys life and knows how to make a class come to life. School would be quite boring without him.

JC has a strong desire to succeed. This characteristic, combined with his other qualities will guarantee his success in college and in life. I recommend him highly.


JC is a great kid but he can be a real pain. I let him read the recommendation and then I told him I was not going to hand it in until he stopped driving me crazy. "Ms, I never do that," he said as he was strolling around the room. "You do it all the time," I answered. "That's okay, I don't need it anyways" was what he said as he sat down. But, surprisingly, he worked great all period. No jokes were told and he did not clown around.

Hopefully this carrot dangling in front of his face will keep him working.

And, thank you Principal Hula for moving us into the 21st century and giving us lowly teachers computer access.

EGS

Not the scrambled kind of eggs, the electronic grading kind.

Grades are due tomorrow and it took me twenty minutes to find an available computer to work on in school today.

The four computers in the library just don't cut the mustard for a school this size.

Thank you resource room teachers for allowing me to use yours.

(I did finish my grades before I wrote this post!)

So Who Needs Lunch Anyways?

Mathematicamama sent me a site that contains the exit exams for Geometry in Virginia. The problems looked great--exactly the type I would like to use in my class, but I did not want to print 24 pages on my home computer so I saved the e-mail and went to the library to print the exam.

Our library has a total of four computers for staff use. After all the school has almost 5000 kids, 4 staff computers should be plenty, right! I was thrilled to see that two were available. Of course when I sat down to work, I had to restart the computer. We now have individual log in codes and the dunces in my school don't understand the difference between logging out and turning off. I can't believe I have to ask the librarians to put up a sign telling teachers how to log off.

So, I finally restarted the computer, logged on to my e-mail and got the site up and running. I hit print, and waited for my beautiful questions to appear. Nothing happenned. I checked. There was paper and toner in the machine. The librarian couldn't find the problem and promised to call for help, which was no help for me. I already wasted 20 minutes of my lunch period and quite frankly after teaching four periods in a row, I was not in the mood for that nonsense.

I'm not exactly a shrinking violet so I ran down to APO office and started bitching about wasting time and the crappy conditions we are forced to work in. She felt bad and let me use her computer which was good but I couldn't get back my wasted time.

I guess the school feels we teachers must lose some weight. We don't need lunch. But, I am fed up (and not because I am getting too much to eat.) They want us to use all this new technology but having a working computer and printer is too much to ask for.

Q & A Session

Mr. New left a note informing the staff that there will be a faculty meeting tomorrow before parent teacher conferences. The note was sweet. It invited us to come and ask him questions. The tone of the note was inviting.

Mr. New asked us to leave questions for him in his mailbox. Not being a shy one, I decided to take him up on his offer and left him the following. I look forward to his answers.

October 23, 2008

Dear Mr. New,

As you are probably aware, Principal Suit made sure that everyone who passed the Integrated Algebra Regents or the Math A regents in June and had gotten a 55 in the class had their grades reversed. All these students are now taking MG 21 (geometry).

Many of these students are failing miserably. They lack the skills needed to succeed and have trouble with basic concepts. As their teacher, it is breaking my heart to see how many are not succeeding. I gave a test on Tuesday and mailed copies of 28 (out of 60) papers home because the grades were so low.

I would like to know how you are going to help us address this problem. Going slow does not seem to be the answer, as I have been doing that.

I also hope that you can address the issue of computer access for teachers. The library only has four computers available for teacher use. Yesterday, the printer was not working. Today, only two computers were working. It is very upsetting to spend the better part of a prep period waiting for a machine or working on one only to find that you cannot print out what you need.


Thank you very much for taking the time to deal with this issue.

Sincerely yours,

Ms. POd
Math Dept