Bob’s Blog

I haven’t shared a real story, or experience lately. I feel like I’m over due. The truth of the matter is, I come home too tired to do anything 99% of the time. I’m a zombie and any time I’m inspired to write, I end up forgetting or simply don’t have time for.

Last week, I was in a meeting. This meeting was regarding the pass/failure rate. Let’s break it down real simply: We have a student body consisting of roughly 1600 students. Of those 1600 students, over 1300 students have at least one F.

80% of students at my school are failing at least one class.

That number is astronomical. This is unheard of to me. I mean, that is utterly mind blowing and unacceptable in my view. How can 80% of a school, any school, be failing in at least one subject? This is just not a teacher at this point, this is a community issue that needs to be resolved at home. There is no doubt that there is some responsibility on the hands of teachers, but it boils down to home.

Truth: most teachers at my school (myself included) don’t assign homework, at least not on a regular basis. It goes against a lot of things I believe in, but the saying goes at the school that if you want to fail a kid real quickly – give them homework. On the days that I do assign homework, I get maybe 2-3 completed assignments (out of a class of roughly 30). There’s something wrong there.

My testing policy goes as this: Kids are given a study guide for my tests 2-3 days in advance. They spend 2 full class periods working on the study guide. We go over the study guide, and we’ll typically play a review game. There’s no reason why they should not be completed because we go over it together before I even take up the study guide. I take the study guide up right before the test, these count as an entire test grade so in the case that you fail miserably on a test, you’re grade won’t be too terribly hurt as long as you turn in the study guide completed. My tests are ripped straight from the study guide.

Most kids don’t have these study guides complete, or turned in.

When it comes to essay questions, most students will outright refuse to answer them. Doesn’t matter how much you weight the question, they won’t answer it. They’d much rather take an F than to ever actually critically think about the subject at hand.

As you can see, if I were to lower the bar any further, I might as well just give them free A’s and B’s.

We have the highest teenage pregnancy rate in the entire state. We have one of the highest adult illiteracy rates in the state. I couldn’t tell you the number of phone calls I’ve made to parents where I get the response, “Well…I just don’t know what to do with them.”

I’m just at a complete and utter loss at this point. And the frustration and discouragement is building.

Word of the craziness at my school is starting to reach other counties. We’re becoming the laughingstock of the area. The micromanagement won’t stop, in fact, it’s starting to get worse.

I’m tired. The environment is so negative. You can just look around at people’s faces around the school and see the anger, frustration, and exhaustion on everyone’s faces.

Bad kids. Bad administration. You can’t have both, it’s either one or the other.

After the past year and a half, I have to come to terms with this fact that this place is getting close to beating me down. I don’t look forward to going to work. It’s not the kids – it’s the management. I don’t know when education became so complicated, and I don’t know when it became ok to threaten people with their jobs and make examples out of people…but it doesn’t sit well with me. Everyone is paranoid, and everyone is miserable. It’s an environment of negativity and confusion. The teachers and the kids have been berated and beaten to the point where the only thing that will change the atmosphere is a change in the administration.

This is not what I signed up for. This is not what teaching should be.

I’m tired.

We are less than a month from the US presidential election; an election that is undoubtedly one of the most important elections of our lifetime. An election that will have worldwide ramifications.

In the past few days I’ve become irate over what has been going on with the election campaign. I’m going to go as far to say that I’ve never disliked politicians as much as I do as in Sarah Palin and John McCain. The more I listen to them speak, the angrier I get. Angrier at the American people for swallowing their talking points, angry at the Republican Party for their actions in the past 20+ years, angry at the entire McCain/Palin campaign and their verbal diarrhea.

The latest strategy in the sinking ship of this ticket is now trying to tie Barack Obama with a 60s domestic terrorist. Never mind the fact that just a few days ago, Sarah Palin chastises Joe Biden for “looking backwards” and never mind the fact that the relationship between Obama and Ayers was more or less a working relationship to improve schools in Chicago. Never mind the fact that Obama was only a child when the Weather Underground carried out these domestic bombings and never mind the fact that even if Obama was associated with Bill Ayers, it does not necessarily mean that he approves of this man’s past and his opinions of the United States government.

It’s such an unbelievable non-issue. It is an issue served only to distract from the bigger and more pressing issues of our time.

We are currently engulfed in the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression. This country is pouring billions of dollars each month into a seemingly endless war with no serious movement to bring troops home. The country has the largest national debt in its history. There are millions of people who are unemployed, uninsured, and have no health care. Our education system needs a total overhaul. Gas prices have skyrocketed.

And yet the McCain/Palin campaign wants to stress a relationship between Barack Obama and a Weather Undeground member that is nothing more than a stretch, at best?

I watched the VP debate and I couldn’t help but laugh. Laugh at the fact that Sarah Palin was chosen as someone who could very well be a heartbeat away from the presidency. A woman who spoke only in vague descriptions and readied one-liners; a woman who is clearly not prepared for the role of the presidency as shown by her repeated gaffs and embarrassing interviews. A woman who tried to compare herself to me and my family. No, Sarah Palin. You know nothing of what most Americans have gone through these past 8 years. Just because you’re a former hockey mom doesn’t mean you know what it’s like to be in a credit crunch, to be unemployed, underpaid, to be uninsured, to have no health care, and to continually have to bail your party’s friends out of their greed and manipulation. No, McCain/Palin, neither of you know anything of what most Americans are currently experiencing or what they’ve been through.

The more I think about it, the angrier I get. This election should not be as close as it is. After the past 8 years of continually failed and abysmal Republican policies, after years of dirty tricks against the Democrats during the Clinton administration and the corruption of the Reagan administration, how can one actually vote Republican at this time?

It is time to end failed Republican rule.

It is time to hand the reins over to someone new.

It is time for change.

It is time for a change in politics and to end dirty smear campaigns.

It is time for people in this country to wake the fuck up.

Just about every teacher had a formal observation yesterday; the Friday before vacation starts. She went on an absolute tear on everybody. She tore apart a lot of teachers in the building, myself included.

I’ve stopped caring.

Had a department meeting today. My department head reports back to us about the meeting he had to attend the other day with the administration. The entire meeting was nothing but negativity and complaints from the administration. Here is what the administrators told the department heads, and what they need to pass onto us. This is all true, and I swear to God I am not making any of this up:

- “The days of lecture are over”.

- We are not supposed to give students worksheets.

- Videos must be shown in “clips” and not in their entirety, and no – this does not mean you can play a movie, stop it every few minutes to explain to the kids what’s going on, and press play again.

- We must teach via “differentiated instruction”. Group work is not “differentiated instruction”.

- Our work must contain more “rigor” and we must push higher levels of thinking onto our students.

- Our students need to know the state standards, and the state standards must not be “kid friendly” but they must be verbatim.

- Vocab quizzes are a “no-no” and we must embed the vocab words into the actual lesson and “not have students spending the period looking up definitions”.

So, let me clarify all of this: We cannot lecture, we cannot give worksheets. Our lessons must be “differentiated” but they also must be rigorous. Group work does not count as “differentiated” and quizzes dealing with vocabulary words are not allowed. We cannot show movies unless they are approved by the administrators, and IF they are approved (and that’s a big if, let me tell you), they must be shown in “clips”.

If anybody can make any sense of this, and could actually provide me any type of lesson plan that fits into this framework, it would be greatly appreciated.

I don’t work at a high school. I work in a circus.