Day 133: What Happened to Spring?

Well?  What happened to it?!?

Wednesday was cold and off-and-on rainy.  By dinnertime, it had turned into one of those drizzly, miserable days that make you want to curl up on the sofa with a cookie, a warm drink, and the TV remote or good book.  By bedtime, it was sleeting with rain mixed in and a prediction for snow in the morning.  Further predictions were made for the early part of next week for a mixture of snow and ice.

Sigh.

April begins Friday.  Can somebody please bring on the spring?

Day 132: Help for Students With Deployed Parents

This is a first for me.  In all of my years of teaching, I have never had a student with a parent who has been deployed.  I have had plenty of students whose parents were in the military but not on active duty in another part of the world.

Until now.

I have a student who's father was deployed to Afghanistan about a month ago; he will be gone for a year.  I have been monitoring this student for signs of anxiety, depression, etc.  Up until about a week ago, everything seemed to be going pretty well.  However, this past week has been a different story.  I have pulled this student to the side and asked if there is anything on her/his mind, if there is anything s/he wants to talk about, etc.  The response is always "No."  I can clearly see that there is something going on, but I think s/he is too embarrassed to say anything about how s/he is feeling.

I have asked the guidance counselor to stop in when she gets a chance, but she has been pulled to monitor (and provide make-ups) for our state standardized tests.  She will be doing this for at least another week.  In the meantime, I'm trying to figure out strategies to help my little friend.

Does anyone out there have any suggestions?  Books to share?  Websites to share?  Techniques to share?  I will be glad for anything you can send me! You can leave them in the comment box below.

Day 131: Calling All Cooks!

Today we began the next story in our anthology.  We are reading Jalapeno Bagels by Natasha Wing. If you aren't familiar with the story, it is about a little boy of diverse cultures who is trying to decide what treats to take into his class for International Days to represent his heritage. His mother is Mexican-American and his father is Jewish.  His parents own a bakery that make tasty treats from both cultures. The recipe for the bagels is a representation of both cultures coming together.

As a class project, I ask my students' parents to submit one or two simple recipes that represent their family heritage or culture.*  I ask for two because I know that some of my students come from diverse backgrounds, just like the boy in the story.  Over the years I have gotten recipes from all over the world:  France, Puerto Rico, Germany, Ireland, China, India, Vietnam, Iran, Lebanon, and Mexico, to name a few.  I can't wait to see what recipes are submitted this year!

Once all of the recipes have been submitted, I type them up and organize them into cookbook sections.  I then submit to book to be copied so that each child has a copy to take home as a keepsake.
 
Do you have any neat heritage/culture projects you do?  Feel free to share in the comment box!

*This project can also be used for a cultural/heritage unit in social studies.

Day 130: Help for Japan

Day 130 saw the arrival of a school-wide project to help Japan.  One of the first-grade teachers on my staff created a fundraiser that all students can participate in and benefit the victims of Japan's earthquake and tsunami.

The project is fairly simple: Each student does five jobs/chores around the house to "earn" $5.00.  Once the jobs are done and the student has "earned" his or her reward, that money is place into an envelope and turned in to me.  I then forward the envelopes on to the teacher in charge. She has contacts at the Red Cross who will send along our donations and letters of encouragement.  It is projected that if each child in our school participates, we can raise over $3,000 to help provide supplies and meet the needs of the Japanese people.  For students who can't afford the $5.00 donation (or choose not to participate), the teachers have signed up to be sponsors for those students and donate in their place.

I explained the idea to my students and they are very excited to begin this project.  I will keep you updated as to our progress. I can't wait to see what we do!

Day 129: Dear Governor, What'd I Ever Do to You?

Day 129, from the standpoint of teaching my class, was a typical day.  No issues, no worries.
And then...

We had an emergency union meeting regarding my state governor's budget proposal for public education. 

I wish I could say that everything was roses.

But it's not.

Gee, where to begin?  Well, first I would like to say that I am pleased (at this point) that our governor has not taken away or rallied to take away our collective bargaining rights.  Past that, I am not pleased.  Not pleased at all.  Here is a list of why my sunny day suddenly turned cloudy:

1. Pay freeze.  All public school employees, from custodians to cafeteria workers to secretaries to principals to teachers, have been asked to take a pay freeze for this coming school year, or there will be furloughs in my school district.  The governor says the districts across the state must do this to save the state thousands and thousands of dollars.  This, after he has proposed to cut over a BILLION dollars to public education and public state universities.  If ALL of the bargaining units in my district (and I dare say, others) do not accept pay freezes for the upcoming school year, then there will be furloughs, with notices as early as May.  In my district alone, that equates to a MINIMUM of 49 positions across all areas.
2. Cuts to the education budget.  My district stands to lose nearly 20% of its funding from the state. Our district projected a $927,000 shortfall after our budget was done earlier this month.  The district offered early retirement to those who were eligible and came close to a balanced budget.  When the governor gave his address (just several days  later), that shortfall grew to $2.6 million. I don't have to tell you what that means for any district in this situation.
(Interestingly, businesses and other companies/corporations have not been asked to "share in the sacrifice" to help make my state more fiscally sound.  In fact, companies have been allowed to use a nearby state for P.O. box mailing addresses while the companies do business here, thereby avoiding fees and taxes that should be paid to the state.)
3. 18 new proposed bills affecting teachers and other workers in education.  Some of the more pressing ones:

• One bill would allow districts to furlough teachers for purely economic reasons.  Seniority would not be the deciding factor in these decisions.  Not only that, but the furloughs would be allowed without school districts being required to cut costs through other means.
• Another bill would allow a version of merit pay for teachers.  Basically, if your test scores are reviewed and your class is not meeting the goal set aside by the state, you could be fired.  Note that this does not take the makeup of your class into account.  So if I have students who are learning the language, or students with special needs, or students who came to you as a lower group because of outside factors (lack of parent support, undiagnosed learning disabilities, etc.), I could risk kissing my job goodbye.
• Another bill would permit uncertified school nurses to be in the buildings.  (Sorry, but as a parent with a child with asthma and another with allergies that can result in anaphylaxis, I'd want a certified nurse in the building.) 

I believe we are going to take the pay freeze for this year (two nearby districts already have), partly to save jobs and partly to help the public's perception of teachers.  The public's overall impression of teachers here is that we work nine months out of the year and have summers off at the taxpayer's expense so we should just stop complaining about everything and let the governor do his job. 

Sorry, but until they've taught a mile in my shoes, they have nothing to say.  Yes, I'm a teacher, and that entails a lot more than nine months of work.  Some of my roles:

• Educator,
• Counselor,
• Parenting coach,
• Literary expert,
• Confidante,
• Entertainer,
• Nurse,
• Psychologist,
• Crisis manager,
• Psychiatrist, and
• Parent...

...Just to name a few.  I have fed children, clothed children, and provided basic school supplies for children.  I have been hit, threatened more times than I care to count (by students and parents), and called out of my name because I wanted to help a child that needed it. I have spent thousands of dollars providing my classes with items a nonexistent school budget couldn't provide, including pencils and writing paper for my students and copier paper for their work. I have endured several years of wondering if I would have a job because of budget cuts--years before the economic situation we are in now. I have taught students and their parents the English language.  I have taught children with all ranges of special education needs, from autism to deafness to bipolar disorder to emotional support.  I have spent years teaching students of various grade-level abilities (sometimes a range of kindergarten-level to fifth-grade level) in my second-grade-level classroom.  I spend my summers taking even more classes in education and planning how to implement those strategies for the next year. I'm up early, in the building early, stay late, and am to bed late...all in the name of a better education for a child.

...I KEEP COMING BACK BECAUSE I BELIEVE IN EDUCATION.