Spring Break Has Began!!!

I was in the mood for sugar cereal the other day. Looking at the advertising on this...come on now? An excellent source of Vitamin D? Why are we allowing advertisers to dupe us like this? I know it is a bad choice, and I need to admit when I buy something like this....I don't need to justify it.

I forgot what Jerry said he was in this picture, but again, had to stop and take a picture of him. Yes, my WHOLE classroom is this organized. OCD, yes please!

This is a small portion of the Cookie Pops that I made last night as a "test batch." HH tried one out last night so we could make sure they were ok. He liked them a lot. He said not to tell people they had a part of a Milky Way in them, it was a pleasant surprise. I will take the test batch to two of our neighbors soon.

I am going to vent about school, which I have tried not to do on this blog. I generally save the school venting for two of my best teacher friends and HH. (Oh some of you would delight in hearing his thoughts about some of my school stuff!) There is a woman on my team who only has ELEVEN students. I have been given three of her students, and my other two team members have also been given students from her room. Anytime a new student comes into my building, they will never go into her class, but only ours. She is a nice person, but she cannot teach....and reducing her class size to eleven has done NOTHING to help matters. This is her eleventh year with our district. She has an extensive professional (presenting, coaching, etc.)resume, but when it comes to teaching.....bomb.

So this post comes after one frustration after another from her this year. At least one day she sends a kid over into my room because they are misbehaving, and another one to "word process" in my room. (She uses all four computers in her room, two in my neighbors room, and one in my room so she only has to "teach" four kids for a decent portion of the day.) She gets help from the BD teacher, our behavior coach, and the security guard at least once a day.

She has been inviting her former students who are now in my room to fun things that she has in her room. (She is a master at not teaching.) She asks the KIDS and not me, so when I have to be mean and say no, they get mad at me. Well, yesterday was the worst for this. She starts having a party at noon yesterday (school ends at 3:45). She has this fried chicken buffet for her class. Of course my kids wanted to come over, and we are doing a Social Studies lesson. When I explained to William why he couldn't go, he started to cry. Jyail didn't cry, but was really sulking. This goes on for the better part of Social Studies. Heck, if I could go eat fried chicken instead of teach, I would!

I finally took the boys up to the Principal's office. I needed him to explain to them why they couldn't go. He apologized to them about this adult problem, and gave them a pretty good explanation (at this point they are both crying). Putting myself in their shoes, I can see why they were so upset. I asked the principal to take care of this matter to make sure this didn't happen again, and he said he would. (He is beyond frustrated with her.) On the way back, I pointed out ten different classes where students were working, and how that is really what all the students should be doing this early in the day, even on the last day before spring break.

When I was telling my husband about this last night I commented on how it is people like her that thinks we need sweeping teaching pay reform, etc. What really needs to happen is that each school needs to be allowed to get rid of five of their worst teachers. I mean fire them, revoke their teaching license, and we would see some dramatic reform in our classrooms. It is the dead weight teachers that have others trying to make a two year academic gain with so many students in their classroom, or having extra kids always in their room because their colleagues can never handle ANY discipline issue.

Ok, I'm going to stop there, because I could really go on and on...but I am stepping off my soap box.