Trouble at school

Liam started in his pre-k class on August 27th at Lincoln Elementary school. We were all very excited in the weeks previous getting the supplies needed and looking high and low for a backpack for him that is his size and not smeared with co-branding or logos. I had quite a busy summer with teaching at Shipwreck camp and working to get Design Lab: Early College High School ready for its student orientation and start of year. I have started a second blog to cover my muses on this subject. So pretty much from the 3 week of July I was working everyday.

Anyway, Liam has been getting negative reports from his teacher from his Pre-k class and there has seem to be problems with Liam in class. From the start of the second week the teacher said that Liam's behavior was of such concern that the teacher started sending home a behavior chart that has three catagories: Hands/Feet to self, Listening, Group. Ahmie since the first note has tried on several occasions to be in contact with the teacher via e-mail, but the teacher has not responded.

We tried to support this behavior chart by removing privileges from getting poor ratings (frown faces) and giving incentives for good ratings (smiles) and nothing for neutral ratings (neutral face). We tried to do this for about 2 weeks until This Thursday when Ahmie tried to ask the teacher when picking up Liam about why Liam is still getting Frown faces in his behavior chart, the teacher told Ahmie that "you should ask your son and his friend."

When I got that phone call from Ahmie I was livid because of the unprofessional nature of the response. Then I was told that Liam was not given his snack in class because of his behavior. Now Liam had told me about him earning his snack back last week later in the week, I had thought he meant that he had earned his juice for the ride home from school. I was pissed and still am.

I can see perhaps that I am getting one part of the story and I should not get so incised but the lack of story from the teacher's side of the conversation is not good either. As a teacher I could not tell a parent why their child was written up by responding "why don't you ask your child?"

I am so very angry for several reasons.

1) Where does the teacher think she has the right to withhold food from my child? When I was managing a group home I could get in trouble if I did this to any of my clients. Where does she think she has the right to ostracize my child in this way in front of his classmates.

2) The behavior chart is meaningless since the teacher has failed to define what she meant with these ratings.

3) If his behavior was so difficult to manage why is it that the teacher not contacting us about working together to help Liam be better behaved in class.

4) If she is charting the behavior, for what reason, and to what end? Charting is pointless unless the teacher has a plan of action to correct my son's actions in class. If she does have a plan, she has yet to let us know anything about it. Since this was the second week of her charting my son's behavior his behavior is not changing, so what is next?

5) When Ahmie asked the teaching assistant in the class about what is going on in class the assistant did not seem to think Liam's behavior is that extraordinarily bad.


6) Why is the teacher so lazy that she could not communicate with us so that we can help parent our child so he can behave better. She has not given any communication about any incident at school who Liam may have hit or kicked, or tripped? Without any context I cannot in good judgement punish my child for his misbehavior. Without information we cannot have Liam apologize to the kids he may have hurt.

7) Liam is starting to dislike school because of all of this, he only goes to school for like 3 hours a day and there is no way that this teacher will make my son hate school.

I really want to be the ugly parent and rant and rave at the teacher and give her a piece of my mind. However this is not productive as much as I wish to do it.

1) Liam has picked up that Ahmie does not like his teacher. I cannot let Liam see me yell at his teacher, that would be disrespectful. I don't like it done to me so I should not do it to others.

2) I should really see what is going on. Monday I am taking half a day off to observe the class interactions.

I should be very precise and critical with the teacher and with the information that I already have I think I can evaluate her with a very cold critical eye.

I really want my son to love to go to school and learn, he is starting to ask good questions about things. Like he asked about the moon, I try to explain it to him in a scientific way.

Apparently Liam has learned to be quite careful about recycling his things before throwing things out.


I guess we are doing something right.

Catch up

Well I know I haven't written much since October of last year and that since transferring to a different school I haven't written at all. So here is a short recap.

0. Originally I posted that I received the transfer notification at the end of September. However due to delays due to inadequate notification and the number crunching after ADM week 1 (week where enrollment is verified for staffing reasons) I did not get the transfer meeting until the end of October.

My principal was wise enough to take me off the schedule and I work as a kind of building substitute teacher, helping out when needed. It was kind of hard to keep explaining why I am still at the school to the students and after a week of this I eventually just came to work and avoided interacting with the small school principal and just went to my classroom. There were three of us teachers Mrs. Korb and Mr. Lewandowski. Mrs. Korb was the most principled she helped students review for their OGTs while I just hung out. I felt like Peter in Office Space or Milton. I just came to work and sit there and well get paid to be in teacher limbo.

In fact I actually watched the movie in my classroom with the projector with Mr. Lewandowski on one of my last days at East Tech.

1. I went in to the transfer meeting with several schools in my mind namely Jane Addams or Rhodes. Both schools are high schools each school has pros and no real cons. Jane Addams was located near East Tech where I taught so my commute would be the same (mostly highway). Rhodes is my mother in law's alma mater (as well as Drew Carey's). I was ambivalent about both schools and flipped a coin. Jane Addams if heads, and I got heads. The staff at the transfer meeting was amused by the way I decided.

2. I had a day to get ready I moved my stuff and it took a better part of a day to do so. I inherited 2 Chemistry classes and a Senior OGT Science review class. The classes I inherited had many issues, the most frustrating was that the long term sub made up grades for the Chemistry classes and did not assign any grades for the OGT Science class. It was quite a struggle to overcome the long term sub's bad habits.

3. It was great to teach at Jane Addams I finally felt like I was part of a department, My department Mrs. Ammon worked with me and helped me prepare for teaching Chemistry which was a new topic for me to teach. She shared with me materials for labs and reading materials which was great. I enjoyed doing some of the chemistry labs, Mrs. Ammon was happy to see labs were being done.

4. I really enjoyed working with Mrs. Ammon she was like a mentor that I never had as a teacher, she was really pleasant to talk with and it was nice to be able to talk with her about how to teach Chemistry. I think I really learned much from her this year.

5. I really got into recycling this year. It is nice that Lakewood has plastic 1-7 recycling along with glass, metals and paper recycling. Some time after the start of the 3 quarter (late January) I started recycling in school, first in the teacher's lounge with a found can crusher for aluminum cans. Then in March I placed a recycling bin in my classroom to collect the plastic bottles and cans that students often toss into the trash. Apparently as I recycled more the more I had an aversion to seeing recyclable materials being tossed into the trash. In fact I recycled the boxes that were left behind when the school received 55 new computers. It took me several days to collapse the boxes and sort out the recyclables and several trips to the recycling center to get all the computer packaging to be recycled. I still lament that I could not find a place that would recycle the styrofoam packing materials for the computer and monitors.

By the end of the year most of my students actually recycled their papers and drink cans and bottles when they are finished with them.

6. After settling at Jane Addams I got into a very popular reality show it was called the Presidential Primaries of 2008. I had to watch CNN and MSNBC every night and checked Huffingtonpost and Realclearpolitics everyday to get last minute information on the characters presidential candidates and poll information. This pretty gobbled all free time that I have in the evenings. Ahmie and I first were rooting for John Edwards, after he dropped out of the race we rooted for Barack Obama. We went to see him talk in Youngstown, in Cleveland, and for a town hall meeting in Parma, we even went to see Michelle Obama talk at Cleveland State University. We rode the highs and lows of the campaign from Supertuesday to early June with Hillary Clinton's concession speech.

There is of course more to say about the past 8 months but that is for another night. I just finished reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy and I am planning a meditation on my reaction of the book.