I am grading papers and entering grades into the the grade sheet. All teachers hate grading, and this one especially. Jeez. When is DISD gonna send my money? :(

I am not in school anymore but for all the people that still are, this is a great website. You'll never do your own bibliography again.

I was just glancing at the search engine queries that bring up the blog and "Levi Skinner Jeans" is still the number one search term for my website. Searching for abercrombie and fitch models also seems to be a reliable way to bring up this website too. No end of entertainment to be had from looking at search engine queries. I'll have to be sure to talk about nudity and Christina Aguilera and other women as much as possible as that brings up this website too.

I just made the lives of some adolescent boys miserable and I don't regret it a bit. I teach them in a class at school and they torture me everyday for 45 minutes a piece so it isn't uncharitable for me to spread the love a little is it? All was done in the name of reducing chaos in the classroom.
Deep down I believe that almost every single child in the special education classes that I am teaching is capable of doing more work. Their behavior prevents me from finding out. So, I intend to crackdown on their rowdy behavior with the help of the dean of instruction. I am hoping he can make a guest appearance and do a little intimidation for me. Evidently, the kids don't find me very intimidating.
I think the DISD isn't going to send me my thin little bundle of joy till Monday! I am liking this idea of being payed once a month less and less. Maybe if I made more money... A job at Inutuit is looking better and better. Especially with a sizeable check on its way from the DISD in December. It would be like a Christmas bonus, only I slaved for every penny! I might want to get out of the education business before I begin saying aloud what I am beginning to feel about the children. I do love them. I just want to wring their necks.

Waiting for that paycheck to get here.
The beautiful weather continues. Can you believe it? I spend the best part of the day inside, but I get paid for it. (Not enough and very infrequently, but I do get paid)
I am having trouble getting enough sleep. I have taken to sleeping all evening and waking up in the middle of the night. \
How did I miss out on the leftovers from chicken my mom cooked yesterday?

I hate sitting around waiting for things to happen.

Major processing muscle here.

I am fighting back against the hordes of chaos. I phoned several children's parents and they promised immediate action against their ill-behaved offspring. Who said that parents don't care?
I am going to be teaching these kids at least until Thanksgiving. That means I have to grade papers... UGHHH!

When I am walking in the morning to the bus or from the bus to the school, I am often struck by the beauty of these fall mornings. I often wish I had a camera with me to photograph what I see - ducks in the creek, brilliant red leaves, bright green grass, and sunny blue skies. I just wish sometimes I were seeing it from the seat of a car.

I need a car so bad that while selling my right arm is still too much, I have a left arm I’d trade for a low mileage Honda Civic.

What posesses middle school children to thrust each other's heads at their crotches while making slurping noises? What posessed me to laugh?

I am a little weary of teaching this group of kids and it is only Monday! I have a long week ahead of me.
I am going to fight back a little by working out instead of sleeping as soon as I get home. I need to run too but my excuse for that is that I don't have great cold weather workout gear.

People can't be depended on to articulate their needs to you in a way that is commerically exploitable. You can observe these people acting on their needs to get clues on how to meet their needs and line your pockets.

Linux less secure than Microsoft!

I had a long chat with the leader of Special Education at T.C. Marsh and I feel like I better understand the situation and have more sympathy for Special Education teachers. I like the system less. A Special Education teacher explained to me that 20% of all children in the United States where in Special Education. Special Education teachers are well aware of how wrong-headed and self-defeating certain aspects of the system are. There also isn't much to be done to change the system. Schools like Special Education because it funnels money into the school. Parents like Special Education because:

• Kids pass and progress from grade to grade.
  
• They stay eligible for sports.
  
• The parents often receive money for their child's disability.
  

Teachers all know how sad and disgusting some aspects of Special Education can be. They also know that a third of kids who start Special Education will not graduate and that almost none of these kids will go to college. Kids hate Special Education and learn to hate school quickly once in the program. The kids in the program often have behavioral problems because of their frustration with school. They feel powerless to help themselves and act out by being disruptive, violent, and or disobedient. As they fall further behind they get worse. Teachers are often harried and so stressed out that they send troublesome students to Special Education rather than deal with the child's behavioral problems. It is easier to make the child disappear from your class than it is to repair years of frustration and unlearned school work.
Should your child ever be put in a special education program, he is doomed. The immediate goal should be to get him out immediately. However a lot of the damage is already done by the time the kid gets out of the third grade. Teachers can tell you who will do well in life and who will not by that point in the child's school career. What I learned is that there are children on whom and education is wasted. These children will most likely grow up to be the person who mows your yard, cleans your house, bags your groceries, serves you food or builds your machines. These kids are screwed.

The teacher I am substituting for is coming back early! I am elated. I feel a little guilty, but I see my current teaching position as a bit oif a trap for teachers and students. The DISD Special Education program is a catch-all program designed to be a repository for students performing well below grade level. For the most part these children are bright and have no apparent mental defects that keep them from performing well (I have no access to their grades and IQ scores so even the brightest and sharpest looking students could possible severely deficient according to the recorded evidence). They do have significant behavioral defects. When scattered among relatively well-behaved students they are innocuous and easily managed. When gathered together with other students with similar problems, keeping them in line is a major feat of classroom management.
I failed miserably at classroom management today. Nearly every student in my third period class was out of my control and most of the boys received referrals for playing a schoolyard game called "Licks" at the back of the class. (Combatants in "Licks" roll up their sleeves and take turns pounding each other's upper arms. The winner is the one who can still move his arms when the game is finished.) The rest were lucky to have been seated when an exasperated teacher walked in on the classroom. I could only look on, helpless to control them. The teacher visited again to demand another referral for a young girl in my fourth period. I hate writing referrals and especially for these kids because they exist on the very fringes of educabilty (I have no idea whether "educability" is actually a word or not but I like it). New referrals for many of these kids put them in alternative schools and if alternative school is anything like Special Ed then they are doomed. The only glimmer of hope I see for college success for any of these children is that they are relatively far away from college. They have five or six years to change their ways. The problem is they are operating on fourth grade learning levels and are in the seventh and eigth grade. How they are to recover from that I don't know. Even with extremely intelligent children (and I know these kids are smart), I don't see how there would be enough time to learn all the things they are missing by not being in regular classrooms.
My mistake today was in not keeping them busy enough. Busy students don't act up and the ones who give me the least trouble are the ones who work through the period. Paradoxically, these are also the least remarkable kids. They struggle to finish the assignments in the time alloted but work steadily to get all the work done. The other kids who breezes through the work or just refuse to do the work are the more troublesome ones, even though they usually seem to have the most mental potential.
My mental block with classroom discipline is that threats don't seem to have any effects on these kids. They respond to action, drastic action. In past assignments I have responded to this by randomly choosing a sacrifical lamb from the many offenders so that the others would beware. I felt this was unjust and a deterrent born from anger - an uncharitable emotion that I don't like to give in to around the kids. However, It does yield fewer referrals overall. Tomorrow I am giving a test and I'll attempt to keep the kids busy for the rest of the class period. Maybe I'll avoid handing out referrals tomorrow. I hate Special Ed.

Why can't I make you laugh? Other people do...

I could really use one of these. Anyone who has seen my scraggly beard will tell you.

I had a really sad situation in class today. I was hearing reports of a student in my class who certainly looked male enough being called a girl. Convinced that it was a simple case of schoolhouse bullying, I called the student to my desk and demanded to know who were the perpetrators. THe student promptly broke down in tears under my questioning and refused to tell who the tormentors were. The student refused to go to the next period class so I offered to walk the student to class. A female teacher immediately recognized the student and asked what the matter was. I explained and the student wept again. THe teacher immediately moved to comfort the child and said she would handle it. When she came back, I asked what the matter was and she explained. The child was a girl and was dressed as a boy and had a shaved head. The parents had recently decided that she should live as a boy and had begun dressing her as a boy and demanding that the school change its documentation to reflect their choice. The school adamantly refused insisting that the child remain a girl. So my student is stuck in the middle left to the tender mercies of her gleeful classmates.

I used to think that Manute Bol was a cheap shameless self-promoter, but a paragraph in this article made it all clear to me. He is a freedom fighter. Really...