Non re-elects

Last week was a really trying week, mentally and emotionally.  On Wednesday, they non re-elected every teacher on my campus that wasn't tenured.  A non re-elect is different than a layoff.  A layoff is because of budget reasons.  Sorry, we can't afford to keep you.  A non re-elect is for teachers who are in their probationary years.  When you begin teaching in California, you are on probation for two years.  During those two years, they can fire you at any time and they don't have to give a reason.  At the end of your second year, they have to decide if they want to keep you, thereby granting you tenure, or get rid of you because you're not good enough.  A non re-elect means that you can never work in that district again, whereas if you get laid off, you can always reapply.  So, 5 teachers on our campus (4 of the 5 who are GREAT teachers) were non re-elected, two of them being my good friends of mine and another being the only eye candy on campus!

Last year, Melissa and Rebecca received stellar observations by admin (this year, we have all new admin and they're terrible.  It's very much an us vs. them mentality on my campus) and this year, they received good observations--not the stellar ones from last year, but still good.  Then, their most recent observation forms come back and they're marked "does not meet expectations" on one tiny, stupid, minute thing--which is all they need to non re-elect someone.  One of the 6th grade teachers received a "does not meet expectations" because she didn't have enough things on her walls!  She is a first year teacher who was given really difficult kids and had been asking admin for help all year, but received none.  And then they fired her.

Rebecca is our music teacher who also took on the leadership class, organized a huge school-wide going away party for our campus monitor, Eddie, who had been at the school FOREVER (who the new admin promptly transferred to another school as soon as they stepped onto campus), and spent countless hours putting on concerts and doing anything else they needed done at school.  Yeah, she was non re-elected.  Melissa was harrassed on a daily basis for almost a semester by one of her students.  He said, "Shut up, bitch" and "Fuck you, bitch" to her and the Instructional Aide in her classroom on a daily basis.  Nothing was really ever done about that kid.  He was finally moved into the Opportunity class, after A SEMESTER of that.

It sickens me, the way teachers are treated.  What was their reasoning for non re-electing them instead of just laying them off?  Public education is a joke.

In other news, that fall I took a couple weeks ago?  It looks like this now:

It's super puffy and itchy!
On Sunday, we went up to Oakland to scrimmage the Oakland Outlaws.  It was a ton of fun and they were great hostesses as usual.  Last year, we scrimmaged them in February.  It was the first time that we, as a travel team, had played against another team EVER.  We lost 242-24.  This year, we only lost 152-51.  We did so much better!  And we only had 10 skaters and they had 17, so we were tiring out much more quickly. I love B.ay A.rea D.erby Girls.

I've come down with a really terrible cold and am out of work for my second day. :( I'm trying to get as much rest and liquids in as possible because we have a game in Paso Robles on Saturday and I need to be able to play.

Help, I'm trapped!

This is me on the inside:

I saw the orthopedist.  He looked at my MRI and told me that I have not one but two cysts (one on each hip).  I also have labral tears.  He also said that I'm looking at having both of my hips replaced at some point in probably the next 20 years.  Apparently, I have the body of an 80 year old woman.

The good news it that as far as exercise and physical therapy for my hip, skating is probably one of the best things I can do.  At some point, I'll probably have to have arthroscopic surgery, but since it isn't really bothering me that bad yet, I can wait a while.  Which is good because I can't afford another surgery.  Of course, the day after I find out about all of this, I take an epic fall at practice and slam down on my side.  I laid there, writhing in pain for a good 3 minutes, unable to speak while my teammates were asking me question after question after question.  I was getting so annoyed.  I just wanted to be left alone.  I mean, obviously I love them and they were concerned about me, but I was in so much pain I couldn't answer at the moment, and they kept talking to me.  When I finally was able to speak again, I said, "I'm fine.  Just stop talking to me."  And now I am growing the most epic of bruises on the back of my thigh.  I can't wait until it reaches its full potential.

We have the top derby coach in the nation coming for a 4 hour clinic tomorrow.  I am so unbelievably stoked.  She's doing a two hour table top coaching session for the entire training committee (all of the captains, the director of training, and the head ref) before the 4 hour clinic.

In work-related news, I wish I were good at math and had become a math teacher.  It would make grading less time-consuming.  It's either correct or incorrect.  Grading 7th grade short stories is both entertaining and mind-numbing.  I had a kid title his story, "Live or Don't."  It makes me laugh every time I think about it.  He's the most adorable little guy.  My students have been pretty cute the last couple days (but boy were they atrocious at the beginning of the week!).

Fill-in

I stole this from Caitlin at To Make Love Stay, who stole it from Sam of Young People in Love.

Sometimes...

It's hard for me to get the energy and motivation to get out of bed and leave the house.

 I'm reminded of how much I love my family when I stop and think about how I only see them twice (maybe 3 times) a year.

 I feel self-conscious when I am getting ready to play in front of 600 people and realize that I'm one of the biggest girls in my league.

 I am mildly dishonest when I tell myself I will be better about budgeting my money next month.

I can't imagine a world without books.

 I'm surprised that I still am teaching for this district considering how much I abhor it.

 I get a little too easily wrapped up in anything and everything roller derby.

 I indulge in guilty pleasures like the Backstreet Boys Pandora Station (even though I was never a boyband fan when I was a teenager). 

 I wish all things in life were as wonderful as the feeling I got when my Red Red team won the tournament in December.

Rainy Day

This is happening right now, making it very hard for me to type this.  Ollie insists on sitting on my lap at the most inconvenient times, but when I want to cuddle with him, he has no interest in sitting still.  He wants to play and jumps all over the place.  He currently has my left hand pinned down with his head.  But he's so cute, I don't want to move him.  :)

I went to the doctor on Wednesday and got the results of my MRI.  I have benign (whew!) cyst in my hip.  The doctor was pretty sure it was benign when she sent me for the MRI to begin with, but wanted to make sure.  The MRI did, however, show that I have a slight tear in my hip socket.  So, now I have to go back to my orthopedist.  I'm not sure how you heal a hip-socket tear.  I'm assuming skating is probably a no-no.  But, I haven't seen him yet, so he hasn't told me I can't skate.  So, I will continue to skate.  Innocent until proven guilty, and all that.

I asked her about the leg pains (I've been having weird random leg pains since October.  I thought they were exercise induced but then I got them when it had been a few days since my last practice, so that theory didn't really work anymore).  I also told her that I feel like something on my body always hurts.  It's not always the same place.  She tested a few areas on my body and determined that I have a mild form of fibromyalgia.  She then asked how I felt about taking an anti-depressant.  Anti-depressants have been proven to help with fibromyalgia.  I wasn't very keen on the idea of taking an anti-depressant.  I'm not keen on the idea of taking medication every day for the rest of my life.  I guess I feel like it's a sign of weakness.  (Oddly enough, I am already on a medication for the rest of my life--levothyroxine, which is for my thyroid, but that's not something I can control.  Does this make me a hypocrite?).  She explained that it would help with my anxiety, my general lack of energy, and my fibromyalgia symptoms by increasing the levels of seratonin in my body.  I reluctantly agreed.  I am actually feeling okay about it now though.  It will be great not to be in as much pain and to finally have energy.

There is a breaking-in period with the medication, of course.  The first day was WEIRD!  I suddenly felt like I needed to run laps around the school.  Then, I just wanted to lay down on the ground and take a nap.  Then, I felt jittery like I'd had 20 cups of coffee.  Then tired again.  I just didn't feel like me.   Here's hoping I get used to it quickly.

This afternoon, I'm going to see Avenue Q with Nurse Rackula for her birthday.  Holler!  I've seen it twice already (once when the broadway production was on tour, and once earlier this month at our community theater production).  It is absolutely hysterical.  I'm excited, but this rainy, blustery day is making it really very hard to do anything but sit here in my pajamas.  Even though it is already 2:00.

Rants about my dipwad school district.

I am so frustrated by my school.  I honestly don't know how the District hasn't imploded on itself and crumbled to pieces.  The district and its schools are so poorly run.  I've taught at 3 different schools in this district and I have never really felt supported by the administrators at any of them, and forget about the people at the district level.  That's a whole different story.

We have this class called "Opportunity" class.  It is for the kids who are such a problem that they can't function in a regular classroom (we're not talking about special education students.  This is for students who do not have any learning difficulties or an IEP).  These are the kids who take an entire class hostage with their poor behavior, or show no respect to the teacher, etc.  Once other avenues have failed--counseling, detention, suspension, etc, a meeting is set up with the student's teachers, parents, counselor, and an administrator and it is discussed whether or not opportunity is the place for the student.  There are only a handful of spots open in Opportunity as the Opportunity teacher cannot be expected to handle too many of this type of student at once, since the teacher is with those students the ENTIRE day.

I had a student in Opportunity all semester who just came back to me and has made absolutely no improvements.  His first day back, he called another student a bitch because he was bullying her and she shoved his binder away from her because she was frustrated.  He also says, "make me" when I give instructions and then gives what he thinks is a genuine I'm-just-kidding smile, but is really a genuine I'm-an-asshat smile.  He has no remorse for anything that he does wrong.  He has no respect for women.  He waltzes in to class 15 minutes late and is super loud and disruptive when he comes in.  As soon as I turn my back, he is throwing something at someone, taking something that doesn't belong to him, or out of his seat bothering another student.  And my only choice is to give him detention (which he doesn't show up to).  If I send him to the office, they send him back saying I haven't done enough of my own interventions.

At the last school I was at, Opportunity students had to earn back their regular classes gradually, and a meeting occurred with the teachers-of-record and the opportunity teacher to discuss whether or not the student was ready to come back (part of the deal is that the student needed to be turning in the work being sent to him/her in Opporunity).  At my current school, we got an email from the AP (assistant principal) saying he was coming back.  Both the art teacher and I emailed asking if there was going to be a meeting about it because he hadn't turned in ANY work in 15 weeks.  We got no response.  The first day back to school, there he was, gracing my door with his stupid jerk face.

I don't dislike kids.  I like all my students.  No matter how annoying they are to have in a big class that I have to manage, I still like all my students on a personal level.    My students love me.  I'm not saying this to brag.  I'm saying it because it is true.  I'm very easy to get along with.  I treat them like people, not children (even though they are).  I share students with other teachers who are just fine for me, but terrible for other teachers.  It is really, really hard for me to dislike a kid. This kid is a bad seed.  He does and says terrible things.  I've not seen a single redeeming quality in him.

That is just one example of why my school sucks.  Another?  A colleague of mine had a student who, when given any kind of direction by herself or her instructional aide, would say, "Shut the fuck up, bitch."  This occurred on an almost daily basis.  This is not just disrespect.  It is harassment.  It took the administrators and entire semester before they took him out of her class and put him in Opportunity.  He was never once suspended for this behavior.  The admin is always telling us we never do enough.  We're expected to hold our own detentions (because the school can't afford to pay someone to run detention), unpaid, beyond our contracted work hours.  A kid has to be assigned 5 detentions before we are allowed to send him/her to the office.  So, if you have a kid who is loud and obnoxious and you can't teach over them and you've assigned them detention, but they still won't shut up, you just have to put up with that student.  And so do the rest of the students.  Who aren't learning anything.  Because said kid won't shut up.

My hand hurts from typing.  It is all bruised from being run over by a skate at practice last night.  I love teaching.  I love teaching.  I love teaching.  /rant.

Wannabe

I want to be a blogger.  That is, I want to actually update this blog on the regular.  I'm such a procrastinator.  I had this list of things I was going to do this summer--not the fun "vacation" type things, but things around the house that a responsible person who has nothing else to do should be completing.  On that list--hang all my framed pictures and put the bout posters around the house.  Also, spray the backyard with weed killer.  Aaaand...blog on the regular.  None of that has happened yet.  Though I did do laundry yesterday (party, bonus!).
Also, I feel I've limited myself in content somewhat, by choosing the name Misadventures of an English Teacher for my blog.  I feel like all I should do is talk about teaching, when in reality, all I do talk about is derby.  I should change the name to Misadventures of an Ass Kicking, Booty Blocking English Teacher.  At any rate, summer is flying by.  I have less than a month left of summer.  I'm sure to anyone who is not in education this sounds pathetic and cry-baby.  Waahhh I have all summer off while everyone else works all year round, but the difference between teachers and most people is that their average work week is somewhere around 70 hours.  Sometimes more. And for 10 months, I don't really have a real weekend.  So, I feel summers are well-deserved and I'm bummed that mine is half over.
I'm so looking forward to RollerCon though.  However, RollerCon means summer is over because the Friday after I return from Vegas, I have to report to school.  Ick.  I wish I could win the lottery and stay home and do nothing but skate and blog :)

Santa Cruz Beach & Boardwalk

Today, I chaperoned the 7th grade field trip to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk.  I've been looking forward to this all week.  Mostly because being outside in the sunshine and going on rides is obviously better than being in school with the kids who didn't go (see: all the behavior problems), but I really only went on three rides and the rest of the day, walked around with some of the other chaperones.  As I was walking back and forth, I realized I was almost always looking for my students.  They always at least smiled and waved as the passed by, but they also yelled to me from the rides and even stopped frequently to tell me about the things they'd done since the last time they'd seen me (usually only 30 minutes).  It was on the bus while I was watching a group of boys chat and smile and laugh with each other, recounting their day to the people around them, that I realized that the best part of my day was seeing the kids have fun.  The smiles on their faces and the knowledge that they had the best time was way better than the actual trip to the boardwalk. The kids were all really wonderful and the trip went on without incident.  Even when our bus was 30 minutes late and they had to sit on the sidewalk and wait, and were clearly getting restless, they were great.  Today, I truly loved my job.  For all the stress it brings me, and for all that I DON'T want to teach middle school, I really enjoyed my students this year and will genuinely miss them next year.

Another highlight of the day: Bumper Cars.  When else do you get to take out your aggression with your knucklehead students without really hurting them?  And when else do they get to bash around their teachers?

One of my students today said, "It was nice to see the teachers actually have fun for a day."  I thought that was cute.  They must think our lives suck haha.  I think kids forget teachers are human.  It's like they think we just roll out a sleeping bag and live in our classrooms.

8 school days left!