Bandwagon Day

I will totally jump on with you ...

I was not in the best of moods today. The kids were awesome and have been since we've gotten back from the break. It's nice to know that my students still remember how to behave in my class, even if they don't in others.

I have to say that I am not particularly in a bad mood. And its not that I am more easily annoyed than usual either. I have decided to call it my "bandwagon mood."

This school year has not been bad, but it wasn't as good as last year (which of course makes it seem worse than it actually is until you think about it overall). I'm not exactly sure how to describe the "temperature" of the school, but it seems less ... happy, for the lack of a better adjective. We seemed to have lost the doe-eyed optimism that was so prevelant last year.
I consider it to be like a relationship. All the minor things that you dislike about a significant other but think you will get used to start to become more and more annoying.

So, why is considered a "bandwagon day"? Well, nothing particularly bad happened to me today. Annoying things happened to other people while I was in the room and decided I should be as equally angry as they were.

One of the English teachers submitted her semester exams to administration. A part of the test asked the students to brainstorm ideas and write a thesis as if he/she were going to write a persuasive essay. One of the topic choices was "Should your school have school uniforms?" The administrator e-mailed back that the test must be removed because students should not be allowed to criticize something that already happening in the school. God forbid we ask them to be able to support their ideas with persuasive arguments!

Another anger bandwagon I jumped on was that the other 6th grade social studies teacher and I submitted virtually the same semester exam. She received an e-mail saying she needed to add 3-4 essay questions and I was told mine was fine. I felt bad for her!

Then, our music teacher was accepted in the Masters in Ed, Alt. Cert. Program at The Lake. They offered to pay over 75% of it as long as she would enter to teach science. She said absolutely and only has to take about 14 hours of science to be fully qualified. She told our principal about the program and how she would need to teach at least 3 science classes next year. His response was that he would have to see because teaching science is so much harder than music. Now, some may disagree with me, but I feel I can make a strong argument that all classes are equally as hard to teach, but in different ways. Social Studies and English can sometimes be amazingly boring. Science and math hard and some students just have a mental block. Yet, electives are sometimes seen as the "easy classes to teach." Since I taught speech this year (and Geography Bee last year), I found it just as hard to teach the electives. The students tend to not take them as seriously and are much more prone to behavior issues. I felt angry for her too!

Over the Winter Break, we were asked, as a homework assignment, to reflect on our first semester, how we thought behavior in our classes was, and any comments, concerns, or suggestions to improve the school. Yesterday in the staff meeting, the homework assignment was discussed by the VP of Students. I can sum up the 25 minute discussion in one sentence: "Thank you all for so much for the constructive criticism, but we are not going to change a damn thing." The reason this angers me so much is not so much that they aren't going to change a damn thing ... Its that they made me waste my time giving them at least descent ideas and not give a damn about them. It was a waste of our collective time if they had no intentions of actually listening. I understand that most of those "sugesstion box" assignments are pointless, but at least lie to me!! Make me think that you are going to implement some new and improved ideas! Even if you don't actually plan to, sometimes a little white lie can shut me the hell up.

With the exception of the homework assignment, none of these issues really happened to me, yet I seemed to be just as angry as the people it actually affected. It is important to note that I still feel that the positives heavily outweigh the negatives, which is nice to focus on. But the negatives are becoming more noticeable, recognizable, and aggravating ... which is less nice to focus on.

And so goes the life ...