My Interesting Week

This has truly been one of the more interesting weeks of the school year. In fact, so much has happened that I am going to write two posts about it.

The week began with a department meeting on Monday. There was little new business to take care of, only a few minor announcements to make. At the last Department Chairman meeting I announced that we would be offering Honors Biology as a “zero hour” class for local eighth graders next year. Math does something similar, offering Algebra I to eighth graders who qualify first period. These students, if they attend our school for freshmen year, would begin their math education with Geometry. The zero hour Biology would allow these students to accelerate in both math and science, taking Chemistry as freshmen. One of the assistant principals at the Department Chairman meeting asked to see me after and, at that time, expressed his concerns about the staff chosen to teach the class. His concern was not that they would do an unsatisfactory job, they are both excellent teachers, but that they tend to call in sick in the morning rather than the night before. He was concerned that if they call in sick in the morning, he would have a difficult time getting a substitute for them at that early hour. He wanted the teachers to be responsible to get their own subs if absent so he would not have to be bothered with it.

I decided to make an appointment with the principal to discuss the matter, not wanting to go against the assistant principal, but also not wanting to go against my teachers. I brought it up to the principal as something I didn’t know what to do about. “I can see both sides.” I told her when I apprised her of the situation. She told me she would handle it.

The next item on my meeting agenda concerned a formed department member who left six years ago when she became pregnant. Her child is now ready to begin pre-school and she has asked to return to work, part time, if a job is available. This was a very average teacher who I had no problems with, but left bad feelings behind when she quit. The other teachers in the department don’t like her for a variety of reasons, and the former principal was quite upset with the way she left. She had taken two months maternity leave and promised to return again, then decided a week before school began to resign. I discussed these problems with the new principal, making sure she understood the situation. We both agreed that we did not feel comfortable having her back, and decided to inform her that we had no part time position open, but thank her for her interest. It is our hope that she will hook up somewhere else.

The third item was printing for Biology. Biology students used to buy a workbook, but the new edition of the text supplies the teacher with a disk that contains the workbook files. Teachers have to print the workbook page, and duplicate copies for their students. We figure that the result is 40,000+ copies on our machines each school year. The Biology teachers what to get permission to send the workbook pages to an outside printer and have them make packets that each student would purchase at the beginning of the year. The students would pay $4.00 for the packet and the teachers would be saved from being chained to the copy machines every day. I was not sure that the principal would go for this, but I emphasized the 40,000+ copies that would be saved and she agreed.

Teen Violence

If you turn your TV or radio on today you will probably see or hear a news/talk show devoted to the topic of school violence. Big news the last few days has been the eight teens in Lakeland Florida who beat a fellow cheerleader because of something posted on Myspace. The local paper in Lakeland reports today that the girls are charged with kidnapping, battery, and tampering with a witness, and could face life in prison if convicted. We all know that won’t happen.

In Chicago, students have recently marched on the State of Illinois Building protesting for more gun control after a particularly violent few months where 20 teens have lost their lives to violence this year already. The fear was so bad at one Chicago public high school that parents were keeping their children home. I read a news story today about a 54 year old teacher in Baltimore who was sent to the hospital after being beaten by a student. At another local public high school, a student was arrested yesterday. He was found with a gun in his locker and ammunition on his person. This is not a inner city school but a mostly white suburban district. Any sane person would be frightened.

Fortunately, the school I teach at has only minor fights to deal with, and then only a few times a year. I have never been threatened by a student in all my years here, and only once was a teacher struck by a student. We suspend students for a first offense of fighting and put the student on probation. Last school year there were 4 fights the school administration had to deal with all year. A second offense will usually result in expulsion. Students are immediately expelled for having a weapon on campus, and while no gun has ever shown up a few students have been expelled over the years for knives.

You may be surprised that fights between girls are generally much more violent than those between boys. Boys don’t really want to fight, they want someone to step in and stop it. The altercation can easily be broken up by a teacher yelling stop. The fight is almost always over a girl or some perceived insult to one’s “woman” or “manhood.”
These altercations lack passion and are only face saving activities.

On the other hand, fights between girls are nasty, violent, and brutal. Girls fight in order to inflict pain and humiliation on each other. It is almost impossible to break the fight up without physically restraining the combatants. About 25 years ago I tried to break up a fight after school between two young ladies in the back hall of the main building. At the time I was 5’ 11” and 190 lbs and lifted weights three times a week. Both girls together weighed about as much as me. It took all my strength to hold them apart with my arms, each trying to climb over me to get at the other, until another teacher arrived and helped. Apparently, the boyfriend of one of the girls cheated on her with the other. One girl had a clump of hair in her hand and the other needed 7 stitches from a cut she received when she was pushed through a window. The girls were sophomores and the “cheating” incident had taken place when they were in 7th grade! When the disciplinary board meet with the girls another fight almost broke out between the parents of the girls. Both were expelled.
Fortunately, girls don't usually resort to weapons. Fists are much more personal and that's the way they like it.

It is silly to think that the world would be a safer place if women were in charge. We would probably have a nuclear exchange when the president of France made fun of the outfit worn by the president of Russia.

The Helicopter Parent

Writing my last post made me think of another incident that occurred last week related to student/parent access to grades on the internet. Opening internet access to student grade information for parents did not occur without some objections from faculty.

Unless you are a teacher, you might wonder what is wrong with “grade transparency.” Most objections from teachers revolve around the idea of correcting papers. When grades are transparent to parents (posted on-line) there is an expectation that papers will be graded in a timely manner. This is not in the nature of some teachers. One English teacher complained that they would feel pressure to grade exams after they were given instead of putting them in a folder and waiting for a week or two. I did the car-pool thing with another teacher for a few years a while back, and he was one of the worst at getting things graded. Term grades are usually due on Monday, and the Friday before he would be panic mode over the pile of ungraded assignments and exams on his desk. It was so bad that he would usually spend 24-48 hours without sleep over the weekend trying to catch up. I would pick him up on the Monday grades were due and he would spend the whole drive finishing up filling out the grade sheets on his lap, while bitterly complaining about the deadline. This was before the days of internet grade access so he got away with it. Another teacher argued that posting grades would increase child abuse. I thought he was kidding–but he was serious.

It is much worse for some of the public school students I tutor. One poor Geometry student would have no new grades posted for weeks. When I emailed his teacher asking how he had done on a previous test or quiz I would get an aggravated reply indicating that she had a family and didn’t have time to grade anything now. A talk with a teacher I know in her district informed me that even though their parents had internet access the teachers contract said that no grades needed to be recorded until the end of the quarter. I was told that a significant portion of the faculty never entered grades until the day they were due. I suggested that such an attitude defeated the purpose of internet grade access. My teacher friend told me that this could be negotiated in the next teacher contract but would require some concession from the district in another area. “We will not agree to increase our work load” I was told “unless we are compensated for it in the contract.”

At my school we need to enter new weekly grades by Tuesday; the day before extracurricular eligibility is determined by the administration. I always grade student work within a day or two of collection and record it immediately online. My students are used to taking an exam and finding the grade online that evening. I can access each student/parent account and find out when and how often they check their grades.

In the case of the girl I wrote about in my last entry with the “absence” problem, I was surprised to find that the parent had never accessed the girls records. This explains why she didn’t seem concerned about the failing grade–the parent was unaware of it. The girl has accessed her information 88 times this school year and probably asked the mother to intervene in her absence situation without letting her know about the grade. I took care of that by emailing the mother back to tell her that I took care of the absence and asked why she wasn’t as concerned about her daughter’s grade. Now we will see if attendance is really more important than grades.

The other main objection to internet access to grades is the “helicopter” parent; a parent who hovers around their child, obsessively contacting the teacher about every assignment. I had to deal with one such parent earlier this year. She would email me every time I posted an assignment her child didn’t get an “A” on. I was told in each contact that her child was gifted and could not possibly have gotten a “C” on a quiz. I was asked to recheck each assignment to make sure I didn’t make a mistake in my grading. Each time I reminded the parent that the student had the assignment and she should look at it, and if there was any mistake to let me know. After about 12 emails she stopped contacting me.

One current parent is the worst I have ever encountered. If you look up “helicopter parent” in the dictionary his picture will be there. Since the beginning of the school year he has accessed his daughters grades 653 times. The printed record covers 5 pages and includes almost every day since September when school began. Three days stand out among all the others. On March 19th he accessed her grades 11 times, spending at least 7 minutes online each time! On February 28th they were accessed 14 times, and January 28th , 10 times. The average is 4-5 times each day.

We recommend that parents check their student’s progress once a week.

Going For The Gold!

As you can imagine, I get voice-mail messages weekly from parents who want one thing or another from me. Surprisingly often it is a request to talk to their son or daughter about something; a failed exam, poor attendance, questions about lab... I tell my students in the beginning of the year that they don’t have to have their mommy call and ask me to work with them....they can ask themselves. I usually reply to these requests by telling the parent to have their child come to see me...many times they don’t.

Last week I got a new request; one I had never gotten before. A parent called and asked me to change an marked absence I had recorded for the student to a present. The student had not been in my class when the bell rang that day, arriving late after attending a meeting with a guest speaker. The student had permission from the administration to attend this meeting and arrived with a pass about 20 minutes into the period. I collected the pass and went along with class, failing to change the “absent” to an “excused tardy” on my computerized attendance list.

A few days later the student approached me to tell me that she was marked absent on a day when she was here...though not here at the beginning of the period. When students are marked absent and not on the formal absence list for the day the attendance office calls them in and questions them on where they were. I returned the pass to the student–I keep all passes of this kind just for this occasion–and told her to show it to the attendance person when called in. She seemed satisfied and sat down with her pass in hand. About a week later the girl came to me again and said that her attendance record still showed an absence and that the attendance office had not called her in to discuss it. I told her not to worry–the attendance office must have a list of the students who missed class that day and didn’t need to check with her. I assumed that she was worried about being accused of skipping class. I learned the truth last week.

Last Tuesday I got a call from her mother asking me to go to the office and have the attendance record changed. She explained that her daughter had not missed a day of school--not even a period--in all her years of school. Perfect attendance for 10 years. She explained that her daughter was “going for the gold”, whatever that means, and it was a “matter of family pride” that she have perfect attendance, my absence mark the only blemish on her otherwise perfect record. Her voice on the recording was close to hysterical.

Many other teachers would have made a big deal about her really being absent, even if still in school, but they teach English. On a scale of 1 - 10 where 10 is an important issue to stand firm on, this is a 0.03. I went to the office and convinced the attendance person to change the record to reflect that she was there that day. It took all of 90 seconds to accomplish. The next day I noticed that her attendance record had changed.

Students can check their attendance and grades online from home. Parents can also access the information. The attendance and grades appear on the same page when called up by either parents or student, making we wonder why the call wasn’t about the fact that the girl was failing my class. She has a 53% and 47% on the two exams so far this quarter and two missing assignments. Apparently “going for the gold” doesn’t apply to grades. I still find it troubling that a parent would appear so concerned about a one period absence and so uninterested in failing grades.