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.