Attendance Follies

Lunch - students can be anywhere: gym, cafeteria, wandering outside, playing long-toss on the grass, teacher's classroom, library meeting. They decide, they go. No problem. Nobody takes attendance, duty teachers simply pay attention.


Next is a student-driven tutorial time (they decide their schedule and which teacher they'll go to).

"We have to take attendance for this study hall/tutorial time! Panic! Here's a roster! Here's a second roster! Find each name in three different locations, mark absent or present in two others."

Of course, right after this, attendance is taken in their next class.

Exactly why are we panicking over the one time period but not the other? What all-fired difference does it make anyway? This is a student-driven tutorial time anyway.

/rant

I've got to get back to work.

Some Teachers should really just shut up.

The teacher who went foot to mouth against Gov. Christie really should just shut up. If the reports are true that she actually said she'd "love to earn $83kpy" and in fact makes $86kpy with benefits on top of that, then she has done much more damage to the teachers' cause than she probably realizes.

It does no one any good if the most visible spokesman whines hypocritically and gives the Gov enough ammunition to shoot down her argument. It does no one any good because lots of NY teachers make less with bigger courseloads. I don't make anywhere near that, even after nearly 30 years of teaching, but I don't have nearly the student load or the administrative hassle either of my readers do.

Lady, for all of us, please shut up.

Because it does matter. It matters in the court of public opinion. It matters in the court of John and Mary Smith when they go off to pay their local property taxes. It matters in the zeitgeist.

How much? The same post had this from NJ.com:

In an astonishing fall from grace that has taken only months, teachers have gone from respected and beloved members of the community to some of the most reviled. In a blink, they have trashed years of good will.
Once the patient darlings who nurtured our kids, teachers now look like insensitive, out-of-touch, can’t-think-for-themselves union robots who, when forced to face economic realities, clung to an insulting sense of entitlement, heartlessly sacrificed the jobs of colleagues, called the governor naughty names and used students as political pawns.
All while blaming everyone else.

It matters.

Cellphones and Teenagers.

Over at Joanne Jacobs, Sexting is Popular among teenagers:

More than a quarter: involved in sexting
One third sent or received explicit photos.
14 percent said they suspect the pictures were shared without permission
Seventeen percent of those who received naked pictures said they passed them along to someone else, often to more than just one person.

I'm not surprised. Cellphones (with their current abilities and prices) are so new that everyone has difficulty. Society hasn't set the rules yet. We're close, but it's gonna take time. It always takes time for society to figure itself out.

I recall going to an Everclear concert at a local club. They were playing loud and furious and an audience member held a camera high above his head to record the whole song. Everyone else was doing the same thing but this guy was close to the stage and the camera was right in front of Alex's face and the guy kept it aimed right at him. He stopped the song in the middle. "Dude, you're weirding me out."

We have the same situation in schools with texting during class and the constant NEED to have the phone on vibrate or "too high for teachers", the same situation with over-controlling boyfriends and their new way of keeping track, the same situation with impulsiveness and what the older group deems irresponsibility.

Give a kid unlimited candy and he will eat too much of it.
Give a kid unlimited hours in front of a tv, he will sit there and veg.
Give a kid a computer in his room and he'll spend all his time on it.
Give a kid unlimited use of a cellphone, he will misuse it.
The same with videogames.
The same with sports.
The same with books.
The same with sex.

The parents who give their kids unlimited and uncontrolled use of a toy unleash the limitless ability of the teenager to waste all his time with it and do something stupid or intelligent, wasteful or pretty cool, annoying, funny or thoughtless.

Adolescence is the time when controls are needed to establish boundaries and learn the appropriate use of everything. Limit choices.

Finally, a note to the parents of high-school students:

Please don't try to claim that the current cellphone with all of its bells and whistles is necessary - only the "call parents" option is necessary. Everything else on that phone will be misused.

The "Children sing Obama" video has competition

A little while ago, the world was horrified (okay, Fox News et al. was horrified) that an elementary school would have its children singing the praises of Obama in a YouTube video. Comparisons to Soviet Russia and cults of personality.

Then the antispin: "It's civics! At least these children know who the President is. Not like those twits on the Tonight Show."

Now we have the same thing, only this time it's corporate: Microsoft advertising jingles.



Can't say that's an improvement on singing to Obama.

I wonder if Sean Hannity and Michelle Malkin will get their panties in a twist over it?

h/t to the Register

Punishments, Fines and Penalties

From this Yahoo article by Chris Chase comes news that penalties for lateness in the real world do exist. I may keep this one for when kids complain that they were "just going to the bathroom and couldn't make it to class on time" or "their car wouldn't start" or "my sister was late."

"Lance Armstrong and his Astana team were fined for arriving late for the pre-stage registration this morning in Marseille, France. Rules state that riders must show up 20 minutes prior to the start or face a fine of 100 Swiss Francs ($92)."

Of course, the French authorities were not amused:

"They don't care about the fine. We are going to ask the UCI to be tougher."

Which brings up an interesting point for educators. Set your penalty for the 'offense' and stick to it. The temptation is to raise the stakes for repeat offenders leading to the school suspending or expelling for chronic tardiness. This escalation rarely works to your benefit. Instead, keep the punishment wherever it is. The rulebook is your friend.

High Schoolers are in the middle of feeling their way through the transition from "letter-of-the-law" mentality to "deeper meaning of the law" mentality. Anyone who has tried to write or enforce a dress code knows what I'm talking about here!

If the rule and its response aren't specified, the lesson won't be internalized. If the rule isn't followed all the time, don't expect to have an easy time of it on those rare occasions when you try. These kids are not quite ready to understand relativity and fine lines and shades of gray. They want "Yes" or "No", "Breaking the Rule" or not, "I was inside the door when the Bell rang."

Also, don't get all hung up over the enforcement of that clearly-defined rule and response. The kids get the quid pro quo if they know that you are not singling them out. They might not like the punishment, but they'll understand it. Better to say "You knew what was going to happen, don't complain" or sing the theme tune to Baretta.

Whatever you do, don't drop the punishment. If your school says 1 detention for 3 tardies, it shouldn't suddenly try to mitigate that with "restorative justice" or some other touchy-feely garbage just because Johnny has racked up 15 detentions. The adults will feel better but the Johnny won't get much except "I got away with it." Figure out a way for him to "pay off" those 15 detentions - maybe a work crew assignment on Saturday that happens to be equivalent. If you can't find an equivalent then maybe your penalties should be changed -- at the end of the year.

If the school seems to be ignoring your problem student (as mine does) then the "Mad Minute Quiz" is a fine solution. Have them add fractions or solve simple equations for 60 seconds, no retakes allowed. Anyone on the absence list is exempt.

Don't over-react, either. This is not the time to start talking about "three strikes" or suspension or expulsion. If the kid escalates, then you can rise up with him. His screaming and shouting raises the stakes and is a new situation. His loss of control is a new problem and should be treated just like any other episode of screaming and shouting. Just don't try to make that kid understand that THIS time his five-minute tardiness is somehow more important that the last one and deserves more punishment. He won't understand and you'll get nowhere, mostly because this tardy IS NO different.

Sometimes, you just have to laugh:

"One of the excuses floated for that late arrival for Astana was that there was bad traffic in Marseille. The irony of showing up late to a bike race because your car was stuck in traffic is something even Pescheux should find amusing."

Wrapping up the Strip Search for Advil Case

I thought the school would lose the case but 8-1 is a pretty strong rejection of the school's policies and behaviors.

Supreme Court Rules School's Strip Search of Girl Was Illegal
By Robert Barnes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 25, 2009 12:22 PM

The Supreme Court ruled today that Arizona school officials violated the constitutional rights of a 13-year-old girl when they subjected her to a strip search on the suspicion she might be hiding ibuprofen in her underwear.

The court ruled 8-1 that such an intrusive search without the threat of a clear danger to other students violated the Constitution's protections against unreasonable search or seizure.

Justice David H. Souter, writing perhaps his final opinion for the court, said that in the search of Savana Redding, now a 19-year-old college student, school officials overreacted to vague accusations that Redding was violating school policy by possessing the ibuprofen, equivalent to two Advils.

What was missing, Souter wrote, "was any indication of danger to the students from the power of the drugs or their quantity, and any reason to suppose that Savana was carrying pills in her underwear," Souter wrote.

Justice Clarence Thomas dissented. "Judges are not qualified to second-guess the best manner for maintaining quiet and order in the school environment," Thomas wrote.

Thomas - "Judges are not qualified to second-guess" ... Everyone else seems to think so, why not the Supreme Court?

School Discipline and Silly Administrators

The original article and my repost here was about a student who was sent out of the building when he was suspended and had to wait in sub-freezing weather for 20 minutes. I generally read such things with suspicion - somebody's always lying and usually both sides are speaking through the sides of their mouths.

To wit:
"the school has records of calls made to Mother telling her that her son was going to be suspended that day." "Mother said neither she nor her son knew he was set to be suspended that day, or he wouldn’t have shown up for school." (Names changed to Relationships for clarity.)

This sounds a lot like a case of mistaken communication with interpretations taken liberally by both sides. School probably called and said something like "He's gonna be suspended if he keeps coming in late" but might not have mentioned specifics. I can remember when my school called (kept careful records) but never actually talked to a parent - since neither was home during the day when the administrators called.

On her side, Mother might have figured that if she dropped him off and made a quick getaway, she could be rid of him for the day - the school might not go to the trouble of calling to have him removed. He does sound like a real PITA.

The lawyers are going to have to decide that, but I have my suspicions and it's because of some later statements by the school.

As an aside, we have the obvious question of why "suspension for lateness" makes sense. I mean, you have the kid there and that ought to be your purpose all along, no? Put him in a Special study hall, make him serve after school detentions or something that keeps him there and makes your point. If the true reason for suspension is something else, that needs to be said or you will never address your real problems.

So what is my smoking gun here? A few statements from the "Human Resource Officer" ...

"He was finally told to leave the building. At that point, he was trespassing." and "would never have been removed from the building had he remained calm"

But he wasn't really being raucous or violent, he was being a goofball. Why exaggerate?

"Had he not kept sneaking into the building and roaming around" and "He was being insubordinate with the principal and also not following protocol"

Don't you love it - now he's being "insubordinate" and not "following protocol." Let's use serious terms so people won't notice how silly this whole thing is. I find that school administrators resort to this kind of talk when they know they're going too far, when they know that simply stating facts won't look good, when they know they screwed up and are trying to CYA.

For my part, though, the biggest screw up was this line from the HRD (a dehumanizing title, if I've ever heard one - just call the woman Dean of Students or Attendance Secretary) ...

"He’s failing all of his classes and he failed all of last semester, too. He’s not coming in, and is playing games when he is here."

Have you never heard of FERPA, lady? This bit of information was told to a REPORTER. Besides being immaterial to the case at hand, this information comes under the category of Educational Records and it is PRIVATE.

Moron. If they are resorting to this level, they are almost always trying to cover up their own mistakes. Even if the school district is not actually at fault in any way and did everything else exactly right and the mother and kid are completely in the wrong, this HRD needs to rethink her public relations, at least.