Monday truly was hell, as I expected. I felt lousy, the kids had their eyes on the end of the week and spring break and behaved as expected. Many detentions for all sorts of things (two girls who found a sub in their music class left and wandered the halls. "I didn't cut class, I went in then left." was the excuse).
Tuesday, though, things came together better. Maybe because the day was pure chaos. Spring pictures, to which we had to bring our homerooms. Except that our homerooms scatter to classes on our hall and off, and they staggered the times of each homeroom, so I had a fourth of my class at any given moment over the course of 2 hours. It could have been that so many of our detention students didn't bother to show up, and were given in-school-suspension, or ISS. They actually prefer that, since they don't have to tell their parents they got a detention, they don't have to see any of their regular teachers or move from room to room. A couple of students in my classes actually observed that the class was "good" - then took a quick look around to see who wasn't there, and had an "aha" moment when they realized that such a small handful can disrupt an entire class. Or maybe it was the good lesson I planned that wouldn't have worked at all without the smartboard, where my kids could highlight/model percents on ten-squares, right on the board. I had kids begging to be allowed to do a problem. Or perhaps it was that Wednesday (which is today) I don't go in to school (and therefore miss a boring faculty meeting), but go to jury duty to tell them when I can actually come back and serve.
Yesterday was also election day. One item to vote on - Should the City of Memphis surrender the Charter of the Memphis City Schools. The school board already surrendered it, the city council also ratified it, and the state says that you don't need popular vote, those two are enough. But the city council has said if they vote is "no," they will backpedal so fast and rescind their ratification. No matter...only about 15% of registered voters bothered to show up, and the vote was 2:1 in favor of getting rid of Memphis City Schools. What does this actually mean? Nobody knows, but by the end of the month the Shelby County School Board will expand to 25 members, from current 9 (and there are 9 who used to serve on Memphis City School Board)...fuzzy math there, to my mind anyhow. Applications for nominations are being accepted - A perverse part of me wants to apply, since I have taught in both systems, have an Ivy League degree and a Masters in Teaching. But I am not politically connected, so it would never happen. Things like that only happen in the movies or on TV.
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