I know I've been absent...life is truly hard around here right now. If you stick around I'll list off one by one the absolutely crazy mess that is my so called life.
Let's start with work.
I dunno if I told you guess this, but DESPITE our absolutely fabulous reading scores, history scores, and right on target math scores, our school was rated "Academically Unacceptable" by the state. What happened to us was our science scores, which, overall were right on target. The problem is the state doesn't give a crap about "overall". When you break it down into subcategories (ethnicity) our black children failed therefore we failed. So we earned the rating of "AU", which we have lovingly embraced as our "Gold Status". If you don't get it, look up the periodic table (educators ARE dorks). We knew we would return to big changes BUT we thought those changes would be in the best interest of our kids. There we go thinking again.
Now, I know whose fabulous idea this was, and I must say as much as I admire her, she has truly disappointed me on this one and frankly, her argument for it, well, that dog don't hunt. We returned to school to learn we were going from 7 periods a day, to 8 periods a day, that class time had been reduced by 7 minutes, and that core teachers MUST teach an elective. Huh? So, a school that has been rated "AU" has had CORE class time reduced by 35 minutes a week...roughly over 31000 minutes of instructional time in a 179 day calendar year? WTH? Does that make sense? And the argument...we need more electives to keep kids interested in school????
Hold on...it gets better. They want us to teach these electives, but uh, we aren't/can't by curriculum or materials for it because we lost $40,000 in Title 1 money! So, good luck! Oh, yeah, but the way, here is a box of paper and that is all we are supplying you with for the next five months. The copier will cut you off at 5,000 sheets. Have a great year! Oh, also, now you MUST teach 6 of 8. Glad to have you here! Also, while we are burdening you down....we lost funding for our after school program, so now you MUST stay two days a week after hours to help babysit for $11.35 WELCOME BACK!
The issues that have arisen are too numerous to write, but, there were quite a few us ready to walk out last week, and we are now applying for grocery clerk positions rather than teach in this environment. We all feel our scores are going to drop dramatically come spring and know how feces rolls, it will land on top of us.
Now...let me just add this. We EXPECT the hubby to loose his job somewhere between oh, NOW and Christmas. I won't get into details, but, it is an event on the horizon.
We've lost $27,000 in extra income due to some unexpected things. OUCH!
My nephew, who has MS, has to have surgery next week. However, the doctor has had the family put into counseling due to the fact that he is not giving much longer (6 months) to live. He is 11.
I'm the mother of a 15 year old girl...need I say more?
All this stress has set off my depression and panic disorder so I'm off to the doctor today to get my meds upped to something stronger! I am truly scared and panicked as to what is become of this family if/when Bubba is fired because I'm not sure if I can survive the school year. My world is rotating wildly off its axis right now.
And I'm done venting.
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