Wow, what a stressful day! All I can say is, "Is it May yet?"Ok, so we'll start with Michaela's teacher. I'm beginning to think that this woman and I are not going to get along well. Michaela's class has snack time because they are the last class to have lunch. Michaela's teacher has told them that they cannot bring candy as a snack. But, it seems to be rather vague as to what she means by this. Or, at least Michaela is not completely clear on it.
She wanted to take Teddy Grahams the other day but decided against it because she didn't know if her teacher would accept it as appropriate. She has been taking Whales every day. They are just like Goldfish. We get them at Wal-mart. I've asked Michaela about other things, making suggestions, but she says she's not sure and seems very hesitant to ask her teacher.
So, last night when I was signing her assignment book (which I have to do every night or the teacher takes Michaela's recess away from her) I wrote a note in it asking the teacher to please send me a list of things she felt was appropriate for snack. Tonight when we got home I went into Michaela's room with the intention of signing her assignment book and looking over her homework. At that point I remembered the note I'd written and asked Michaela if her teacher had sent a list home. Michaela tells me that the teacher did not and that she said to Michaela:
"I thought we already went over this."
There was NO RESPONSE written to me in any form. So she completely ignored me. Pissed me off to no end.
Add this to the fact that Michaela is scared to death to ask this teacher anything. She is supposed to read a certain number of AR books this year. Part of that includes checking AR books out from the school library. Michaela says that the AR books are not marked in the library. They have a new librarian that seems like she doesn't know which ones are AR. I asked her if she asked her teacher. She tells me, well it was on my desk and she knows I was taking it home. Which translates into, "I didn't want to ask."
I've really been trying to keep an open mind about this teacher. I mean I know a lot of times things get elaborated in translation and I understand that a lot of times when a child comes home and tells what has happened in school it sounds bad when it really isn't. But, how is my child supposed to learn from her if she's afraid to ask her questions? And, what kind of teacher completely ignores a note from a parent?
I am going up to the school to talk to her, but not just her. I need to talk to the principal too. Michaela's SOAR day is Monday this year and of course they put her class on the schedule to be in the computer lab on Mondays, meaning Michaela would never get to go to computer lab.
Also, according to Michaela the art teacher is taking letter grades this year. And, yup, you guessed it, Michaela's class is scheduled for Art on Mondays.
And, then at work:
Ok, so we've been having Internet issues in our school building since last December. It got to the point by March that it was impossible to do anything on any computer outside the computer lab that was on the DSL. The Wireless still worked. It doesn't now.
On top of our Internet issues, our school was broken into in July. They actually called to tell me this on the day I was getting ready to leave for vacation. The people that broke in took computers, laptops, palm pilots, and the wireless router. This is why the wireless does not work. The wireless is what we used to get the Internet up on our Smart Boards. Luckily nothing from my room was stolen.
We are still having Internet issues. Our computer lab teacher has been documenting and emailing and calling our technology department daily since December about our issues. TODAY was the first time anyone came to find out what is going on. They sent a new guy who did not even know we'd been having issues since December and was not shown any of our documentation.
We were supposed to start using SISK12, the district wide electronic grade book and attendance on the first day of school. Well of course we can't because none of us can log onto the Internet. But, wait it gets better.
We got a new math series this year which I'm actually VERY HAPPY about. This series came with an electronic test generator. It doesn't just create a test, it has the capability of being published to the web so students can take the test on the computer, the computer grades it and analyzes the data. WONDERFUL, right? Well, yeah, when you have the technology and it's all working correctly. But, no big deal because we can still do the paper/pencil tests, right?
HA!
Our principal has decided he wants each grade level to sit down and create all the benchmark tests for the year using the electronic test generator. Which I would be all for and would be cheer-leading for it IF WE DIDN'T HAVE TECHNOLOGY ISSUES. As it stands now, we have NO IDEA when they will have us up and running correctly. AND, the software for this test generator has to be put on the LAN in order for us to publish to the web. Well, of course the same people who have taken 8 months just to come to our building to acknowledge that we have a problem are the only ones who can put the software on the LAN.
So, this means we're being asked to put substantial time into creating tests that we may not even get to use. Excuse me? Do I NOT have enough to do as it is? I already had the inventory test and both Chapter 1 tests for our grade level copied as far as the paper/pencil tests are concerned. Plus, one of my teammates is a PITA to do collaboration with because she has to pick everything apart and discuss and argue over EVERY LITTLE thing when we are planning together. She takes something that should take half and hour to do and turns it into a week long project. The other two of us just want to bang our heads against the wall when we have to do things like this together. She is also not the type that will just let someone take over and do it.
So, we have missing computers and technology. We have a server that cannot maintain our activity level, but yet we're supposed to act like we're a highly functioning technology center.
As I said, is it May yet?
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