Meet The Administration!

Well, actually not ALL of our administrators are like this. Some of them are actually pretty nice, down to earth people. In a moment of unthinking action some teachers today arrived to their mailboxes to find a 'certificate' placed there by an administrator that stated they were observed not standing by their doors between classes!

I didn't get one of these love notes but I still feel insulted that teachers are being treated like they were 6 years old. Let me point out a few facts:

1) Teachers at my school are working their asses off with the kids. If they are not at their doors when an administrator comes wandering by it's not because they are sitting in their offices drinking coffee with their feet up on their desks. They are counseling students, giving makeup tests, dragging some urchin to the dean's office, or conducting one of a million tasks that make the school run smoothly and helps the kids to learn. I know that in this day and age in society image is everything and learning isn't a high priority with some but that is still what we all try to do around here.
2) We deserve to be treated as adults, not as preschoolers. This includes speaking to us directly instead of slipping obnoxious notes into our mailboxes.
3) Teacher morale has been rather low here at the beginning of this year due to a myriad of conflicting demands being placed upon us. This really does not help our morale. I hope things improve after they think about our morale and the part we play here.

It takes as much effort to give us an occasional pat on the back as it does a kick in the rear.

I am so tired of it all

The science and math departments were required to sit through a sales pitch by a statistician who is trying to unload her FCAT pretest and remediation questions to our county. Sound good? It's 26 science questions given to the kids. Now I'm not a statistician but I wonder how 26 questions can adequately measure all areas of science that a student should know! The results are analyzed out the wazoo and sets of science questions designed to remediate the potentially weak areas on the damn FCAT test are given to the students daily until they know everything they need to know to pass the test.

Let me point out two things. First, we are expected to teach all weak areas in all branches of science to do this. Frankly, I am not a chemist nor a specialist in physical science. I am a biologist and that is what my training has been in for the past 27 years. I have no desire to "teach" chemistry. The other thing is that the FCAT test is one of the worst tests I have seen for science. There are so many gaps in testing coverage of science areas that a student could do well on the test and still be practically illiterate as far as understanding science is concerned. Since the pretest is based upon the FCAT it is destined to have the same huge coverage gaps.

The students no longer need a teacher. They need a computer with a set of FCAT questions on it. I love actual teaching and would hate to be around to see its final death in Florida.

Casper Update

It seems that thoughts of Casper supercedes school and all else for now. He is not eating so we have had to go to force feeding. We called the University of Florida to see why they had not contacted us to let us know if Casper would be a good candidate for their radiation procedure. They claimed that the oncologist had not sent the MRI to them and when we contacted the oncologist they claimed that they had sent the MRI and the university doctors had not read it! What a bunch of crap.

Since Casper is fading we are putting on the pressure. We called numerous times today trying to set up a radiation schedule with our oncologist. Of course both doctors had the afternoon off but we made ourselves obnoxious enough that one doctor actually contacted us and set up a CAT scan for tomorrow. She is still talking about beginning treatments next week. This is the same doctor who told me that Casper couldn't be in pain because the brain doesn't have pain receptors. Though technically this statement is true, Casper IS in pain from the increased pressure in his brain pressing upon his meninges. Perhaps she had never heard that people with conditions like meningitis do actually feel a lot of pain. I have had it with these doctors and their B.S.. They only care about the almighty dollar and good P.R.. They haven't seen obnoxious yet if they keep screwing around with Casper's life like they have been trying to do so far. For the amount that we are paying, the oncologists are frigging well going to do things quickly to benefit Casper rather than to suit their own schedules.