And that's that.

I am checked out of my classroom (after an all-day Sunday adventure in stuff-moving, stuff-cleaning and stuff-trashing)!  I swear, next year I'm showing a video on the last day of school, not doing Child Pollock and other fun stuff.

...That said, for unknown reasons, we had several parents tour this week.  Early in the week, my classroom had Paper People remnants and various art activities out.  Not to mention an enormous coop of chickens.  By the last drop by, two hours before school got out for the year, it was a disaster zone of take-home backpacks, tear-downs, and craft explosions.  And an enormous coop of chickens.  I had paint in my hair from the action painting, so you can imagine what the kids looked like.  I do not think this makes a good impression, but really: on the last day of school, maybe don't tour.

At 4:30 on Friday, all 6 remaining pink slips at my site were rescinded!

I remembered to pass out everything I needed to and give away things I wanted to get rid of (like Moon Sand, the world's messiest substance.  That stuff leaves glitter in...well, in the dust.)!

I adopted out all my chicks!

I restrained myself from accepting an offer to raise my pet chicken Egghead for my retrieval in August!

I am registered for the Special Education PD in August!  (This means I'm skipping my site PD, and man, am I so happy about that.  Not that I'm tired with my site, just that what with the high-needs school endless teacher churn it ends up being more or less the same PD over and over and over and over and over and over and...well, I have ADHD.)

I am taking an Adderall Holiday!  Providing I survive the Doom Sleepy, that is.

I am leaving for New York tomorrow!

In other news, I got a couple of really nice letters from parents and/or students.  I made plans with my Resident to do a massive classroom purge next week.  This will mean that all the shelf-papering I did is for naught, but will mean I have more space to store stuff.

I have five active projects up at Donors Choose and a sixth (about the Science of Jackson Pollock) in progress.  I am thinking about linking them here, although that would be the end of my "anonymity".

I had some awesome conversations the last week of school.

CHILD (to child): You're evil.
"EVIL" CHILD: HA HA.  Yes, I am.
E. Rat: No.  Let's not call each other 'evil'.
"EVIL" CHILD: But I AM evil.  Listen: (laughs maniacally).
CHILD: What does 'evil' mean?
NEW CHILD: Devils are evil.
E. Rat: Um.  Well, I guess evil means that you do bad things that hurt others...
CHILD: So it means bad?
NEW CHILD: Devils are bad.
E. Rat: Yes, but also that you do bad things because they are bad and you want to hurt others, and that makes you happy. (Resolves to check a dictionary later).  So calling someone evil is serious.
"EVIL" CHILD: That's why they laugh like this (laughs maniacally).
ADDITIONAL CHILD: But what about the minions?
E. Rat: What?
ADDITIONAL CHILD: The MINIONS!  Are they evil, too?
ANOTHER CHILD: Can YOU do an evil laugh?

...this went on for awhile.  I recounted this to someone later and that person suggested that the idea of "minions" might come from a movie.  I have no idea.

CHILD, HOLDING CHICK: Do chickens make chicken?
E. Rat: Can you explain that a little more?
CHILD: Like, do they make fried chicken?
E. Rat: Yes.
CHILD: WILL THIS CHICKEN MAKE FRIED CHICKEN?
E. Rat: (Assists child in loosening sudden death grip on chick).
CHILD: WILL THIS CHICKEN MAKE FRIED CHICKEN?
E. Rat: Um, this chicken is too little.
CHILD: Oh, okay.

I'm just not so fast on my feet after the Promograduation insanity, you see.

Educrats go home.

I am so tired and exhausted and fatigued and careworn and adjectivized of hearing that overturning teachers' due process rights "professionalizes" my profession.

If these people were serious about professionalizing my profession, there are any number of ways to do that that receive no interest from the deform crowd:

• They could stop expecting me to purchase my own office supplies.
• ...and my own office furniture.
• They could make every effort to ensure I can visit a restroom when I need to. 
• They could make sure my office is clean and safe.  You know, like making sure it even has a bathroom at all (two days with no water!  Thanks, City of San Francisco!  The twenty-minute K bathroom line on the upper-grade yard thanks you!).
• I'd have an expense account for the art supplies.

Okay, I need to stop now.  We didn't have water, but we did have a hairdresser on site, and now many teachers are boasting feather extensions.  We look fantastic.  I have given up on the hope of checking out of my classroom today - I need to open the school Sunday anyway - but I'm still joining Team Kindergarten for snacks and drinks after school.  Fancy people complimented my vintage McQueen getup at a fancy education thingamajig last night.  All of my chicks are adopted, and we should have working bathrooms and water fountains today.

And it's the last day with my awfully cute class.

And now it is Tuesday!

It is Promograduation today!

Yesterday I hung two big banners in the cafeteria; hopefully they are still hanging.  The Paper People go up this morning, and I need to place the tambourines and maracas under the kids' seats for quick retrieval (yet limited access) before their performance.

I have extra safety pins, bobby pins and clear nail polish in my bag.

I have a vegan coffee cake as a teacher thank you for dealing with picnic lunches today.

We are also having a Special City Visitor at Promograduation.  I believe this Visitor is planning a solo trip, but sometimes Visitors collect District entourages like chicken coops collect Kindergartners.  I am already getting District Bigwig hobnobbing later this week (although, alas, not at a venue that will allow for the impoliteness of reality), so I'm kind of hoping for limited entourage excitement.

And that the kids sing loud enough to be heard.

And now, I go to work!

So Friday night, the chickens continued to grow.  How irritating of them to do all that life cycling!  Anyway, when I got to work Saturday it was clear that the current coop situation was untenable, so building a new, high-sided coop of chicken wire, duct tape and the old coop beat out every other responsibility.  Update:

1. Self-Portrait Banner: Glued-and-glittered the names of all the students, cut the paper to the right size.  I still need to glue the portraits themselves on.  One portrait needs to be finished.
2. Chicks: In possession of an even newer, even better coop that should take them through the week. 
3. Diplomas: FINISHED.
4. Assessment: FINISHED.
5. Report Cards: I. don't. want. to. talk. about. this.
6. Loading Cards: Need to attach assessments.
7. Cum Folders: Oh, yeah.  Gotta do these, too.
8. What I Am Doing Today: Going to work.

I have a UTR thing Thursday evening, and on Friday I'm checking into a sorta-fancy hotel with one of my Kindergarten cronies...and we're checking in at 3pm on the dot.  So I'm short afternoons to do mental health care (=go to the gym) and dentistry (of all times to break a tooth.  At least it's not visible) while also getting checked out of my classroom.  ARGH.

The sad possibility that I leave for New York Tuesday week (la la la la la la la) knowing I have to return to clean out my room grows.  I have considered making pledges ("No checkout, no visits to designer concessions!"), but I have this feeling that these would turn themselves into ("I will checkout all the faster so that I can wear this afterwards!").

(For the Responsibility Record: I have three homes for chickens, and if I have a couple of Straggler Chickens for whom I am caring for a couple of weeks, I do have someone on tap to take care of them while I New York it up.)

After being nauseated by the hateful, racist and disgusting online comments - some proud and explicit, others more hidden but no less evil - I was reminded of this Tim Wise essay.

I believe that it is truly wrong to allow such disgusting sentiments to be aired unchallenged.  Still, I'm going to exercise my own privilege and not challenge them (on the threads, at least).

It is depressing in the extreme to see the White Citizen's Councils of the Internet on local blogs.   I'm not unaware of local attitudes (although my own white privilege means I hear them less and their direct impact on me is minor).  But the acceptance of such attitudes as valid - that they are a reasonable, if extreme, argument to make - revolts and surprises me.  And I do believe that the caterwauling of extremists provides a nurturing environment for less hatefully stated, just as destructive racialist attitudes to grow.

Promograduation is Tuesday, and...

1. Instruments for performance of "Turn the World Around": Sanded, primed and painted.  Still need to be decorated.
2. Giant "Class of 2027" Banner: Decorated.
3. Paper People: Autobiographies written, affixed.  Googly eyes placed.  Most of the paper people have bottoms.  Still need jackets, hair, decorations and final coloring.
4. Self-Portrait Banner: Um.  Yes.  Er.  In Planning.
5. New Exciting Dress for the Teacher, Found at a Cost Point that Excuses Jello Mold Incidents at the Potluck: Check, Betsey Johnson crinolined prom dressy thing, bought secondhand.
6. Sashes for Graduates: Glittered.  (Each kid gets one; they read "Future (Insert Career Here)".
7. Chicks: In possession of larger new coop with bedding they cannot fully saturate with water for fun.
8. Diplomas: I have them.  They have nothing on them, but I have them.
9. Assessment: FINISHED.
10. Report Cards: I. don't. want. to. talk. about. this.
11. First Grade Class Loads: Done.
12. Loading Cards: Need to attach assessments.
13. What I Am Doing Today: Going to work.

Multiple Domiciles Possibly Needed.

I left 14 healthy chicks in their new, improved, larger brooder yesterday afternoon.

They are so popular I have had to start locking my classroom door when I am not there, lest I return to chick paparazzi children.

Hopefully they had a fine night of rest and will be healthy and happy this morning.

PG&E hates chickens.

I know because we had a power outage of adequate length that we had to move all the chickens - the ones in the incubator and the ones in the brooder (the kids named it "The Nest") - to another teacher's house.

They come back to school tomorrow.  13 have hatched and 2 more have pipped; one of the ones that pipped is not a healthy chicken and won't make it, I don't think.  This is sad and hard to explain to the kids. One of the ones that hatched today has shell stuck on its head and was attached to its umbilical cord for awhile.  It isn't drying very well.  Of course, it is my favorite chicken and the only one that I have secretly named in my head.  But otherwise they seem okay, especially given the whole "driving in a car after drastically falling temperatures".  We'll see.

In conclusion, PG&E tried to kill my class' chicks, the foul fiends.

Chicken Impossible Continues

Eggs Pipped Today: 10
Eggs Hatched Today: 4

One of the four chicks was so hot to get out of its shell that it wasn't entirely detached to the membrane and it bled a little.  By the time I left school, it had stopped.

Of course they started hatching as soon as school got out.  Another teacher taped one hatching while we were in a staff meeting, and I texted a bunch of parents to come and see if they wanted.  Some of my kids who are in after school came and saw two hatch.

Crossing my fingers they are dry, fluffy and alive tomorrow.  I have a 7am meeting, so I will see them bright and early.

Chicken Impossible!

We hooked up a "brooder" at school and found chick starter within city limits, which made for a win Saturday.

Also, we think we candled an egg.  We think there was a mass of soon-to-be-chick in it.

Sometimes It's Just Like This.

Just suddenly, bang.

You know, somewhere in between

• hearing that six of your fellow classroom teachers are laid off
• and mentally figuring out just which responsibilities will have to be added to yours this year
• having spent three thousand dollars of your (reduced) salary on classroom materials this year but still needing to go buy copy paper
• breaking up a fight
• staying at school until 6pm to do paperwork and planning to be in at 6am for a before school meeting the next day
• providing unstinting love to children with serious mental and emotional disturbances even when they are lashing out at you
• living in a state where six year olds don't get time to paint at school
• let alone do science
• reading yet another attack on your pension in the Chronicle
• whoops!  accident.
• a routine traffic stop in front of the school during recess brings on a panic attack in one of your students
• EPC sends you a new student with three weeks of school left
• loading papers report card promotion talent show eggs personal life
• Same standards, same demands, four less days of school and four extra students
• having a specialist suggest that you (on the down low) suggest a parent contact an outside advocacy organization because your employer is committed to ignoring its responsibilities

you just get a little tired out.

You know, maybe the reason that the educrats are so convinced teachers are burnt out drones is because they've put so much effort into providing the conditions that lead to burnout.

I am not the only teacher I know who is starting to wonder just how much longer we really can hold out when every year offers worse morale for less pay and less support.

SFUSD's teacher layoffs might go down easier if:

• they had actually laid off 140 administrators, too (try 17) 

•  that the administrators they did lay off were actually employed by the district (at least one left months ago) 

•  the layoffs showed a commitment to equity (they don't - the southeast side takes the worst hit - and it's getting difficult to invoke hand-tying Ed Code policies)

SFUSD always seems surprised when its stakeholders find it difficult to express trust.  This is the kind of stuff that causes the lack of trust.  Either they just don't get it or they just don't care.

Reality Nibbles Complacency

I skipped the BoE meeting, because I have a limited appetite for moral outrage about the status quo followed by a vote in favor of status quo.

What I understand to be SFUSD's belief is that teachers should protest, teachers should raise awareness about the dire state of education funding, teachers should close the opportunity gap no matter how bad that funding gets, teachers should expect a total lack of job security and layoffs, while Board Commissioners and Superintendents will make self-validating comments to the press.

The utter lack of responsibility is offensive.  I'm exhausted by listening to so much posturing followed by so little action.  In the end, when SFUSD takes action that is unambiguously worse for its highest-need communities, it is SFUSD - not California - choosing to act that way.

It is probably for the best that the District higher-ups have not seen the inside of a classroom in years.  Their stunning lack of innovation, creative thinking and belief in social justice leaves them unsuited to the profession.

I have mad glitter skills.

They have even been seen on television.

Scorched Earth Doesn't Burn Sacramento!

It takes six pages of New York Times magazine to get to the point, but it appears that the May revise will be exactly the "all-cuts" budget the state GOP is determined to give us.

Jerry uses the whole "the people have to see where their rhetoric ends up" rationale too.  There might even be something to it.

But when you're standing in a burnt-out shed hacking on smoke, it is really hard to hear that you're going to be firebombed so that the voters learn their lesson.

Somebody has to pay for an all-cuts budget.  It won't be nice for anyone.  It will be hell for a whole lot of people Jerry Brown doesn't know.

I suppose my biggest hope is that the state Dems in the Assembly give Jerry a raspberry and hold the budget until it's too late for the layoff window.  At least that way I'll have pleasant people with whom to drink tea before the smoke gets too thick.

Paper People Autobiography Project

The first year I did this, with the help of a volunteer we traced and cut out each child.  This took days upon days to complete.  (That volunteer is now a credentialed teacher at my school, for the record...but pink slipped.)

So now we start with these.  They are intensely lightweight, but lining them with tagboard is more work than I can generally do at the end of the year.  Instead I demand the kids carry them carefully and provide tape surgery as needed.

Anyway.  The kids brainstorm, draft and edit an "autobiography" that covers several key issues (name, future career, something you like, something you can do, etc.).  I publish these by typing them up and printing them in the child's favorite color.  Then I paste them to the paper person's torso.

Other than the autobiography, the paper person is colored and given hair meant to match the child's own (although not with the detail of the Colors of Us project; that would take too long and too much paint).  I have doll hair, yarn and chenille stems for the hair and multicultural crayons and colored pencils for the bodies...oh, and giant googly eyes for the eyes.

Then the kids get to dress their simulacra.  I have a variety of tracing shapes for bottoms and jackets.  The jackets are tricky because the kids trace it, then flip it over and trace it the other way (to get a left and right side).  I have various cloth and felt remnants for the clothes and also some cardstock.  The bottoms are pasted on, but we attach the jackets at the shoulder with brads so that it can be "opened" to read the autobiography.

After that, I let the kids loose with buttons and jewels and similar geegaws to decorate their clothes as they like.  And then I hang the paper people in the cafeteria for the Promograduation.

These look great and the kids love making them and are always hot to take them home until they get forgotten in the Promograduation insanity.  I take photos of the kids holding their person so that their eventual destruction doesn't bum me out (this is one of maybe two projects I get really attached to and feel bad about finding destroyed).

Doomsday May Revise

...and a whole week of fun times before it!

Having taught in financial climates adequate (2001 with a lot of II/USP money), bad (2002-3), worse (2004-5) and gruesome, yet predictably more gruesome each year (2005 - on), I am surprised that this year's May Revise may actually present a budget so bad that some school districts will get over the whole "find a way through" nonsense.

Actually, I am kind of hopeful that they will: that some districts will have the courage to say no, to refuse to present the state with a budget, to call for system-wide strikes and basically demand that California fund its responsibilities.  Let's face it: the state is used to grumbling and lawsuits followed by massive cuts and somehow limping through.

We need to draw the line.  It is not okay that some districts are back to 31:1 AM/PM Kindergarten with one teacher, no aides and no supplies.  It is not okay that basic aid districts will still manage to keep their "essentials" - art and music and labs and computers - while I eagerly await the day that the solution to the plumbing problem in the boys' room near my classroom is not "keep the door open all the time".

It is not okay that I can look forward to an ever-increasing class of kids who have not had adequate nutrition, medical care or preschool.  It is not okay that that half of those kids will have experienced major trauma, five will be homeless and four will have diagnosed learning differences.  It is not okay that I will be expected to ameliorate all of the above while buying all materials beyond pencils and integrating technology using two computers that are 15 years old and cannot load the local newspaper, let alone Google Maps.

I do not anticipate that SFUSD will be one of these districts, given that Beyond the Talk is a lot of talk about systems and MAPs and Redesigns and Overcoming the Historic Power of Demographics.  The District can't even get itself behind the symbolic action of, say, having its top brass take some solidarity pay cuts.  So I don't think we can expect any actual challenging of institutional racism.  I'm sure there will be some good rhetoric around how California won't fund SFUSD, leaving it with no choice but to sacrifice its neediest.

Unfortunately, the buck doesn't stop with California.  We need to have the moral courage to take responsibility for the actions we take - or that we fail to take.  What SFUSD chooses to do is not constrained by the choices it claims to have.  If this is a state of emergency, then the conditions demand extraordinary action.

Hard-working teachers putting that extraordinary effort in every day can look forward to a meaningless Day of the Teacher resolution and a rather more concrete pink slip.

That says a lot about how Beyond the Talk we're really willing to go.

Side Benefits

My Resident is soloing this week and next.  So far, I have entirely prepped out an end of the year project, kept all our plants alive during the heat wave, made a calendar set for next year, and spent five minutes and rather more dollars at an online vintage flash sale.  (Let's just say that my vacation souvenir budget has been, erm, deducted in the amount of one fine dress.)  I'm always there, and I watch what's going on or take notes/get involved when needed, but for the most part she's in charge.

Next week I will spend the time doing end of year assessment, so today is the end of the semi-holiday.  And since it's the second week, I'll be able to focus entirely on the child I'm assessing (as opposed to having one ear open for drama - this is the longest period I've ever had a student teacher teaching solo in my room and it's a test in releasing control, that's for sure).

And Again with the Life Cycles.

This was a banner life cycle week.  The plants in bags are doing great.  The kids were cute doing their little presentation for the school.  They made little crowns and went around calling each other Queen of Seeds and King of Fruits and Super Sprout and whatnot, but on stage they also had a mic and could be heard recounting the life cycle of fruiting plants.  I jerry-rigged a wet bulb thermometer for the incubator (this is not actually hard, but I will brag about it as if it is).  The eggs get candled on Monday and I am relatively hopeful that some of them will have promising dark spots inside.

On Friday I gave the kids a cut and paste apple tree life cycle to do as an independent table group.  If they finished early, I directed them to diagram and write about some other life cycle.  This time-filler was the kind of thing you teach Kindergarten for, in the end:

• one child recounted an oviparous cycle including the important step "the egg cracks".
• another child stated that the life cycle occurs over and over and then noted, "I agree.  Yes."
• one child drew a nine-part diagram of the human life cycle, including labels for "teenager" and "toddler".  The last human had a baby.
• another child went with human life cycles and helpfully gave the final human Xs for eyes and a frown, plus a label of "dead".

In closing, science rocks.

Great Moments in Not Sharing the Pain.

SFUSD's only sent out non-renewal notices to 17 of those 100+ administrators that they are absolutely totally and completely willing to sacrifice along with teachers.

SEVEN classroom teachers at my school are still facing layoffs.  Unlike the district office, our school qualifies as "Hard to Staff".  Moreover, I'm sure SFUSD will take a good look at the late layoff window come the May revise...maybe they can bump that up to thirteen classroom teachers or so!

I haven't seen Waiting for Superplutocrats - I have this thing about controlling my blood pressure - but I understand that the lazy, rotten, nogoodnik public school teacher types sleep while their students fail to learn in this movie.

I don't actually know how that works.  If I fell asleep in my classroom, two students would immediately dispatch themselves to run to the office to alert officialdom.  Three more would make a child tower to get at the Magical Mysteries of the Top Shelves.  The rest would tickle and/or suffocate me.  I don't even have a teacher's desk to sit behind, brooding, while my students have snail races/give each other haircuts/become depressed in a miasma of union-loving child hate.  My class can more or less leave me alone to do Guided Reading and/or assessment, but that's due to months of training (and is made much easier this year thanks to having a Resident).  Moreover, part of the 'leave E. Rat alone' compact is that you will eventually get your turn with the teacher, and you don't want anyone to interrupt it.

This week was a bit difficult.  In addition to some time at the vet, it ends up that part of aging is developing really miserable allergies to life itself.  It was also a week featuring things I find difficult (paper management: field trip permission slips, forms for certain school programs, thank yous to mail) and anxiety-inducing (putting together technological items like incubators, making sure no one jumps in the pond on the field trip, eighty seven thousand little tasks that are in themselves exceptionally easy but become this Doomy Doom in my head).

Also, I had this at my home, waiting for perusal.  And someone gave me a set of these.

So what I really wanted to do was spend hours lettering folders, permission slips, awards and similar for my students, taking breaks only to read my exhibition guide and to blow my nose, cough, sneeze and rub my eyes.

What I did instead was run the annual Read an Eggathon (we have an egg hunt, but with words in the eggs and stickers for prizes), get a snootful of pollen on our buddy picnic field trip (DUCKLINGS!), set up the incubator and leave my new fancy book in its overwrap.

The stars therefore granted me a Donors Choose of fine, fine construction paper - the kind that is smooth, crisp, bright and probably miserable for the planet - and twenty boxes of glitter crayons.  Perhaps one day one of my Kindergartners will rate their own fine museum exhibition of couture, and I will attend as a guest of honor in a bespoke dress.  THANKS TO THE GLITTER CRAYONS.

In other news, SFUSD indicates that - Oops!  Sorry again! - the coming year is NOT the worst.  The one after that could be even more dire!  At this point, I am presuming that if the state passes a budget before August 15 I'll be laid off thanks to the late window.  I'm also frightened by the increasing class sizes forecast for SFUSD (and thankful to the district for keeping them low as yet in K-3).  I started teaching after class-size reduction; I have a hard time imagining 31 students.  And the supports that made 31 more manageable (paraeducators, AM/PM Kinder with co-teaching) are gone, while the standards for students are much higher (and the school year even shorter).

Moreover, what with the financial crisis, every year more of my students are under stress.  In the four years I've been at my school, every year student mobility goes up.  I got a new student this week, for instance.  Of my students who have moved away, most if not all of their moves were directly due to losing housing/relatives losing housing (often complicated by violence and family members' passing).  This year I've held SSTs for seven students; about half my class is receiving some kind of school-provided social-emotional service.  Those are services that we may not be able to afford.

So beyond the academic requirements, the empathy and care needed for a class of 31 at a high-needs school in an ill-funded environment is at the 'psychic vampire' level.  It's hard to listen to education reform rhetoric about failing schools, failing teachers and "we already tried money" and believe they are anything other than self-assured, knowing liars who have enough time to read their Savage Beauty catalogues and enough money to send their own progeny to highly-supportive, exceptionally expensive private academies.

Life Cycles Positive?

My new incubator arrived Friday and keeps a perfect temperature of 100.5 degrees.  I can't find the little "ready" light, but I do have a thermometer: success at last.

I have given up on the silkworm eggs, and while the snails ate four ounces of cabbage in less than twenty four hours, they continue their refusal to provide a living example of oviparous animals in the classroom.  We did run into some mating snails on our field trip, and I considered bringing them back to class as an example for the rest of the terrarium but didn't.  The silkworm eggs appear to have failed; I'm not sure why.

Today is Kindergarten Day! Yay!

Hooray!  For once, the rain has stopped in time for a field trip.  Of course, since it's a picnic with our buddy class, even yesterday's rain is unfortunate.  We'll have to squash a bit on the benches.

This article on basic aid districts' finances (vs. revenue limit districts') gets at the vast inequity in school funding that feeds the ability of the haves to ignore the have nots.  It also features the basic aid districts' lament - their funding has taken a bigger dollar-per-student hit than revenue limits'.  In the last days of Gray Davis, when he threatened the inequity, you heard this a lot.

Of course, when you have three times as much to start with, a bigger dollar cut has less impact.  That can't be forgotten.  If the Governor presents an all-cuts budget that does not push state cash to basic aid districts down to the actual basic aid level, I predict a future one woman march in Sacramento.

In other news, it appears that this coming year may not yet be the worst for SFUSD finances.  I hope that we stop saying "This next one has to be the worst!  It has to get better!" because it's so depressing when the next budget cycle comes.

Happily, it looks like I will probably get a Donors Choose grant wrapped up pretty soon, so I should have construction paper next year.

ARGH LIFE CYCLES.

1. Snails: intensely amorous, anti-egg.
2. New, Unbroken Incubator: not yet received.  I don't even know if it has been shipped.
3. Silkworm eggs: 2 weeks on a heating blanket, no hatch.

ARGH.  So it's viviparous animals by picture now.  On the plus side, the seeds in a bag all appear to be viable except for the winter squash.  (Place paper towel in plastic bag.  Add seeds.  Spritz liberally with water.  Seal bag.  Tape to window.  Observe development.  Plant when done (paper towel and all).

The Other Thing about Testing.

So despite all the time the standardized tests take - two weeks of administration, usually - they aren't very long or detailed.  I believe the elementary reading CST has something like 40 questions.

Based on the standards-weighting and released test item checking that statistical testing mavens do, this means that of those forty questions, 5% (two questions) probably test one minor morphological spelling pattern in English.  For instance, a 2nd grader's mastery of 2nd grade reading over an entire school year can be measured in part by whether he or she can correctly pluralize berry and fox.

He or she may have shown remarkable depth in inferencing characters' motivations, learned how to write a persuasive paragraph for a variety of audiences and be able to read third grade books.  Standardized tests can't test any of those skills very well, though.  So if this young reader is a lousy speller, that's 5% towards failing already.

There's an argument that skills like these are easy - easy to learn, easy to teach.  In some ways I am sympathetic: I represented my county at the state spelling bee years ago.  I'm an awesome speller (although not a competitive one: I intentionally knocked myself out because the whole thing was getting just too nutty and dramatic and bright-lighted).  Spelling is easy for me.

However - an no particular offense meant - I read a variety of blogs, receive many a letter or email and used to teach undergraduates.  If spelling is such an easy thing to teach, then based on the spelling I see, it's a wonder we manage to learn and teach anything.

It's not just "We have spell-check now"; even Laura Ingalls Wilder's prairie lawyers misspelled "hero".*  We have spelling bees because spelling is interesting and hard, and kids who are good at it deserve recognition.  Yet a child's learning - and a teacher's performance - can apparently be judged by it.

That strikes me as not just ridiculous but rigged, to be honest.

In other news, my students really like drapey draped dresses, and if I wear a McQueen vintage number with little gartery/harnessy things hanging on the sides, the kids will use these as additional handholds.  Also, I got the telephone wire + sticker glue paint project to work much more easily this year.  The trick is using not just non-glare report covers but the insides of those laminating pouches for cheap laminators.  Conveniently I know someone with a broken laminator and many leftover pouches.

Sadly, the incubator I received as a gift was broken.  I ordered a new one - once you promise chickens, you have to make it happen - which will hopefully arrive next week.  This means that on the day of filing for last year's $250 educator's deduction on my federal taxes, I managed to spend the savings.



*Side note: I spell well because I read a lot and always have.  I studied linguistics at the post-graduate level and have suffered through endless SB466 Reading First trainings on spelling patterns: that only gets you something if you will actually sit there and systematically and with conscious intent apply spelling rules.  You won't.

amazing crazy fact of the day

Looking at blogger search strings is interesting albeit paranoia-inducing.

Life Cycle Land

The snails' ongoing egg strike despite their bountiful, warm terrarium in the greenhouse and ample food, not to mention my stalwart protection against the forces that would eat them is really quite a drag.

Still, the silkworm eggs are resting comfortably on the heating blanket and with any luck will hatch next week.

And then on Tuesday I received a gift of a circulating-air, automatic turner incubator.  It arrived unboxed during class, so I had to explain what it was.  What with the forces of cute present, I found myself committing to attempting a hatchery providing iron-clad, signed-in-blood "I will take these chickens off your hands on May 27th, 2011 without complaining" contracts enforceable by law, moral code, and so on.

It took less than a day for a child to arrange just such a contract.  Apparently the cute works at home, too.

I now have 30 fertile eggs sitting in my pantry and more or less managed to regulate the incubator temperature on Friday, so all systems are go for a Monday afternoon setting.

I have a bad feeling that the social studies standard I haven't covered yet is going to get really short shrift with all the science going on.  That said, we are doing a school performance covering the virtue of patience and will be using our life cycle knowledge and waiting waiting waiting to craft it.

In other news, I decided that appropriate souvenirs would include both a dress and an exhibition catalogue and ordered the latter in advance so I don't have to lug it around.  I also arranged some visits with grad school cronies and similar who are New York-based.  These plans will provide serenity/mindfulness moments during the next two months of being covered in paint, soil and incubator-temperature-regulation stress.

Today was the first day back.  As often happens after the Spring Break, when I saw my kids arriving I was a little perplexed: how did they all grow six inches and seventeen sight words overnight?  One of the best things about this job is how very obvious a child's development is at this age.  It is an very exciting process in which to take part - really, quite an honor, too.

I then went to the all union rally, which was equally perplexing: how is it that Jamie Dimon is making hundreds of millions of dollars for squandering billions?  Why does GE get a tax break but I can't get a bottle of finger paint for my classroom?  Again, it is a wonderful thing to be part of a rally and enjoy union fellowship: community and collaboration are important.  Regardless, this was more than a little depressing.

(NOT depressing: Wearing awesome find Armani dress to protest.  AND ALSO NOT DEPRESSING: Rally of adequate size that I received text messages from non-union friends asking, "Are you at the BofA building?  Where?"  YAY WORKER SOLIDARITY.)

So I came home and got my solo adventure summer mini break New York flight and hotel done.  I have not gone away for purposes unrelated to work or family/friend commitments in a long time.  AND NOW I AM.

Additionally, I am going right after school gets out: more incentive to get out of my room within 48 hours of the end of the year rather than spending two or three days shifting stuff from one cabinet to another.

Ponies, Pegasi and Ice Cream for All!

Confidential to the California state GOP:

If you're going to go around telling the media that all you wanted were a few little pension and regulatory reforms to allow a special election, maybe you shouldn't release your seven pages of demands to the LA Times.

Actually, never mind.  Go ahead: the New York Times will acknowledge that perhaps there were other issues, but largely back up your story.  Dan Walters will claim that the voters support your positions...while signaling in favor of an all-cuts budget with (presumed) political reprisals from the voters (that's cute.  I guess Dan doesn't have any school children).

None of these sources will mention that you demanded a special election for not five years but eighteen months of tax continuances.  (I saw ONE mention of this, in the San Jose Mercury News.)  They will also fail to mention that you are demanding redevelopment funds be continued, for tort reform, end QEIA funding (even though it works!), and muck around with teachers' contracts.

Oh!  And all those teachers and state workers who've given up whatever they've put into Social Security should also accept our brutal changes to their pension plan - current AND future workers.

That's a lot of free giveaways in exchange for one and a half years of piddling tax continuances.

This is not a story with two sides that are equally partisan and radical.  This is a story of a deeply radical right wing and a center-right Democratic party.  Nor is there a winner and a loser: everybody loses.

Let's remember the Late Layoff Window.

The whole 15 March/15 May layoff thing is not entirely true, you know.  I mean, it makes its appearance in  every story about the catastrophic budget cuts awaiting us (possibly $1000 per pupil now).  But that doesn't make it true.

The Ed Code (44955.5) allows late layoffs within five days' of the state's budget being passed and 15 August...if per-pupil funding doesn't get at least a 2% increase (or, as I like to call it, "annually").

I don't know what exactly they mean by "state's budget".  Does that mean a complete budget, balanced and everything?  Or would the half-budget we have now suffice?  If the state has to have a complete and total budget, I think we can assume that it would be hard-pressed to have one by 15 August.

Still, this is a real possibility.  This 2009 Chronicle blog post reports that the late window may have never been used, but I think that's out of date now (I'm pretty sure they were used later that year.  Last year the budget was so late I don't think the window opened).

And given just how bad things are going to be, barring amazing budget dodges - maybe some of Speaker Perez's plans will be easier to enact since the budget only needs a majority vote this year - I think we better not assume there will be no late window RIFs.

...Or for that matter, late resignations.  I don't care what happens in November locally or statewide to provide school funding: we have almost three months of school year before then to suffer through.  And it will be suffering.  High needs schools, as always, will get the worst of it: more teacher layoffs, no cash-rich PTA to spackle over the gaping holes, more students feeling the outside-the-classroom impacts of the massive safety net cuts (you go to work with an infected abscess in your mouth and see how well you do, now that we've cut dental benefits for poor children) on the state level.

And we can look forward to federal cuts, too.  Nothing like a little starvation to ensure bad learning outcomes, and the food stamp cuts the Rethuglican* Congress is proposing will make malnutrition easier.

Given that, who wants to teach?  There is a huge emotional component to the work, but it shouldn't be ministering.  The situation we are in makes it missionary work, not education.  Teachers have lives outside the classroom; while their students so desperately need their emotional energy they have less left for their families and friends.  That's unfair to everyone and unsustainable for educators.

I have a science proposal on Donors Choose that is about to expire not fully funded.  I think I had better start writing some for pencils, socks and toothbrushes so I'm ready for when it does.

*Seriously.  If you do bad things to the neediest people - and unambiguously, that Congress does - you are a thug.  I am tired of civil behavior glossing over the real, brutal impacts of the budget cuts being demanded for economically imaginary reasons.