A teacher in my building has some hearing loss from an unknown cause and received an appointment with a local expert, but the testing of her hearing is scheduled for 7 am Monday. This two-hour test means she would miss the first 75 minutes of the day, which is during an all-district meeting in our auditorium. It’s the “state of the ...

On a survey given to every employee of my district and every parent of a student in my district, I saw some very interesting results. However, the one that jumped off the page at me was the absolute lack of trust between the teachers and administration. This is not just teacher to administrator but teacher to teacher as well. At our opening ...

School starts on Tuesday, but this week was full of meetings, trainings, and planning. I am very much ready for the students to arrive; I’ve worked so many hours these past few days that I just want to get this show on the road. We still have one more position to fill in my department, so that’s a bit distressing. We’ll have to ...

Today we had an entire day of meetings and then I was pulled into another because my department is short two teachers with five days before the kids arrive. We lost one teacher because of an involuntary transfer, and we still do not have a journalism teacher (no qualified applicants). It’s getting desperate. We may have a solution, but at ...

My department had our first meeting of the year, and all seemed to go well. We finished everything on the agenda early, so we had over an hour of individual time to prepare our rooms and work on curriculum stuff. I’m pretty tired, so here’s a joke for ya: A six-year-old was learning to read using phonics, and he pointed at a picture ...

As I was getting off the phone and after setting up an orientation meeting with a brand new teacher, she obviously didn’t realize she hadn’t hung up before saying to her husband after a high-pitched squeal, “I have my first meeting! Woo-hoo!” How cute is that?!

My rule of 90 is an axiom I believe will be true forever: 90% of the problems are caused by 10% of the people. This continues to be true in my building as I found out today. I will attend my first department head retreat tomorrow, and on the agenda is whether or not we should keep having finals week. Apparently, a few teachers told kids not to ...

Today I officially heard from the administration I’m the new English Department Head. Woo-hoo for me. I got the official word around 2:30 this afternoon, and then I received 7 e-mails and 5 phone calls regarding business items people in my department wanted me to help them with. Word travels fast in this town! Starting tomorrow ...

At a meeting in June my principal discussed the efforts of our school in narrowing the achievement gap (such a cliched term nowadays). Specifically, the gains of the lower end students were highlighted. An obvious upward trend could be seen. But, the high achievers basically showed no change. I mentioned at the meeting that this should [...]

I believe unions should only fight for better benefits, higher wages, and working conditions. These are the only issues I will discuss as a union executive board member, and I don’t believe my union(s) should take moral stands on issues like the Iraq War or abortion or other issues, divisive or not. Also, I don’t expect [...]