The title of this post is what a student told me today after he finished his first high school exam. He’s right, if he’s not prepared. Finals can be hard for teachers, too, especially when it sometimes feels as though I’m one of the few giving them. Here’s my list of complaints (sorry, but this site [...]

Naperville Central High School Principal Jim Caudill plagiarized a speech given by a student 11 years prior at the same event. To make matters more embarrassing, that student is now a teacher at Naperville and was in attendance for the event. An irony which surpasses even this is that this same principal fired the 19 year [...]

Sometimes sports do reflect the general state of education, and this week is no exception. As Craig Smith notes, two possible WIAA state sports rules could be created and: could be called “Archbishop Murphy Rules.” One would suspend a student who played with an expired physical but NOT the team for the number of games the [...]

He rarely smiles. He rarely speaks. His rakish suits and power ties seem to imply a need for attention and respect. And people suspect he’s reading a book on how to teach. He’s our assistant principal. He’s not my evaluator, but the stories have run throughout the building. When observing teachers he would always say that [...]

Back in September I posted about how my principal canceled Open House without informing the staff first, so we were bombarded with complaints and questions but didn’t know how to answer them. It was a PR nightmare, and we are still paying the price in lost support. Well, disaster may strike twice. A parent asked the principal [...]

A while back I had a student, Davy, reach the final week of his final semester in high school, and he had a 40% in my senior Mythology course while maintaining an attendance rate of 60% (and I think a blood-alcohol level of 2.0 most of the semester). I wouldn’t budge on giving “extra credit” [...]

My high school is losing an awesome math teacher (I’ll call her Math Genius), and she’ll officially announce her move on Monday. Math Genius is leaving the high school mainly for the unfortunately all-too-often-cited reason of lack of administrative support. She also cited difficulties in getting her department to jump on board with ...