SpEd or not to SpEd

What do you do when you REALLY want to help some students but the administration will not let you? From past experience, I know what they need and I know OW to help them, but I am being turned away every chance I try to do something. I know what a REAL 504 plan looks like and WHAT it does, I know what a REAL SpEd form should do but according to my school “we don’t have special education students”. I KNOW better but my hands are tired.

I know that when these students hit the public school system next year they will be referred and evaluated but according to “OUR” school they are not SpEd nor are they listed as 504. Sure we have a 504 form but it is not the same form the public school uses nor is it accomplishing what it SHOULD accomplish!

My hands feel so tired every day so I just have to make the best of a back situation. According to my school “we have the post top students in the area” but I know that is not so. We have the most academically motivated students in the area”, which I know is not true. “Our students will all go to college and become doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc, I also know that is not true”. It might have ben true years ago but over the last 10 years or so they have filled the enrollment with whoever will pay the bills.

They need to open their eyes and smell the roses and the stink weeds. Look around you. We have the same student population that the public schools have, drawn from the same students the public schools have. Maybe not as many of the ones the public school has to deal with but we DO have them!

Sooner than they want to, this school better open their eyes. I have only been here a year and a half and I see students that in my ‘old school’ would have been classified as special ed or at least lebeled as 504 and helped through the system. I don’t have a problem helping. I started in SpEd and over the years I have always worked with Sped teachers because they knew I would help these kids get the education t hey would need. But here I am being told to shut up and just go with the flow. I don’t like that.

Last year I had a students who is now paying for her educational problems in high school. This year I have four students will pay big time in high school if they get there. Which is another thing. THEY WILL GET THERE because we are not allowed to fail them because mom and dad have paid big money for them to get an education.

This is so sad but what can I do? I can only do so much before I am the one to lose my job. And that would do the others any good!

-----------------
As I read thru many of the other blogs here I keep finding that most NEVER post anything. Now some do, but MOST don't.

Tweaking

I have been shopping around TpT for the last couple of weeks looking for things that I can “tweak” and make my own. It is not because the items are not good enough; it is because NONE of them fit my needs. You know that feeling. At least that’s the way my own brain works. I? NEVER tweak them then post them back on TpT but after I tweak them I may sent the “tweaked” item to a colleague for them to try out and use.

I am sorry but if I bought the item, spent my own time tweaking them and making it fit Louisiana history then I figure I will share it. I have done the same thing for the Civil War projects I have found, explorer’s projects, newspaper items, graphic novel ideas, etc. They all seem to have worked well with my own class but I want someone else to try them. Most have been successful with them also.

There are so many on TpT and some I have found on the elementary side and tweaked them UP and some I found on the high school side which I had to tweak DOWN just a bit. They all have work well. Some I have used and then I had to tweak them again because they just did not work well in my own environment but “hey, what can I say”. It is “live and learn”.

It is a lot like this blog. I wish I knew what would make people read and learn from it but people don’t so I just go on and do “my thing” and help the other teacher here in Louisiana – and there are lots of us who need info about I state and projects worksheets, lesson, power-points, etc and I just keep on sharing them. At some point in the future I will pass on to the classroom in the sky and people will have to do without my assistance.

But for now I will just keep on ‘reinventing’ and ‘tweaking’ thing I buy and making them fit Louisiana history.

Upcoming....

I made it to the first click today. WOW. I know it is just a temp thing. But that is okay. Today was neat as my students began to work on their “Home Remedy” booklets. They have 12 remedies to create and collect from parents, grandparents, and great-grand-parents. Should be a cool next Wednesday.


Monday is our school wide Social Studies and Science fair. Means I won’t have students next Monday after church. They will be tired up all day. I will be finishing the day with an asmbly on Mardi Gras and how things came to be – 12^th night – Fat Tuesday/Shrove Tuesday - Ash Wednesday – Lent – Easter etc.


 I am starting a movie next week. After they watch they will have a sequel to write about what happened next since there is “no next” after the movie. They will write plus draw a story that they make up covering all the main characters in the movie.

 
They have loved this each year and I am looking forward to seem the outcome again this year. They will also be doing my Cellphone from the Past activity from here on TpT. It worked great last year.

 
The week after we will be watching the second movie based on the time period. From there they will be creating their own Instagram photos from one of the lead characters. There is so much going on.


That will take us to the Civil War and the project (TpT) and their computer work for it. After that we move on to my student’s “Guess who is coming to dinner” computer project which is so cool. They have to invite six people, give me info on each, give topics to talk about that the dinner guests will take part in, create a meal to serve, look up and figure the cost of the meal, and so forth. That will take 5 -7 days. Then it is on to Huey P. Long and his story. And the quarter will be over.

Yearbook

Today I spent all day – with the exception of the two classes I taught – working on the yearbook. I have over ten years working on yearbooks but this one is really beating me up. It is not the normal middle school book where I know all the teachers. It is book that covers everything from Pre-K 2 to eighth grade. It has been fun taking copies of their pages around and getting them checked for spelling, missing kids, and other ‘problems’.

I saw everyone today which was a bit strange but got it all covered. Next week I have the yearbook advisor coming by to see me for a bit. She is as new at this as I am with this company. I have done yearbook with another company for the last dozen years. It is unusual but I am getting the hang of it.

The book will be my normal overkill has I have a TON of photos. I have always believed that middle school is all about photos. High School is different but for me it is pictures, pictures, and pictures. Right now I have space for over 2500 photos in a 68 page book. I want the boss to understand that I know how to put together a really great book. Right now she is telling me over and over to not be taking photos of girl’s teams. I have shot pictures of girl’s teams for years and years with no one getting upset. I have coached my on softball team for over 30 years. I have coached my own basketball team for over a dozen years. Let me do the job you asked me to do.

I love my job even though I would love it better if I taught a few more classes each day. I don’t like ebing a PART-TIME teacher.

The post no will read

Welcome! You made it through 166 other blogs to find me. If you did, you probably read through several other blogs and coming to this spot you hope to find something useful. I guess not. I read through several of them every day but tend not to find much new material. It seems most people do not blog on a regular bases. Teachers just do not have time to sit a blog when they are trying to get ready for another day, another conference, another student, another lesson, another dollar.

I don’t have that worry anymore. Oh I am still teaching but only part time. I left my high pressure, full time job of 167 students a day for a more LOW pressure private school with only 30 students a day. Most of them are a handful each day but there are a few that I will really miss come May. I have taught these students for the last two years – as 7^th graders in a weekly Art in Literature and now in history class. Some of them have been angels and some have become the devil.

I try to love them and give them everything I have but some just don’t want to become ‘students’. Many of them have attitudes that the world owes them everything. They are in a private school and their parents have PAID for their education so they want an “A” no matter how much or how little they do. I am tired of that. I saw it last year with a girl how should have failed but the administration wanted her to pass – they even changed one of her history grades so she would pass. This year she is struggling big time in high school and can’t even change school because she didn’t take the LEAP test to get into public school.

She has to stay at the local Catholic school and just make what she makes. I could have worked with her last year but was told NO….. and off she went to fail somewhere else. At the Catholic high school she no longer has ‘helicopter’ parents who can force the school to GIVE her the grades. She was ‘babied’ through our campus for 8 years I am told.

I want to help students since I HAVE been in public middle schools for the past 23 years. I know what is expected and I know what they need to learn but the administration tells me to just get them through school.

The administration is a little bit better this year than last year and I am a little bit better by not failing anyone due to the administration’s push. I just “go with the flow” and earn my check. I hate this bit “it is what it is”.

Another day another post

Do you really believe how many people you have to scroll through just to get “HERE”? It is crazy and getting worse. I understand the fact that this site gets no comments. The middle school section of blogs is over-crowded if you want to find the one area you need. Most of us are subject dependent and we are not like the elementary teachers.

I don’t have a problem with the fact that I am so stuck on my own subject and I have gotten over the fact that no one really comes to see me. It is just a fact of the job. I teach a ‘no name subject’ in a very little ‘cared for state’ in a ‘little bitty school’ on the south end of the state where we don’t even get much notice from our own state let alone the rest of the country.

I blog on another site when I want comments and fee back but even then, I tend not to blog on a regular basis. I like – no LOVE to read other peoples blogs and I love looking through the blogs here almost daily but I have a tendency to not post nearly as often as I should.

I have found my blog on the first 20 or 30 and then sometime I have to scroll through everyone before I can find mine. Maybe Paul needs to create “sections” so we can find ourselves faster. Oh well, that’s today’s comments. Guess I better get ready for school.

Happy to be here

It is so funny to find people who can actually find me in this mass of blogs. Even I have a hard time finding my own blog. Sometime I have to scroll through hundreds of blogs in the middle school range to find this old man. I am happy to see everyone else here but I am still looking for that middle school person that teaches state history.

It may still be a long while before anyone else gets the idea that someone is looking. IT’s okay, but I will keep looking. At least I have found a couple of high school teachers who do what I do, just not in a poor state, or in Louisiana. It is funny that I may be practicing alone but I am making a “little” bit of money which I plow back into this site.

Over the last two quarters I have made over $200.00 which I am reusing to buy other teacher’s items. Those items get redesigned and reformatted into something I can use with my own students. I will never ‘re-sell’ those items here but I get to use them and see just effect they have on my eighth graders.

Most of my friends can’t understand why I do what I do. They can’t even understand Why I work early in the morning before school and before most other people even get up. Right now it is dark outside and cold – I mean really COLD. Well for south Louisiana standards it is cold. HE it is 35 degrees outside. BURRRRR.

I am happy with TpT and love the fact that other people are getting wealthy or should I say” wealthyer”.

Here’s to TpT.

Now I have to start getting ready for another school day. "Off to see my students!"