So Improved

Every school in Florida has to write an annual "School Improvement Plan" (SIP, for you acronym-lovers). If your school is a terrible place, you might write in there that your goal this year is to wrestle its control back from the gangs that are currently ruling it. According to the DoE, you need to write this as a set of measurable goals, such as:
By the end of this year, less than 80% of students will use Schedules I to III Controlled Substances, and less than 20% of the faculty will be providing those to their students.
or
By the end of this year, terminations of student pregnancies will be reduced in half compared to last year.

However, if your school is and has always been an "A-Rated" school due to its amazing location right in the middle of an affluent neighborhood and to the fact that every attempt at integration has failed, then what is there to improve? Do we really need to write an improvement plan?

Now, I realize that we may be extremely successful at what we do and still strive to improve. Here are a few ideas:

• Hire more minorities.
• Have more people TEACH and less people in "support" jobs.
• Treat teachers with respect, almost as if they were professionals.

Will those be in the next SIP? Yeah, right!

So Insidious

So, from the look of it, this promises to be a better year than the last one. I am of course talking about my students, because I know that the state, the district, and the school will find new ways to make my job even more difficult.

Last Friday, during that morning-long meeting intended to prevent us to properly prepare for the first day, the "PBS Coach" (yes, he looks a little like Big Bird) told us that "of course, we're not telling you NOT to write referrals," when of course, that is EXACTLY what they are doing.

PBS stands for Positive Behavior System, which sounds fantastic, just like NCLB ("No Child Left Behind"). PBS's official goal is to place the emphasis on positive reinforcement. I applaud that. However, the PBS team in my school (and maybe yours also) has a hidden agenda. Its real goal IS to lower the number of referrals written on students. Why? Because it makes the school (and therefore its administrators) look bad. Their thinking is: "A school where lots of referrals are written must have lots of discipline problems." Consequently, PBS has come up with a flowchart that indicates all the steps a teacher has to have taken first before writing a referral. Do I have to tell you that it involves LOTS of paperwork, phone calls, and wasted time? Guess what? Referrals have indeed come down in numbers in the last few years, to the great joy of our administrators. Of course, behavior has also gone worse during the same time, but that is not their problem. It is ours, so who cares? Teachers have given up on writing referrals, not just because of the wasted time and energy, but also because the consequences applied by administration are ridiculous: "Silent Lunch," or "Talked to Student." Oh, yes, I bet those students must be terrified and will indeed modify their behavior after those consequences!

Imagine the State Troopers being discouraged by their superiors to write tickets for speeding or dangerous driving. Politicians would then use statistics to show that roads are now safer, while in fact it would be the exact opposite. We would take the road with a false sense of security and end up in the hospital or the cemetery. It has been 15 years since the last teacher shot to death by a student in our District. Another one is long overdue.

So, thank you, PBS! Don't forget to call with your pledge. At the $50 level, we'll send you a stack of unused referrals. At the $100 level, an assortment of condoms and syringes used by students in the school bathrooms. At the $150, an invitation to the next shot teacher's funeral. It includes the speech from the superintendent about how dedicated that teacher was...

So Last-Minute

So, in a few minutes students will return to school and sit in front of me. Today, I'll have to learn the names of 127 students. Well, actually, I know some of them for having taught them in previous years, so it should make the task a little easier. As always, I promise myself that I'll be a strict, mean, well-respected, even feared, teacher, but I know I won't be able to.

Friday, our last day for getting everything ready, was consumed by meetings. Yes, we had a first-day meeting on Tuesday, but apparently it wasn't enough. Upon arriving at school, I saw a sign on the door that the office was closed because there was a meeting from 8 to 10. What? I hadn't heard of it. People tell me it was in that welcome back letter we received at home during the summer. Really? Who still sends letters? That meeting lasted ALL MORNING. Then in the afternoon, there were department meetings and grade-level meetings. When are we to prepare? Oh, yes, the school would open its doors on Saturday for the fools who want to work extra hours just because administration made it impossible for us to accomplish anything during regular hours.

Ready or not, here we go...

So Hypocritical

So, here we are all gathered once again at the onset of what promises to be the best year ever. Of course, the initial faculty meeting is always a little painful. If you have ever stopped doing any exercise for a few months and then gone back to the gym, you know the pain I am referring to.

Even though the principal wants us to believe that this is us "conversing" or "dialoguing," she is the only one talking, so it is more like she tells us how it is, how it should be, and how miserable at our job we are, even though this school is and has been an "A-rated" school since its inception. All this is supported by gorgeous District-created graphs projected on the screen. Test scores are going down. It MUST be because of our poor performance. How else could you explain it? What? Testing conditions were terrible last year? Computers were not working the way they should have? Students were parked in the cafeteria all morning with music blasting and then took the test in the afternoon? We lost a whole MONTH of instruction to this lunacy? NO-NO-NO-NO-NO! It is the TEACHERS' fault! We are terrible, and it is time to change that. To start with, we are now going to be subjected to twice the fun, as the principal has decided to conduct TWO faculty meetings per month this year instead of one. That will give her more occasions to try to get us to use the words the District wants us to use, like: "I am teaching this to fidelity." Do not ask me what it means, but it sounds good to their excellences.

Now, she keeps a straight face to ask us: "How can we make sure that we prepare students for high school?" We are in the same exact room where three months ago the same administrators told us to let our students pass, no matter how terrible their grades were. So, we are to lower our expectations only when it is convenient, and pretend to raise them the rest of the time?

So Professional

So, if you ask students what they want to become when they grow up, they always seem to aspire to the same few professions: doctor, firefighter, police officer, lawyer, veterinarian, and so on. Some seriously deranged kids will say "teacher," but they obviously just say that to please the teacher. No sane individual would pick that as a profession.

A way for white parents to circumvent the annoying fact that their little angels have to share a room with black kids (can you imagine the trauma?) is to enroll their kids in a "magnet" or "choice" program. Those programs aim to prepare the students to careers in the fields of medicine, business, law, engineering, the arts,... However, if you look around you and see the jobs that actual people have, you quickly realize that our schools do very little to prepare students for those jobs. Real jobs include bagger at your local supermarket, barista, or being the lady that pushes the rich old lady's wheelchair at the mall. We need academies to prepare our students for those careers. We need the District to finance more of those academies, and let kids explore a wider variety of possible professions. Among those are:

• Game show host
• Sad white clown
• Sports team mascot
• Crime scene cleaner
• Taxidermist
• Telemarketer
• Used car salesperson
• Road Construction Flagger
• Funeral Director

Don't laugh. All those are valid professions, and many (including flagger) require an official state training and certification. The French say: "Il n'est point de sot métier." There is no silly job.