Educational Thoughts

Let me tell you what's wrong with our educational system, of which I am a member. This morning I attended a faculty meeting wherein we were told that the computerized system of keeping attendance, which apparently worked just fine last year, is not to be used this year except to take first period attendance. No, we must revert to the paper and pencil method for all classes, including the first period class, for which we're still supposed to also take attendance via the million dollar program the system purchased a year ago that is now not sufficient to take hourly attendance upon. Not only that, but first period teachers, who are not homeroom teachers BTW, must now collect the excuse notes from the kids and keep them BY CHILD in a folder until the end of the school year, at which time they will be placed in yet another file. And what do I do at the end of the twelve week rotation when I have a new class of kids first period? Who the hell knows? If a child misses one of our classes during the day, we must post that child as absent until we see an excuse note. But where oh where are the excuse notes? Stuck in a freakin' file in the first period teacher's class. So how do we now know if a child is excused? We, the first period teachers, must take a sheet of paper and fill it out that says that yes, we have received the golden ticket (aka the excuse note) from the child's parent and the child really was out for a legitimate reason. Now said child may take the note to all the rest of his/her teachers throughout the day, present the golden ticket, and be given make-up work. But no, no, no, we must not give the child any make-up work if there is no excuse note--forget the fact that many excuse notes are forged or are nothing but lies, but they exist therefore they excuse. And of course no middle school child has ever forgotten anything for class.....despite the fact that on any given day I might find an entire backpack in the middle of the freakin' hallway....if they can't even make it to class with a backpack, how on earth will they keep up with a sheet of paper like this? Anyway, what makes it even more ridiculous, not to mention time-consuming, is the fact that a child might be legitimately sick and yet forget to get a note, but SUSPENDED students are automatically excused and can receive work without the golden ticket. This was explained that we know where the suspended students have been.

Did I mention they gave us printed out sheets of paper on which to keep the blessed attendance but they are nearly useless because the columns aren't really columns, just little lines that could be taken for dashes? So I created my own sheets today and if the attendance police (which is apparently a real job) don't like it, they can climb up my butt and blow. We also were given the RED NOTEBOOK in which to keep the attendance which must be returned as part of our checkout procedure next spring.

And I'm supposed to be teaching during some of this sometime.

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Favorite link of the day:

http://www.bullshitjob.com/titles.html