annie@teachertruth.net

No Thanks Necessary

It’s that time of year. Christmas has come and gone. Santa has left his gifts. The wrapping paper is strewn all over the floor, and it’s time to write those thank-you notes.

I have made some observations about my current school that I hesitate to mention, because I don’t want this to come out wrong, and it could so easily. Then why attempt it, you may ask. I believe it is very telling. I wonder whether it is only indicative of the neighborhood in which I teach, although I’ve taught in high-poverty, low socio-economic, Title I areas before. I also wonder whether it’s a sign of changing times.

One of the observations is the role of the Parent-Teacher organization within the school. All of my other places of employment have had PTOs that are focused on making their school better for their students and supporting teachers in any way they can to help bring that about. At one school, granted within close proximity to a country club neighborhood, I would go so far as to say they spoiled their teachers.

Upon every teacher’s birthday, that person was treated to all sorts of goodies by the parents of the students in that room. I was so fortunate one year to have particularly grateful parents who, not only brought me a beautiful bouquet of my favorite flower, but also brought breakfast and lunch to me in my classroom, as well as small tokens of cards and little gifts they’d had the children bring me from home.

Every quarter, the PTO would hire a nice local restaurant to cater a lunch for the teachers, while the parents watched the children in the cafeteria and gave the teachers a duty-free lunch. They would decorate the tables, include a dessert we could take back to our classrooms, and give away door prizes and special treats to the teachers.

Every August, the teachers all received $150 checks to spend on supplies for our classrooms so that we didn’t have to spend so much out of our own pockets. The parents ran all the fund raisers, helped with the Scholastic book sales, and even chipped in money so the teachers could buy a book or two of their choice for their classrooms. One Friday out of every month, the parents came in and popped popcorn for the entire school, and we were allowed to show a video while the children enjoyed their treat. It was a welcome break for all of us, students and teachers alike, from our rigorous work. At random times they would send around a treat cart to the door of each classroom, and the teacher could pick anything from it…bottles of water, soda, snacks, fruit, lip balm, hand lotion, hand sanitizer, office supplies.

Like I said, we were spoiled, but we also felt acknowledged by our parents. No matter how ugly or harsh or unfair the administration became or how difficult our students were, there were those moments every once in a while when we felt valued, that we knew our efforts were not overlooked or forgotten by the people they were intended to benefit. It kept us going.

For the first time ever, I currently work at a school where the focus is the same, to support the students and school, but the attitude is the opposite; it’s what can the faculty and staff do for us parents? In all fairness, I have to say there were cold sandwiches supplied for our dinner on parent-teacher conference nights where we were required to stay late into the evening, which was nice, but those were ordered by the principal and set up and served by the school secretary, not the parents. There are no catered luncheons or hot food banquets. There are no checks to help us cover the cost we incur every year replenishing supplies the school districts no longer provide. There is no acknowledgement of a teacher’s birthday. There are no free books from the book fair. I was allowed to fill out requests for specific books I would like in my classroom that parents could donate, but not surprisingly, no one did.

When these parents wanted to have a back-to-school picnic last year, the teachers were expected to run it. When they wanted to host a pancake breakfast to raise money in January, the teachers were required to organize it, purchase the supplies, set up the tables, cook the pancakes, serve the pancakes, and clean up afterward. So much for the P in PTO.

I experienced another first a few days ago, I didn’t receive a single card or gift for the holiday from a student. Usually, a lot of teachers try to have a plan and thank-you cards on hand to write notes of gratitude to all the students who bring in presents before the end of the last day before break. It’s easier to slip a note into the students’ take-home folders than it is to have the task looming over one’s head during the holidays. It also saves the cost of having to mail the notes to each child. For the very first time in my career, no thanks were necessary, because I received nothing.

I have to say it was odd, and I am still not quite sure how to feel about it. This is also where my tale becomes tricky. I don’t want to sound like a demanding lout. I’m not. I don’t need anything. While I have received such items in the past as articles of clothing, $50, $100, and once even a $200 gift card, I don’t expect anything of the sort. It’s not the size or the quality of the gift at all.

And, yes, just in case you are wondering, I know that I am working in a neighborhood that is always suffering financially in a year that has been absolutely horrendous economically. Many parents have lost their jobs, and my heart goes out to them. I would not want them to take one penny of their money that they need for rent or food or utilities to buy me anything. (On the contrary, I have done my fair share of playing secret Santa, leaving anonymous greetings with grocery store gift cards in the mailboxes of students I’ve known whose families were struggling.)

It’s the attitude. In a year when our school has given free-of-charge all sorts of paper, crayons, markers, pencils, and other school supplies to our students and their families to take home and use for school work, a year when I’ve never worked harder, longer, smarter, or more flexibly to do my best for these children, there really wasn’t even ONE family who thought to have their child write a little note of thanks or to wish me a happy holiday?

Well, despite the recent trend of receiving nothing and having to risk my life to serve, I will continue to give my students presents for the holidays. I will continue to do my best for them, learning everything I can to continually improve my teaching, to spread myself as thinly as possible, to keep working and pushing despite exhaustion and lack of appreciation from my administration, my parents, and my children. I’ll keep stepping in and teaching my students to be civilized, productive human beings. I’ll keep providing supplies and food when their parents don’t, having their hair brushed by the school nurse because the mom never takes care of it, changing their clothes and having them laundered when they come to school so filthy that there’s no way to hide the parental neglect. I’ll keeping making the calls to the Department of Family Services when I discover the bruises and welts on their bodies where they’ve been beaten and when little girls finally find a way to express that they’re being sexually abused. Why? Because it’s my job; it’s what I’m paid to do. No, it’s more than that, and every teacher knows it. It’s a calling. You don’t go into this job for the riches or the fame or the glory. There is none.

No thanks necessary.

Gingerbread

Like many teachers across the country, my fellow grade-level team member and I declared the week before winter break to be “Gingerbread Week” in an effort to be festive without giving offense to anyone. Each day we read a different gingerbread story, beginning with the original folktale on Monday.

We made all sorts of scholarly applications out of our topic. We had gingerbread sorts, gingerbread CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) word blending, gingerbread math, gingerbread vocabulary syllable identification, and gingerbread alphabetical order. Just to make sure we were (that all-too-loved term by administrators) “rigorous” enough, we also made sure we used higher-order thinking activities, such as analysis and creativity, as we discussed cause and effect in our stories, made comparisons of similarities and differences between the versions, and wrote our own endings to the story.

At the end of the day, though, it just didn’t feel like enough this year. The students weren’t allowed their usual winter party because of COVID-19, and it just wasn’t the same. I had expressed that thought to my husband, and told him I wished I could at least give the kids some gingerbread as a treat to wrap up our themed week and send them off happily into their break.

Being the sweet, kind fellow that he is, he stopped off at the grocery store the next day to see what they had. Although he wasn’t able to find traditional gingerbread people, he did find some gingerbread cookies, all factory-made and prepackaged per COVID precautionary guidelines. I was thrilled! I checked the ingredients, double-checked my list of allergies, sent out a notice to the parents of what I was planning to do, and even sent an individual email to one parent just to clarify the extent of her child’s allergies. Everything was cleared and ready to go!

Before I handed out the treats I explained to my class that I thought it would be fun if we actually tried some gingerbread since we had been reading about it all week and asked if anyone had tasted gingerbread before. Only one hand went up. We washed our hands, sanitized our tables, and I distributed the packages of cookies. They opened them, lowered their masks, took their first bites, and their eyes opened wide. They loved it!

In fact, one boy, who is very difficult to please and who often proclaims himself “bored,” muttered to himself as he gobbled away, “So this is gingerbread, huh? Why haven’t I had this before? This is GOOD! I gotta get me some more of this stuff!”

Teachers, by this point in the year, are feeling the same way about rest and relaxation, and while we’ve experienced it before, it’s been a long, long time since we’ve actually had any, particularly this year. So for all the teachers out there (and anyone else who needs a break – like our diligent, even harder-working health care professionals), may you have some time over the holidays for peace and release and rest, because it’s GOOD, and we gotta get ourselves some more of it!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Actions Speak Louder than Words

Back in late October when our school board was deliberating whether or not to switch from all-remote learning to a hybrid model, we were just beginning to get the hang of remote. The rough bumps in the road early in our journey were beginning to smooth out, and students and teachers alike were settling in. Not everyone had jumped aboard the remote learning platform, but most families had embraced it, and we teachers were doing everything we could to support them and help them be successful with their education, as well as encourage the ones who hadn’t tried it yet to climb aboard.

Then everything changed. Despite the numbers of COVID-19 continuing to rise in our community, despite the reports from Dr. Fauci, all of a sudden the rhetoric from our school district superintendent changed. I’m not sure why. I’ll probably never know what was really behind it, but for some reason, our superintendent became hell-bent on us returning to the classroom. His school board members were dubious, despite the threats they’d been receiving from a minority of less-civilized parents. His staff was overwhelmingly against it and made very compelling, well-supported arguments against it. Even a vast percentage of his parents had elected, through his many surveys, to keep their children remote, even if the district opened up a hybrid option. He chose to ignore all of us and campaign for us to return. Every sentence out of his mouth was slanted in that direction. He produced the district’s HVAC engineer to testify endlessly at the board meeting that the air quality in our classrooms would continue to be healthy upon the students’ and teachers’ return. The board meetings lasted for hours, far past midnight, arguing the prudence of their decision.

I knew any hope was lost when, during one of his follow-up videos in which our superintendent tried to explain himself to the public, he said with a shrug of his shoulders, “Can I guarantee that none of our teachers will get COVID? Of course not.” It was the nonchalant shrug of the shoulders that got me. I knew in that moment I did not matter. I was expendable. My life and my well-being were of so little consequence to this man that he was willing to gamble with them to get what he wanted. He faced the possibility of harming me and my family as disinterestedly as a general analyzing the collateral damage of his latest offensive.

After that, no matter how many times he says that the health and safety of his staff and his students are of utmost importance, it falls on my deaf ears. Actions speak louder than words, Mr. Superintendent, and your actions speak volumes (both in quantity and decibel-level).

He was right about one thing, he couldn’t guarantee that his staff wouldn’t get it. Within just a couple of weeks of each other, our Title I teacher (after spending 30-minute sessions with several of my students), our Parent Involvement Facilitator (after overseeing lunch duty in my room for 30 minutes the day before), and our Media Center Specialist (after teaching for 45 minutes in my room the day before), have all tested positive.

Please pray for their full recovery and for protection for the rest of us. Our superintendent’s latest rhetoric states that children ages 0 -9 are unlikely to get COVID or to be carriers, contrary to what the CDC has published on its website. Our state school board and our local school board have just adopted measures that have completely changed the “gating” criteria, which govern how the community health is rated by color zones. Using our former criteria, the county would now be back in red, but they’ve redefined the zoning so that we’re only in yellow. Additionally, they’ve altered how our school district reacts to a change in zone color. Now, it doesn’t matter how bad the pandemic becomes, all elementary schools have been ordered to stay in hybrid mode, even if the health code turns red.

What a Waste!

Looking back at some of my most recent posts, it sounds like saner heads were prevailing, but alas, the sanity was short-lived. From the moment we headed back to school this fall, the push to send us back into the classrooms turned up the pressure exponentially. What surprised me was the direction from which the push came: administration.

I had hopes, at first, when the COVID-19 numbers began to rise last August and our board members voted to delay the start of school and then start remotely when we did begin. Whoever was in charge of the district calendar did an excellent job in reworking it so that all of our PD (professional development) days were moved to the three weeks during which school was postponed. It gave the teachers days to “prepare” (if only they would actually leave us alone and let us do exactly that instead of tying up our time in meetings) and kept our school year from having to be lengthened. It was brilliant.

The only problem with this seemingly good plan was the quality of the PD. It didn’t really help us with the problems the teachers were facing, and in the end, turned out to be a huge waste of time. For example, we were told if we were going to begin the year remotely, our school needed to have a website presence on Google sites, and each teacher was supposed to develop his/her own page for students to use remotely. Almost none of us had experience with the Google sites program and how it worked, and we were given no instruction in its use. None. No joke. Instead, we were told to “go play with it.” The theory being that we would learn much more through our own exploration than by being shown. (I wonder what kind of evaluations WE would get if we just simply told our students “go play with it” and expect them to learn on their own.)

Having spent a few hours in frustration and not having those hours to spare, my grade level cohort and I went to our instructional specialist, who is our technology guru, and begged for some pointers to get us started. With just a few minutes of demonstration, I was actually excited and felt equipped now to tackle the assignment set out for us. I spent days, yes, entire days, as in a spare hour or two during the day that I wasn’t scheduled in some worthless meeting, plus evening hours and all weekend, designing and building my website. I made buttons that served as links to my Webex meeting room within a clearly-laid out schedule for my students to follow every day.

(Oh, yes, I don’t believe I’ve told you yet.) You know how there was this huge push to get the teachers to learn Zoom last spring? Not only did we have to learn how to be a participant, we had to know how to run the meetings, control our students’ behavior on it and teach them to properly use Zoom’s tools, as well as help our parents trouble-shoot. Well, just as everyone gets fairly proficient with Zoom, our school district decides to dump it and change to Webex. All of that learning was thrown out the window, and we’re all having to learn Webex, which doesn’t work like Zoom, as well as Google sites, on top of everything else.

Anyhow, I was incredibly proud of my website. I was a little uneasy because I was wondering what’s to keep someone “off the street” from entering our website and crashing our meetings. However, I just followed orders, and I was told to post my personal Webex meeting room link clearly on my site for my parents to see and use. I secretly wondered if I’m the only one who sees the irony in the fact that we dumped Zoom because of “security problems,” which were actually our own fault by publishing the links and passwords to our meetings in a public place, and now we were even more publicly sharing our Webex links. Was I the only one to see a problem with this? Apparently so. I continued to build my site incorporating all the items my administration required: a contact page with my link big and bold, a weekly newsletter, a list of tasks to be completed, and the learning objectives for the week’s lessons. It was a beautiful sight to behold, if I do say so myself. I figured out a way to create separate links for my small reading and math groups so that they wouldn’t drop in on each other’s meetings, and I had them all hidden behind labeled buttons to make things as easy as possible for my students and parents. I was the very proud parent of my baby Google site, especially since the labor to give birth to it was hard and long.

We launched our sites, spent a few days in parent-teacher conferences demonstrating our sites to our parents, and it wasn’t until that moment the our school district administration decided “Oops! This wasn’t as secure as we thought it would be. In fact, you need to take it all down right now.” Days and days of work made completely worthless in an instant, and it all could have been avoided with just a little forethought and planning.

I knew before my principal did. I read the directive in the district’s daily bulletin that morning and pulled my Webex links off immediately in order to protect them. I later even taught myself how to go into Webex and change the actual link just to be sure no one could enter my personal meeting room using the previously published link. To add insult to injury, my principal chose that morning to do an unannounced “walk-through” observation of my site and my morning meeting with my students. The only thing she could find to criticize was the fact that my Webex link wasn’t published anywhere. I informed her that I had had it there minutes before she browsed my site, and I would be happy to put it up again if that’s what she wanted, but there was this article in the daily bulletin she needed to see that said to take it down. A few minutes later a memo was sent by her to the entire school to take the Webex references down, requiring interactive sites like mine to be dismantled.

This is just one of many instances I could cite that show the lack of planning, foresight, communication, and consideration of our district’s administration.

This Is Why

I was in Target today, and I saw a mother of three young children, the oldest looked about ready to enter second grade at most. She was pushing her cart through the store, the two older boys walking nearby with the youngest, a girl, sitting in the cart. All three children dutifully had their masks on, each a different style. The oldest had a no-nonsense, disposable, nondescript mask, the middle a black cloth mask with a superhero logo, and the youngest a pink sparkly sequined mask. None of the children were fussing with their masks. They just seemed to accept them as much as they accepted the clothing they were wearing. They were simply a necessary part of their outfit when they are out in public.

Kudos to that mom!!! She has obviously spent some time and effort training her children about the importance and necessity of wearing personal protective equipment in this COVID-19 riddled world. She made me start to question some of my strongly-held personal beliefs about the ability of my students to follow the CDC guidelines regarding social distancing, hand washing, and mask wearing. Maybe I’d been too hasty. Maybe I’d not given the children or their parents enough credit. Maybe it WOULD be possible to have a group of twenty first graders in a classroom for eight hours per day, five days a week, follow protocol and learn safely in a deadly virus-infested world.

A few minutes later, I was checking out my purchases at the register. I heard them before I could see them: a handful of unmuffled children’s voices, one taunting another and apparently successful, based on the full-throated scream that followed. Curious about the clarity of their voices, I shifted my position slightly to get a better look at the children making the ruckus.

Another masked mom was pushing her shopping cart, surrounded by her three small children, the oldest of whom was probably entering first grade, the youngest toddling next to the shopping cart with its pacifier dangling from its mouth, barely able to keep up. All three were out of control, touching everything in sight. The one thing that was no where to be seen…a mask.

In that moment, all the doubt, the recrimination, the reconsideration I had been giving to my views about the age-appropriateness of expecting my students to wear masks all day long just flew out the window. I was right. I’d been right all along. It’s too much to expect of them, too much to ask. I just happened to catch that first mom at a good point in time. I’d lay bets that even her kids, at some other point, had given her fits and refused to wear the PPE.

Does that mean that the first mom shouldn’t bother to teach her children to mask up? Of course not! I still give her kudos, and she should still continue the good work she’s been doing, because it’s the right thing to do. It’s keeping her family healthy. It’s keeping me healthy. It’s keeping you healthy. It’s helping starve the virus from devouring its next victim. It’s bringing the virus under control more quickly than it would be otherwise.

But if you’re one of those people demanding that schools reopen immediately, despite the ever-rising numbers of new COVID-19 cases being reported daily, and you’re demanding to know why they aren’t, this is why. Even if you could reasonably expect six-year-old children to keep their uncomfortable mask on all the time and to always remember to never approach their friends closer than six feet (and you can’t), you can never count on all parents teaching their children to wear their masks, even when they don’t want to, and to keep their distance from other people, and to do the right thing because it’s the right thing, especially when it is inconvenient or uncomfortable, to think of the good of other people and maybe, once in a while, even put other’s needs above their own.

Unless parents are willing to do the hard work of parenting, and it IS hard work, I know, children will NEVER learn these behaviors. Students can’t be expected to magically start to exhibit these behaviors at school if parents have not first taught them at home.

Thank You!

A couple of weeks ago, the governor of our state issued an order that would delay the start of all public K-12 schools in our state until after Labor Day due to the most recent developments of the COVID-19 pandemic. A short time later, the state board of education in a 5-5 split voted it down. My heart sank.

How, in good conscience, with the number of COVID-19 cases rising daily to ever-increasing new heights, could these people, who are supposed to be doing what is best of the children and educators of our state, not support the governor’s order that was trying to protect us? I do not understand. I will never understand. However, that left the individual school districts with the task of deciding for themselves when they would start.

I confess I haven’t kept track of the entire state, but in my little corner of the world, one by one, the school districts have met and made their decision, and I am thrilled to report that they ALL have chosen to support the governor’s order and delay the start of school. Additionally, all of them decided to start the first several weeks remotely, online. By the time my district’s board met, it chose to do the same, despite much heated dissent from the community.

To the five members of the state board of education who voted with their heads instead of their politics, and to the members of my local board of education who chose to do the right thing in the face of much opposition, THANK YOU!!!!!

I’m Back!

It’s been a while since I have posted. I had grand plans of starting a daily journal during the COVID-19 quarantine. I thought I would have all this wonderful time that I don’t normally, since I was no longer spending an hour and a half commuting to my teaching job, not to mention the 10- to 11-hour workdays themselves.

I was wrong. The quarantine meant that instead of teaching in my classroom, I would be teaching online. Prior to this, I’d never even heard of applications like Zoom, and even though I’d heard of Seesaw, I’d never used it or seen it used. Now, I would not only have to know about them, I would have to lead my class of first graders and their parents in how to use them! No pressure! I found myself spending every waking moment on my laptop trying to teach myself three different applications simultaneously so that I could turn around and proficiently teach a class using them. Most days, my head was spinning long before I laid it on my pillow at night.

As if that weren’t enough, I didn’t have a lot of the tools I needed at home. The last time I was allowed in my classroom, it was with the understanding that we would only be shut down a couple of weeks. I never dreamed I would be teaching school virtually for the rest of the school year. I did my best to piece together resources not only for my students, but for myself as well. I got creative. I experimented. I learned a lot.

On top of all of that, the instructions and advice we were being given from our government and school district authorities changed practically on a daily basis. At first, we were supposed to have daily meetings with our class, but no more than 45 minutes total. Then I found out I was the only one doing that. So I changed my format…and my plans…again for the umpteenth time.

Then there were the meetings. Oh my, the meetings! More meetings than I’ve ever had in my life. There were the usual staff meetings, but then there were also the Professional Learning Community (PLC) meetings, plus the meetings we had to have with the Title I and Special Ed teachers, plus the normal (and usually only beneficial) meetings with my grade level, plus the meetings with our cohorts at another school, plus the meeting appointments one-to-one with parents and students every single week.

I did my best. We survived. My kids learned things. I learned things. We made it to the end of the school year.

I heaved a sigh of relief, took a few weeks to recover, then decided I was ready to blog again…only to discover that for some unknown reason, my site had been deactivated at some point. There was no warning, no email notification, no nothing. It turns out that there was some technical issue that could only be cleared up by the host, so “Thank you, Bluehost,” for getting me up and running again. I’m back!

NOT the New Normal

Like so many teachers, I’ve been playing this game of hurry up and stop, very much like the children’s game Red Light, Green Light. On the one hand, I’m rushing ahead to try to learn four new software applications simultaneously that I think will make my students’ learning experiences better. I’m rethinking how I do everything and even what I need to accomplish with my students. On the other hand, I have to stop and wait for directives from my state to trickle down to my school district administration to further trickle to my building administration to get to me. I don’t know what is required of me until the state tells me how long I’m to spend with my students and parents and colleagues each day. I don’t know which standards I’m going to be required to emphasize for the rest of the school year, because I can’t possibly cover all of them in the allotted time. I just sit, hoping and praying they pick the same standards to label as “essential” as I would have.

In the meantime, my district has declared this week to be an SEL (Social/Emotional Learning) week. Our task as teachers is to call our students’ parents and inquire how they are doing, if they need anything like food, medicine, mental health services, technology services and/or equipment. I feel very uncomfortable with this task, because the questions imply that I can actually do something about their problems if they have any. I can make referrals and am happy to do so, but I don’t want to cause anyone to have misconceptions about the scope of my job. Despite dreading the calls and the need to block out my personal phone number to make them because the host calling platform that my school district was endorsing wasn’t working, I picked up the phone and dug in.

What I discovered was, not only did my students’ parents seem to appreciate the call, it made me feel better, too, something I wasn’t anticipating. It was good to hear their voices, to make human contact. In some cases, I even got to chat with my students briefly, and their voices, which before sometimes grated on my last nerve (c’mon, teachers, I know I’m not the only one who sometimes winced at their less-than-dulcet tones), sounded so sweet to my recently unaccustomed ears.

Often in the last several days I’ve heard people refer to our shelter-in-place order as “the new normal.” I tried to remind the parents, especially the ones having a hard time, that this is NOT the new normal. This, too, shall pass. It may last a lot longer than any of us would like, but it is only temporary.

In the meantime, can anybody teach me how to host a meeting on Zoom?….

New Appreciation?

The old saying promises that there is no cloud without some silver lining. Could that be the case with COVID-19, as well? It may very well be, at least for teachers anyway. My school district is one of many across the nation that is shut down starting today. I’ve been on email, trying to give parents lots of ideas to use with their children that will actually help my students prepare for the state and standardized testing they will have to face when they return to school. Many of them are stuck at home with their children wondering what to do to fill the hours of “social distancing.”

No one has actually expressed any gratitude to me directly, but I thoroughly enjoyed a tweet my daughter and husband shared with me earlier today from a Shonda Rhimes. It said, “Been homeschooling a 6-year old and 8 year old for one hour and 11 minutes. Teachers deserve to make a billion dollars a year. Or a week.” Shonda, may I quote you to my school board? Maybe after a couple of weeks of having to walk in our shoes a little bit, parents will be a little more respectful and appreciative of what teachers do. As taxpayers, I hope they remember this experience the next time our salaries come up for review.

Seeing Stars

Teachers, have you ever used a 5-star chart as part of a behavior plan with one of your students? It seems like a simple thing, at least it did when the SPED teacher gave it to me. Her instructions were, “Every time your student does the right thing, give a star. When the student has earned five stars, give the student a five-minute break.” That seemed simple enough, and she had gone to a lot of trouble laminating the chart and attaching Velcro, so the stars could be moved over and over. I was happy to give it a try. Heaven knows, nothing else I had tried was working. The things this child needed (medication and therapy), I could neither give nor suggest.

The first problem came with implementation. It was very difficult, if not downright impossible, to catch the student making the right choices. This student was so impulsive that she wasn’t still, not for a second, and every movement was the wrong one. The child could find a million different contortions to use to perch upon her chair, but none of them the right one. She blurted out constantly, always with something unhelpful, usually with something that would get another child riled up. As a result, stars were earned infrequently.

The second problem came when I started the GEI process, the practice of online tracking of behaviors and/or academics that are of concern and meeting with a “team” of colleagues (classroom, SPED, and sometimes specials teachers) to brainstorm ways to help the student. I really didn’t have a choice, because she was in a similar process the previous year, and we were told that we should continue with the GEI process on those children from the previous year.

I didn’t know what I was walking into. I came armed with my data, because I’d already been tracking one of her behaviors on a different chart, and I had evidence of her academic growth, or rather lack thereof. I knew we had an hour and a half for the meeting, and there were two other students on the agenda before her, both in another grade level, and one listed after her. I listened as each teacher presented what was going on with their student, what they had tried up to this point, and what impact it had. There were tales regaled of help they had already received from the SPED teacher and further suggestions of things they could try. “This is great!” I thought. “I can’t wait to see what they come up with for my student!”

However, despite the fact that we were told only 20 minutes would be allotted to each student, I watched the clock tick by, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes. Finally, on to the next student! The same thing happened with the second student, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes went by. “Surely, they will table my student and have me present in the next meeting,” I thought.

But no! I was wrong. My student’s name was called, and I was told to present. Well, maybe we’ll stay late, or maybe we’ll just start and finish at the next meeting, or maybe they know my student so well already that there won’t be much question about her, and we can jump straight to solutions. Nope! I was wrong again. I was given five minutes to present and basically told I had to deal with it myself, but to keep tracking data. Case closed. I was stunned speechless as everyone got up and left the room.

The next GEI meeting was no different. Well, it was, but it wasn’t any more helpful. In fact, for me, it was worse. The student’s mother had decided she wanted to attend the meeting, so they had to allow it. They brought her in at the point where we started discussing her daughter, so the rest of the meeting was confidential. I began to present my data on the behaviors I had been tracking. I projected my graphs onto the screen for everyone to see.

Then it came time for the helpful suggestions. One or two ideas were half-heartedly thrown out and then shot down before the SPED teacher that works with me more closely spoke up. “I just have a couple of questions. Have you been using the five-star chart with her?” [yes] “And how many breaks does she earn per day?” “At least one, sometimes as many as three, but probably on average about two per day” was my reply.

“Oh! Well, that’s not nearly enough!” exclaimed SPED teacher #1. At this point, SPED teacher #2 chimed in. “If you want her to buy into the system, you have to give her at least one break every 30 minutes.” It would have been nice to have known that when she gave me the now- loathsome chart! I could feel my face turn fiery red. They went on and on about how I wasn’t using the chart properly, making me look like an idiot in front of the child’s mother.

But even if she had told me, I would still have been at a loss to find a way to reward the child more often than I already was. She just wasn’t earning them. She hadn’t done anything to deserve them. I struggled with how to express that in front of the mother. “It’s not that she doesn’t buy into it. She looks forward to her breaks. I’m just not sure what it would look like for her to earn stars more frequently,” I lamely replied.

SPED teacher #2 jumped on the bandwagon again, happy to enlighten ignorant, little, ol’ me. “Well, you have to reward her for every little thing she does correctly. Like, oh, you are in your chair, not under the table, you get a star. You picked up your pencil, you get a star. You wrote your name on your paper, you get a star.” ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME??? I don’t have time for that. I have four other students with IEPs in my room, other students whose behavior I also have to track, plus the rest of my students. Besides, I would feel like an idiot doing that. “Oh, you picked your nose, here’s a star.” “Oh, you hit your neighbor, but you half-heartedly and unconvincingly said you were sorry, you earned a star.” No, absolutely not. A thousand times, no. I walked out of that meeting feeling completely beaten up. This was not helpful. They were acting like that stupid little five-star chart was the only thing in their arsenal to help my student, as if it were the ultimate antidote and her life depended on only that one thing, which I was administering so ineptly.

I licked my wounds, started over the next day, and tried really hard to find more things to reward without feeling like a complete sell-out. In the meantime, there was a new diagnosis from a new doctor and new medication and new hope. The child and I both did a little better with the five-star chart, but not because I lowered my standards to ridiculous levels, but because her new-found hope gave her the drive to work even harder to the right thing, and I was able to reward her more often.

Then, the next GEI meeting rolled around. I was so happy to be able to report that we were using the chart closer to their expectations and my student had been enjoying more frequent rewards for her efforts. Then the speech teacher opened her mouth, and I couldn’t believe what came next. “Well, I was checking up with the specials teachers, and they reported that the chart isn’t always coming with your student to specials.” You were what?!? You were checking up on me? Who died and put you in charge of me? Who the heck do you think you are?! I was furious, but I was trying to calm my thoughts enough to answer. I could feel my face go fiery red again. What she said was true. My student usually didn’t remember to grab her chart, because that is her nature, and I didn’t always remember to remind her, because I have a million and one other things to keep track of as well, but I had a system in place to take care of that.

I noticed that none of the actual specials teachers were in the room to either condemn me themselves or back me up. Not once had any of them complained about the chart or its absence directly to me. I simply asked them at the end of every class how the student had done. I responded, “That is true, the chart doesn’t always make it to specials, but I always award my student as many stars as she earns tickets [another reward system our school uses], and I give her any breaks she has earned during specials when we return to the classroom. I never expected a specials teacher to take time out of their precious 45 minutes to give one of my students a break. They have the kids for such a short time. Just today, when I picked up my students from music, the music teacher told me my student had earned a break during music, so I gave it to her when we got back to class. Nobody has ever expressed a problem with this.”

It was at this point that both the media center librarian and SPED teacher #2 piped up. The media center librarian explained that she never used the tickets, she was too busy to hand them out, and that she WANTED to give students the breaks they earned in media center. Oh, really? You can’t be bothered to use the school-district’s adopted method of positive behavior reinforcement? I’m sure they’d love to hear that. And if you felt this way, why didn’t you say something to me earlier in the year? SPED #2 chimed in with “It’s YOUR responsibility to remind her to take her chart with her.” If this were an old Batman episode, this is where the words “BAM!” and “POW!” would be exploding across your T.V. screen.

How many different ways can I be blindsided by a simple little laminated chart with such cheery-looking stars on it? At this point, all I can think about is taking the blasted thing out on the blacktop and setting fire to it. I feel like the cartoon character that has just had an anvil or a piano dropped on its head, and it’s sitting there with a loopy expression on its face, a wreath of birds and stars encircling its head. I don’t know what I’ve ever done to incur the wrath of these ladies. I don’t even know them! How can we control bullying among our students when we are doing it to each other?

My student may be earning stars, but I’ve been verbally assaulted over this so many times, I’m the one SEEING them.