Shaddup Already!
2005-04-25
Sneezy, Grumpy, Dopey, Sleepy
Now I just need Happy, Bashful and Doc.Just a few days ago a student asked me to name the seven dwarves. So I did. I didn't mention that in the original tale, the dwarves didn't have names. Maybe I should have. Oh well.
I'm sneezing my head off which is making me grumpy. I intend to take my Benadryl which will make me both sleepy and dopey. So I represent 4/7 of the imaginary dwarf population.
Today was my bad parent day. First there was the mom in the conference saying that we don't contact her when F is misbehaving. Then in the next breath she says that the only time she ever hears from us is when F is doing something negative. Huh?
Then I got two messages on the grade sheets I send out fairly regularly. One was from a dad who is way overprotective of his daughter. She didn't bring her planner to school one day so she couldn't show me her homework,(which was to get the planner signed), so she got a zero for that day. Dad asked if A generally had her planner, to which I said yes. Then he said that it seemed unfair to give her a zero for not having her planner one time. Then he got really condescending and said, "Well, you're the teacher, so you do what you think is right." Okay, bucko, your baby has a 98% average, I ain't sweating one little F, get the hell over it.
I flicked off the phone and called him a bastard when I hung up.
Then there's the kid who never listens. You'll say, "Okay, take out some paper and a pencil," and he'll turn around in less than a second and say, "Do we need paper?"
So he didn't have his homework on the desk even after I had asked for it to be placed there about 20 times. So I gave him a few zeros. I mean, come on, how much time am I supposed to spend babying these little minions of evil? Mom was obviously upset, so we struck a compromise--I think.
I'm hoping, at the very least, to have avoided a conference between just her, me and the kid. I think she thinks I'm picking on her baby. Which I suppose it could seem that way to him, since he only ever hears me when I get in his face and repeat something 300,000 times. Not to mention how much patience I've lost over the past few weeks with students who don't want to listen or do anything for themselves.
Today I had a student ask me if they were supposed to make their vocab notecards the same way that they have been doing every week. I said to her, "A, what do you think?" To which she responded, "I don't want to think."
Bingo! Right there is the reason American schools suck. The teachers aren't thinking enough for students. I gotta work on that.
