Distractions

Monday. Senior government, seventh period. 

In the lesson plans Ms. P warned me about Lou. But, I know Lou. Have since their freshman year. (Not sure what pronouns they're using at the moment, so let's leave them general.) I have written about Lou before: freshman English, success, junior English, and I'm sure there are other posts I can't locate at the moment. 

Lou's now a senior... Oh my, how time flies. 

So, of course Lou has matured and is no longer a problem? Of course not. 

Lou arrived just at the bell. I tried to get their attention, but they didn't even seem to notice me. Sigh. I guess out-of-sight, out-of-mind. It had been a while since I'd seen them. 

Ms. P had given her usual sub assignment which was questions on the chapter. She has her classes do packets of work, so I knew I didn't have to collect anything. Lou took one look at the assignment and declared, "I'm not doing all of that." Okay, then. 

First distraction, Lucia. Lucia had samples of honey that she was sharing with the class. She had gotten the honey from Mexico (I guess a family member cultivates bees, or something), and she was asking how everyone liked it. Lou? Hated it. Vociferously. 

Then Lou bounced over to Lilith. She had beaded bracelets all laid out on her desk. Lou went shopping. But, alas, Lou had no money. So, Lou called out to Asher. Asher would give them the money. 

And so began a back-and-forth. Asher said he had no money. Asher asked when Lou would pay him back for the last time Asher had lent Lou money. Lou admitted that they'd never pay Asher back. 

And Lilith? Lou tried to haggle down the price of things. I jumped in to state that handmade goods were worth the price, and if Lou wanted the bracelets, Lou should pay what they're worth. 

Lou complained that they wanted them for a Christmas present for their girlfriend. 

Eventually Asher relented, and Lou acquired a couple bracelets, but not as many as they wanted. 

Lou finally settled, getting a computer and settling down to watch some movie or other. The work? Yeah, they stated they weren't going to do it, and they didn't. 

Sigh. 

I communicated all this to Ms. P. She wasn't surprised. 

Nor was I, really. 

Lou's a senior now. If they don't do the work, if they don't earn all the needed credits, they won't graduate. We'll see. 

The Nero Decree

When I was trying to figure out what I was going to talk about today, I went over to Bluesky to jumpstart my brain. I ran into this post: 

Link to post

And I thought he said this way better than I could, so I thought I'd share the thread. 

Link to article

Link to article

These are the things that worry me. I'm not the only one who worries about this, am I?

Not Worth the Effort

After avoiding it for a week, I finally sat down to bind off the front and back of eldest nephew's sweater. It went about as I expected. That is, badly. 

I had bound off maybe a dozen stitches when I decided to reevaluate. 

Reminder: tubular bind off is basically Kitchener stitch, which is grafting stitches together. I'm sewing them, not actually knitting. 

So, to get the dozen stitches bound off took a while. And as I examined what I had done, well, it didn't look good. (That's my big issue with Kitchener--I can never get the grafting to graft. It does not look like seamless knitting when I do it.) Plus, it didn't stretch that far. 

At which point I was done. My stretchy bind-off would be way quicker, actually stretchy, and it would look good. 

That meant that I had to undo the dozen stitches I'd bound off. This wasn't knitting, so I had to unstitch each stitch. Then, I had to unravel the last row of knitting as that row was preparation for the tubular bind off. This all took a while.

And then binding off took basically no time at all for both the front and the back. If only I had started there... 

But, bright side, when I finish the sleeves, I won't do all those extra steps. That'll make it easier. 

And my bind off looks like this: 

The other bind-off? Not worth the effort. This looks fine.

I'm at crunch time. Christmas is in 10 days. Will I finish the sweater in time? (The answer is no. This is not getting finished in time. Deep sigh.) 

Sweater Tracking:

• Starting the Sweater
• Getting to the Back
• Missed Deadline
• Distractions from Knitting
• A Month Late
• Inching Along
• Tracking the Growth
• Weekly Sweater Update
• Moving Right Along
• Good Progress
• Almost to the Interesting Part
• Plot Twist

Issues of the Day

Friday. BEST. 

(I finally found out what the acronym stands for. Behavioral and Emotional Support Teacher. It was driving me crazy not knowing, and now I do. Phew.) 

Small class, but it has to be as the students need extra support. Academically they're at grade level, but emotionally, not so much. 

We were warned early on that it might not be a good day for Gavin. The previous night he had switched foster homes, so we weren't sure if it was going to be a good day or a bad day for him. 

Gavin started off okay, but by the second period, he and his friend were disappearing from class (not bothering to ask permission or even inform anyone of where they were going) and returning only to go out again. (Eventually we learned they were going in search of snacks.) 

It all came to a head when Gavin took something from the instructional aide (a ski mask) and wouldn't return it. This was when Gavin was sent to the principal's office and he did not return. 

And then there was Dennis. 

As it was Friday, it was make up work day. Dennis had one assignment to make up, and then he pulled out his PlayStation. 

Mr. T had told me that if they were finished, they could play games or watch a movie. It was kind of a reward for getting through the week. No worries, then. 

Dennis logged into his account only to find he had been suspended. For a year. 

I threw out some ideas as to what the suspension could have been for as the notification did not specify. Dennis had to do some searching to figure it out.

He had been suspended for pornography. Which was confusing to him as he had not done anything that would qualify as pornography. He complained that he was fourteen, there was nothing he could have done to warrant that. 

Now, there have been days and students and situations where I'd say that the kiddo clearly did something that was a problem. For Dennis? Nope. I believe him when he says that he did nothing wrong. 

He tried to find a way to appeal the decision, but he couldn't get in contact with a human. As he went through that, he figured out what must have happened. He had reported a fellow player for bullying him. He figured that that player had falsely reported him as retaliation. 

That tracks. 

Dennis did not get his account restored. Instead, we started a movie and another student requested a board game that Dennis joined. (Monopoly.) And that was the day. 

Not too terrible of a day. And I had two instructional assistants who were able to keep things on track. 

Contraband Chips

Thursday. Spanish 1. Seventh period. 

(This was the same day as yesterday's post. I covered an extra period. Two doors down from the French class.) 

Because Spanish 1, the class was mostly freshmen, and it took some time to get them into the room and into their assigned seats. (I had a seating chart with their pictures.) But then, once they knew what they were supposed to do, they got to work. 

The room was quiet. They were all making a good pretense of working. That's when the assistant principal walked in the room. I looked over, and there was the drug sniffing dog. 

I knew the drill...

We all exited the room. I was the last one out. The students were chatting, as they do.

One girl was in a near panic. Her friend explained...

"She's worried that they're going to find her chips." 

Chips? Unless they were laced with marijuana, no one was going to care if she had chips in her backpack. 

This I did not say. I did say that they weren't looking for food. I assured the girl that her chips were safe. 

Seriously, I'm sure half the students in that room had some sort of food in their backpacks. (They'll pull it out during class time.) 

The assistant principal and dog and dog handler and counselor all exited the room. They let us back in.

The dog hadn't found anything. 

I'm not sure if I was surprised or not. I mean, I wasn't surprised the dog hadn't noticed the chips. But freshmen? I wouldn't have been shocked if they had found drugs. But it was good they didn't. 

Six More Minutes

Thursday. French. 

The way the lesson plans were written, it sounded like the teacher had been having issues with the class. So, I made sure to watch them carefully and try to keep them on task. 

It wasn't quite the end of the period, and they started packing up... 

Me: "You've still got, like, six minutes left of class."

Them: "Six... seven..."

I walked right into that one.

Just in case you were wondering how "six seven" is going, it's still going. Middle school classes are worse, but the high schoolers are in on the game too, just not as obnoxious about it. 

But something I just realized, as in last Friday... The last two digits of my cell phone number are six and seven. Because, of course. 

(No way am I giving that out to the kiddos, though.) 

The Outrage Machine

Last week, while I had some time in a class where the kiddos were nominally doing their work (they weren't really, but they weren't making a ruckus), I happened upon an article that I want to talk about today. 

The article: "The Conservative Grievance Business Is Always Hiring"

There are people who find ways to make a living about being outraged. And the public falls into the trap of being outraged along with them. The current kerfuffle has to do with a college student who claims she got a failing grade on a paper because she expressed her religious views. 

And... no. 

If you dig a bit deeper, you find that this girl went after a trans teaching assistant and got them fired. Why? Because these people find different people weird, and they have chosen to use their time and energy to chase them from having a life. They want to chase them into the shadows. 

The problem is these people aren't all that smart. If only the media would dig a little deeper, they'd find that out. 

But no. They want to be outraged. They know outrage sells clicks. 

So, let me talk about my outrage. How it sucks that someone can claim bias to get someone fired when they did shoddy work. 

Don't believe me? Here's a link to the assignment: Reaction Paper Requirements.

Then read the paper. (If those links don't work, I got them from this article via Yahoo.) 

It reads to me like someone knew the paper was due at 11:59 PM and started writing it at maybe 11 PM (maybe 11:30). And, in stream-of-consciousness fashion, they wrote down what they were thinking, getting angrier and angrier at having to do the assignment. 

There are no cogent arguments. There is no textual evidence. There's no intro paragraph or concluding paragraph. No hook. Not really a beginning. 

If I were grading this... Well, let's look at the criteria. 

1. Does the paper show a clear tie in to the article? 

No, it does not. She doesn't at any point cite any text. She alludes to the article, but she doesn't paraphrase anything from it. She doesn't even cite the title or author of the article. (The high school English classes are taught how to write a sentence that tags the article they're using. So, it's something she should have known how to do.) 

2. Does the paper present a thoughtful reaction or response to the article, rather than a summary?

Well, she does not summarize the article. Is her reaction thoughtful? Meh. I might have given some points for this, just because she did turn it in and she did react, albeit without providing clear evidence to support her point. Lots of hand waving excuses for why the article was wrong.

3. Is the paper clearly written? 

Not really. She's clear on her viewpoint once she gets going. But the structure is a mess. It could use a good edit. 

The paper was worth 25 points. I wouldn't've given it over 10 points if even that much. I can see why it got a zero. My grade still would have been a fail. (It would need 15 points for a D.) 

But to hear her tell it and to witness the controversy over it, you'd think she wrote a masterpiece that was dismissed because they didn't agree with her viewpoint. 

Did you read the paper? What grade would you give it? 

Whenever I've assigned writing when it's their opinion (not often, because this only happens when I'm on a long term), I never care what their viewpoint is. Just so long as it's argued coherently. I could see giving a paper an A about something I completely disagreed with them about. It'd be irritating, but good writing is good writing. 

Of course, this isn't really about the paper. This is about a girl who doesn't want to think too deeply about gender roles and whether or not what she's believed all her life is right or wrong. And when she got a zero, rather than reflect on what she wrote, she lashed out. 

Sadly, she's not learning what the professor had hoped to teach.

Stupid people follow the authority blindly. And that's what they want. Blind obedience. Not people who think. 

So, keep thinking. Keep questioning. Keep pushing back. They win when we don't pay attention.