Surprise Fire Drill

Wednesday. Economics, special ed. First period. 

This was Mr. B's class, a class I'd done a long-term stint in two years ago when Mr. B was out recovering from surgery. So, I wasn't terribly surprised to find no written plans, only an agenda on the board along with three folders each labeled with a class period. 

The agenda on the board said finals. I assumed the work in the folders were their finals. Okay, then.

Class started. I passed out the finals. I recognized about half the students as ones who had been in the special ed class I covered long term this past February/March. 

They got to work. 

A half hour later, the fire alarm went off. It was not until that moment that I recalled that there was a fire drill scheduled. I had seen the reminder email the previous week and promptly forgotten about it. 

(Usually, the front office informs subs of drills when we check in. And usually the teacher makes mention of it in the lesson plans. Neither of which happened on this day.) 

So, I announced that it was a fire drill. They needed to leave their work and evacuate. 

And that's when a student, Edgar, grabbed the signage we use for fire drills and asked where the emergency backpack was. He led us to where we were supposed to line up, and he held out the green sign (for "everyone's present, no issues") once I informed him that I had accounted for all the students in the class (all seven of them). 

Well, that was painless. 

I hate fire drills. Besides being an interruption, usually it's a matter of corralling students and dealing with the crazy that the interruption starts. This time? None of that. 

We got back to the classroom, and they went back to work. (They all managed to finish the final before the end of the period.)

If only every fire drill I have to do goes like that, I wouldn't hate them so much. Very nice. 

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.)