Caught His Attention

The last class of the day is "credit recovery". I only have one student, Brandon. He's making up English 9. 

Our schools do social promotion, so even if a student fails their classes in ninth grade, they go on to tenth. But they don't graduate unless they've passed all their required courses. Credit recovery classes are available for those students who failed a course and need to retake it.

Credit recovery generally means Odyssey. At least, that's the way they do it at the continuation high school. And that's what the kiddos do at the traditional high schools for the credit recovery classes that are offered before and after school. 

After a couple days in class, it was clear that Brandon wasn't doing any work in Odyssey. He slept a lot of the time. (And he's not easy to wake. I ended up having to smash my water bottle on his desk. This was after I had tried calling his name, knocking on his desk, and shaking him by the shoulder.) And even though I offered to do the assignments with him, he spent most of his awake time watching videos online. 

Last Thursday he walked in with a book. 

He flipped through this book. He was going to get to the class work "in a minute", but he just wanted to look at the book that Mr. T had loaned him.

Well, it is an English class. I told Brandon he could get credit for reading the book that period. He read. I gave him a reading log to fill out. And he filled it out. 

Alas, the book only took him two days to finish. (It was a graphic novel about Nat Turner. Considering his reading level, a graphic novel is the sort of thing to help Brandon get into a story. And this is the sort of history he's interested in.) 

Now if only I could find something he'd enjoy reading for the last week. (By the time you read this, the summer session will be over. But, if you know of any similar books Brandon might enjoy, I'll pass along the recommendations.) 

Summer School 13, Week 2

Things have been going fairly well at the alternative education center, which means it's time for another Thursday 13.

1. As I write this on Sunday, my focus is on my car. It decided not to start yesterday. Somehow I have to get it to the mechanic and get to work tomorrow. Hopefully it's an easy fix, and by the time you read this, all is settled. 

2. I took my car in for some major repairs in June, so having to go back to the mechanic is irritating. (It proved to be fortuitous that I did the repairs in June so I can get to and from work now. At least, it had been nice.) 

3. The above picture of the classroom is now out of date. The "do not use this desk" papers were removed first. Then the partitions on the back desks. There's a new kidney table in the corner of the room. And on Friday they took out all the desks in the middle. (They're going to move in new desks on Monday.) I'll take a new picture for next week's posts, I think, since things will look a bit different.

4. I mentioned the classes in last week's post. First period now has a second student. Yorik was enrolled in the class at the beginning, but he couldn't come to school due to Covid quarantine. 

5. Last Friday I talked about how all the students refused to go out on their walking field trip because they couldn't have their phones. The principal came up with a compromise. If they would write her a paragraph stating why they should have their phones, she would allow it. All but Anson wrote the paragraph.

6. So, the past Friday we went to breakfast at Chik-fil-A. (Breakfast, because we wanted to leave early so we wouldn't be walking in the hottest part of the day.) And the whole thing went very well. I have a feeling we'll be walking out again next Friday (tomorrow). 

7. Now that the continuation high school has started their school year, we have a P.E. teacher. Coach M. works at both schools as neither school has need of a full-time P.E. teacher. But both schools do need someone to teach P.E. He knows me from the continuation high school, so it's nice to see a familiar face.

8. I have not mentioned the water fountains. With Covid protocols, they had to take them out. But, instead of removing them, they've replaced them with water bottle filling stations. 

9. Alas, the kiddos don't bring water bottles. (They're not allowed to bring non factory sealed drinks onto campus.) So, the office has been providing them with plastic cups so they can get water.

10. Ronan's been at war with the school over the non-sealed drink rule. He had opened his water bottle on the way to school one day. Another day, his father had gotten him a soft drink from some fast food place (which was "sealed" when it was bought, but it wasn't actually sealed). Finally, Ronan brought an empty water bottle so he could use the filling station. 

11. The drink rule, like them turning in their phones and them getting wanded on entry, is a site-specific rule. The other schools don't check for those things.

12. This is so much different than last school year when I covered this class. Having the kiddos in person makes a big difference. Some actually do work whereas last year on distance, they pretty much didn't.

13. My birthday is Saturday. I've been on this Earth for half a century now.

Mis-Named

On Monday of last week, Vincent arrived sans hair. He used to have shoulder length, thick brown hair. The difference in his look was startling. 

When asked about the sudden change, Vincent replied, "I did it to prove a point." The point being that he could and would, I suppose. 

I had been warned that he's the sort that'll dig in his heels and refuse to cooperate when it doesn't suit him. So, when he wasn't following along with the book we're reading, I wasn't terribly surprised that he informed me that he didn't like it (after giving it a whole page to catch his attention), and he wouldn't be reading it with us. 

I asked him how he was going to complete the assignments associated with the book, and he said he'd Google the answers. Well, we'll see how that goes.

So, I was rather relieved that he wasn't in school on Wednesday. 

It was morning, and I was at the gate with the aide that checks them in. She was doing a head count and wondered who was missing. 

"Vincent's not here," I said. 

She gave me an odd look.

That's when I realized that I had actually said "Vincent" and not his actual name. I use aliases on the blog. And usually I have no trouble with this. But I'm not usually in a situation where I'm only dealing with five students and writing about them at the same time. 

I'm gong to have to be more careful. 

Now I'm worried I might just call one of them their blog name to their faces. 

Vincent was also absent on Thursday. Apparently, he had a bit of a reaction to the Covid vaccine. He was present for Friday's walking field trip.

At the heart of much speculative fiction (and fiction in general) is a question. What if? On Tuesdays I like to throw one out there and see what you make of it. Do with it as you please. If a for-instance is not specified, feel free to interpret that instance as you wish. And if you find this becomes a novel-length answer, I'd appreciate a thank you in the acknowledgements. 😉

What if you requested assistance, but the person you asked just flat out refused to help you at all? (I'm not going to specify a situation, but assume that what you asked was reasonable, and the person you asked should have been able to assist.) 

Okay, so last week I had a student *cough* Vincent *cough* inform me that he wasn't going to do any of the reading I assigned, and when I inquired about how he was going to do the assignments without doing the reading, he said he'd Google the answers. Grrr.

First of the Season

Someone decided to start on her Christmas projects... 

I mean, it's not like I have anything else to work on. Not really. I have ideas for things, but I haven't really planned out anything as of yet. And I like to have a couple projects going at the same time so I can switch between them if one is annoying me. 

And no, I'm not going to explain what this is yet. I'll talk more about it when it looks like something.

Mutiny

As a reward for good behavior, on Fridays the kiddos get to go out to lunch. Or, at least they did before Covid shutdowns. But as things are moving towards normal, the school reinstituted the practice. 

The permission slips were passed out on Tuesday. The kiddos returned them Wednesday and Thursday. And Friday we were all set to walk the not-quite-a-mile to the In-N-Out. 

The kiddos lined up, waiting for their phones... 

(Upon entering the school, all students are required to leave their phones. The phones are locked up for the day. They can do this due to the nature of the school and the fact that there are so few students.) 

Then the students were told they weren't going to get to have their phones for the journey. 

Oh, they were not happy. They were all like, if we can't have our phones, we're not going. They stalked off and sat on the lunch benches in the middle of the school. 

Mr. G, the math teacher, and Mrs. E, the principal, both went to talk to the kiddos. Nope, they weren't going to budge. 

Fine, then. They could stay in school. Brandon still wanted to go, and he was fine with not having his two (!!) phones. (Anson wanted to go, but he was peer pressured into staying.) 

So, Mrs. E and Brandon and I walked to In-N-Out. We had a rather nice lunch. 

After school I heard about how the other students who remained started to regret their stance. We'll see if they're more willing to go next Friday. 

(And Mrs. E has to look into the phone thing. She wasn't principal the last time they could do this, and legalities and things have to be considered.)

Summer School 13

It's the first full week of summer school at the alternative education center, so I should have loads of good student stories, right? Nope. 

I mean, that's actually good news. This is the school where the misbehaving kiddos get sent, so a boring (blog-wise) week means I got to do my job with minimal disruptions. But this is the blog. 

Time for a Thursday 13, then...

1. At the moment, the school has nine students. This is the school they get sent to when they're expelled from their home school, so low enrollment is good. Besides, since the schools weren't on campus for most of the last school year, no one got expelled.

2. Of those nine, I have five students. One has been absent entirely thus far, and a second only showed up for the first two days, so I effectively have three students. (The first absent student is out for reasons the school is aware of. The second the school has been attempting to contact to find out where he is.) 

3. The schedule is four periods. First and second periods are two hours long. I have one student first, two students second, my prep is third, and I have one student fourth. He is also in my second period class. (One of the absent students is in first and one is in second, so that would up those totals if they ever show.)

4. Anson is in my first period class. He's a bright kid. 

5. I have Brandon and Vincent in my second period class. Vincent has missed a couple days. Brandon hasn't. So, there've been a couple days where I just had Brandon. 

6. I have Brandon only in my fourth period class. Brandon is pretty sick of the sight of me, I imagine. 

7. I had intended to keep the classes on the same schedule, but on Monday another teacher pulled both Brandon and Vincent from class for counseling, so that class is now a day behind. (Brandon does something else in fourth period.) 

8. As I mentioned last week, I chose The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as their work. I found audio online, so we listen to the book, and then they get an assignment that goes along with what we read. 

9. I had attempted to keep the assignments light and fun, but Vincent and Brandon have stopped paying attention. So, now they get comprehension questions. At least for now.

10. Because of the nature of the school, when they arrive in the morning, they have to give up their phones and they get wanded down (metal detector). They are clearly used to this as no one makes a fuss. They wait until the last minute to come onto campus. They busily try to get all their messages attended to before giving up their phones.

11. At the end of the day when they get their phones back, they're all engrossed in them. We adults laugh at this. (Of course, we adults don't have to give up our phones during the day, but I know I'm barely on mine while I'm working.) 

12. The aide who wands them down and collects phones is also in charge of passing out the school breakfasts and lunches. The students complain about the food. Rightly so. The lunches are terrible and insufficient. But the food is provided from the district, so we at the school have no control over it. (The principal has been officially complaining.) 

13. Although, Vincent hasn't complained as loudly. See, he has a crush on that aide. (She's young and cute, so it's not surprising, really.) It was completely obvious to everyone but the aide. The principal gave her a heads-up, though.