The Things We Leave Behind
This website is one of them. As a teacher, I spent at least an hour a day on this site, making it look good for my students, their parents, and other teachers around the country who used this as a tool to be better teachers. It has seen better days. Clearly.
My grand ambitions were to keep it going and add resources for administrators and school leaders to learn from. I am dreaming of them gleaning useful nuggets of gold from my experiences. This has not happened. Instead, it’s like an old shirt in the closet that I hope to fit into (Gaffigan) eventually. I realized today and every day before today, that I don’t have the time or energy to create lesson plans, charts, inspirational messages for other leaders to follow. And besides that, the negative voice in my head says it wouldn’t be good enough, even if I did create them.
I do have the time and energy to tell stories. My stories. The stories of what it is like to be a middle school administrator.
Today’s Story
One of our counselors had this fantastic idea to gather all of our recent new students to a little social gathering during our flex time. Seventeen new students have joined the Elk Ridge family since Jan 7th. All of the Counselors, the SRO (School Resource Officer), hall monitors (TNT), and the admin team met will all of our news students over some Dumford Donuts.
These new students come from all walks of life. Some have been placed at our school to get away from other students at nearby schools; some have moved into our area because of their parents’ new jobs. Others are returning after trying other private/charter schools, others are moving to a better foster home, while others are splitting time between our school and home school.
As we sit in a circle introducing ourselves and playing games (two truths and a lie), I wonder what other schools across the country, do something like this. I thought about the thousands of students who are starting at new schools today without a friend and without someone to say, “We are glad that you are here, no matter how you got here, we are glad that you are here.”
That’s what we say to these kids, almost every day, not only in our words but in our actions and how we treat them. A huge shoutout goes to Mrs. H, who put this all together. It’s something that we plan on doing each quarter from here on out.
Before that, I spent an hour or so taking care of a SAFEUT tip that came in yesterday while we were out for president’s day. The details of the tip surrounded around some inappropriate text messages between students.
After the new student meeting, the following events happened. During lunch, two students pulled the top off of the handwashing sink and started squirting everyone in the bathroom, including students using the stalls.
Weak Meme Game
I realized that my meme game was off during 3rd lunch when I asked a student what his shirt meant, and he said that the shirt was fine, but that the meme behind the shirt was super inappropriate which prompted me to have him turn the shirt inside out, which did not go over well. But, my emotional bank account is full with the student, and he complied. The meme required me to visit the Urban Dictionary, which, I will not send you to.
One of our popular 9th-grade couples broke up this weekend, and it was visibly awkward to watch them try to avoid each other at lunch, almost hilarious. I spoke with both students privately to make sure that they are okay. They lied and said they were, but my job is not to counsel young love’s shrapnel wounds.
I am in charge of sending home the weekly Newsletter that is written by a lot of other people and compiled by me. Of course, this causes problems because I do not feel like I should edit other people’s work before it goes out to the community, but because it goes out to the community, I edit other people’s work. I occasionally make mistakes, and when you send a mistake out to 3000 people, there are always a few that feel they need to let me know that my semicolons are not in the correct place, like that one.
Alarms Will be Ringing
On a rare occasion, a parent contacts the school and wants us to “scare” kids straight. Today, I had that unique opportunity, and it did not go well. I explained to the student the natural consequences of his actions, and he started getting really emotional. He explained to me that he was going to be grounded and that all of his things (phone, Xbox, PlayStation, friends) would be taken away if I called home.
Well, right as I picked up the phone to call home, one of our classroom emergency alarms went off in the main office.
SIDENOTE: For me, this alarm is like the bell Pavlov used on his dogs. I don’t salivate or get hungry, but I go into fight/beast mode. Once I find out what room the alarm is in, I start running. Running to the room, to save a life (at least in my head, that’s what I am doing).
So setting the stage I have a student in my office crying, I jump up and start running towards a room in our school, and then the end of day bell rings… CHAOS.
I start running down the hall into the hurricane/flood (You pick) of students moving to get out of the building. Halfway down the hall, I start yelling, “Get out of the way,” “Get out of the way.” The SRO hears me yelling and starts running behind me, asking, “Where are we going?” Not knowing where he is going. The principal is running behind us, and the kids are trying to move out of the way, but for some, they were casualties of two and a half older men that started moving to fast to slow down. We didn’t slow down. I have some apologies to give out tomorrow.
At this point, kids are stopped in the hallway watching, pulling out bags of popcorn, and launch chairs to watch the show. The three of us get to the room at roughly the same time. The room is…..
EMPTY. Not a living soul in the room. I walk to the back corner of the room where the emergency button is on the wall and sit at a student’s desk. Nothing. The other assistant principal walkies me asking what I want to do with the crying student in my office, telling me that his mom and dad are coming to pick him up on the way home from the hospital after delivering a baby on Sunday. He goes home.
No, you can’t make this stuff up.
The teacher eventually gets to the room, and I ask who seats in the seat next to the emergency alarm. He says the student’s name. “Is there any chance that that specific student pulled the alarm,” I ask. “Yes, but I have 23 boys in 7th period, there is an excellent chance that nine or ten of them could have pushed the alarm.”
The principal and I look at each other, I slowly put my head down in my hands and think I am going to leave today behind.