Purgatory
This week started out with so much promise. It has since spiraled faster than the temperature on a snow day. It seems like so many events have conspired to make this week difficult, and today was just the capstone of the tailspin. Or the tail end.
First off, my Dad was hospitalized before the week even got started. Late on Sunday night my Mom woke me with the news that he was having severe pains in his chest and she had called 911. Soon, our downstairs was abuzz with paramedics moving about and strapping my Dad in for an ambulance red-eye to the hospital. Boom. Just like that. My Mom followed them in her car and stayed at the hospital until about 5 AM, which is when she returned home for all of one hour of sleep. I stayed home with Baxter & Izzy. I was worried sick, as you can imagine, and afraid I'd never be able to sleep, so I was surprised when I nodded off without too much trouble.
It's been nearly four days, and my Dad's still in a hospital room. The doctors have run an EKG, heart cathaterization, and ultrasound to rule out the chances of a heart attack. Hearing that Tuesday night didn't exactly make me feel better. I wanted to know what the problem was, not what it wasn't. The lack of concrete answers was kind of frustrating, but that's the way it goes with hospitals. It took them until today to figure out that my Dad's gall bladder wasn't working properly. At all. So now we finally have some answers. The only thing left to determine is whether we can get a surgical procedure arranged while my Dad's hospitalized, or if we should wait for an outpatient appointment at a later date. I prefer to go ahead and get it done now if at all possible, for fear of what might happen if Dad left the hospital. What if the pain struck again, more serious, and really put his life in jeopardy? But again, you know how it is with hospitals. Reliable scheduling isn't one of their strong points.
All of that has kind of put the rest of my family on edge. None of us have operated at our best, and I hate sounding like I'm making excuses when I have to explain the family situation. My Mom has spent two nights at the hospital, even though I tried to talk her into trading places on Tuesday night and letting me stay. Baxter kind of had a panic attack Monday when he heard Dad's voice on the answering machine. Guess he was a little groggy and drugged up at the time. As for me, I'm still in survival mode with teaching, so any diversions are more of an issue than normal because when my performance suffers, my students pay the price. And I don't want that to happen.
But...this morning...sigh...
I had an observation scheduled for 1st period this morning. On paper, it wouldn't be too strenuous. Just reviewing vocabulary worksheets (okay, not our favorite thing to do in class) and then starting the film on A Raisin in the Sun. Shame on me for thinking anything could be that easy. We have Spirit Week going on at MHS, and a major hallmark of that is our rivalry with Hillcrest High for money being donated to charities. Always a great cause, right? Well, it depends on how you execute it...
We're less than a minute into the period. I've gone over the first few vocab words when the intercom buzzes. Somebody in the administration had the bright idea that a sure-fire way to get more students to donate money would be to place the assistant principal on the intercom. And let him talk. And talk. And keep talking until we got $2,000. What does this mean? It means while I'm trying to explain the differences in print and non-print media with the Raisin film and the play, the principal is on the mike booming into the classroom and making it practically impossible for a soul to hear me. I had no idea this was coming. Not one warning. At first, I did not take it seriously. Oh, it's just an empty threat. No way he'll talk past five or ten minutes at MOST. But alas, the assistant principal is a man of his word, if nothing else. He said he would talk until we reached $2,000, and that's exactly what he did.
Now a period lasts 50 minutes. What's he going to talk about nonstop for that long? Oh, there's things like the syllabus, the dress code, the rules, regulations, class attendance, tardies...things of that sort. I'm grimmacing on the inside (absolutely no way I can let on to my students just how peeved I am about this. As that erodes what control I still need to maintain), but hey, it's the rules. Harmless stuff, and nothing wrong with hearing them. But oh no, it didn't stop there. Then he started to sing. Happy and You Know It. The Hokey Pokey. I wanted to cry. Or laugh. Maybe both. Exactly HOW was this supposed to help our issues with classroom management that are so important to maintaining our goals? That's practically inviting chaos to rule. It is a sad day when I have to raise my voice to keep students in their seats when the assistant principal starts singing the Hokey Pokey. All while my professor is there.
So this had the effect of completely short-circuiting my lesson. I felt blindsided. I trembled at the thought of reading the evaluation from my professor later in the day. Are you kidding me? This is a grade-A disaster. I had to restrain a few of my students from throwing pencils at the intercom...as much as I wanted to join them. I headed off pleas to cut the feed and shut it down; trust me, if I knew how, I would. My only resort was to cut straight to the film, but even cranking the volume to full blast to drown him out did not help; if anything, it kick-started a competition, or a tug-of-war between the intercom and the television.
Stuff like this teaches you to count your blessings. Both my ED professor and mentor teacher's hearts went out to me. They knew I was in an impossible situation and had to try my best with what little I had to work with. I mean, what can you do when the office pulls a stunt like this without having the courtesy to at least TIP YOU OFF ahead of time so you can compensate? And come on...it's practically extorting money from the students. Punishing them by making them sit and listen to an adult which is exactly the kind of mindset I'm trying to CHANGE. But my teachers sympathized whole heartedly. Another blessing was that this happened during 1st period. A high-quality class. 3rd period would have escalated to terror alert red level after five minutes. And I can at least look back and laugh about it now. Which is always a good thing.
First off, my Dad was hospitalized before the week even got started. Late on Sunday night my Mom woke me with the news that he was having severe pains in his chest and she had called 911. Soon, our downstairs was abuzz with paramedics moving about and strapping my Dad in for an ambulance red-eye to the hospital. Boom. Just like that. My Mom followed them in her car and stayed at the hospital until about 5 AM, which is when she returned home for all of one hour of sleep. I stayed home with Baxter & Izzy. I was worried sick, as you can imagine, and afraid I'd never be able to sleep, so I was surprised when I nodded off without too much trouble.
It's been nearly four days, and my Dad's still in a hospital room. The doctors have run an EKG, heart cathaterization, and ultrasound to rule out the chances of a heart attack. Hearing that Tuesday night didn't exactly make me feel better. I wanted to know what the problem was, not what it wasn't. The lack of concrete answers was kind of frustrating, but that's the way it goes with hospitals. It took them until today to figure out that my Dad's gall bladder wasn't working properly. At all. So now we finally have some answers. The only thing left to determine is whether we can get a surgical procedure arranged while my Dad's hospitalized, or if we should wait for an outpatient appointment at a later date. I prefer to go ahead and get it done now if at all possible, for fear of what might happen if Dad left the hospital. What if the pain struck again, more serious, and really put his life in jeopardy? But again, you know how it is with hospitals. Reliable scheduling isn't one of their strong points.
All of that has kind of put the rest of my family on edge. None of us have operated at our best, and I hate sounding like I'm making excuses when I have to explain the family situation. My Mom has spent two nights at the hospital, even though I tried to talk her into trading places on Tuesday night and letting me stay. Baxter kind of had a panic attack Monday when he heard Dad's voice on the answering machine. Guess he was a little groggy and drugged up at the time. As for me, I'm still in survival mode with teaching, so any diversions are more of an issue than normal because when my performance suffers, my students pay the price. And I don't want that to happen.
But...this morning...sigh...
I had an observation scheduled for 1st period this morning. On paper, it wouldn't be too strenuous. Just reviewing vocabulary worksheets (okay, not our favorite thing to do in class) and then starting the film on A Raisin in the Sun. Shame on me for thinking anything could be that easy. We have Spirit Week going on at MHS, and a major hallmark of that is our rivalry with Hillcrest High for money being donated to charities. Always a great cause, right? Well, it depends on how you execute it...
We're less than a minute into the period. I've gone over the first few vocab words when the intercom buzzes. Somebody in the administration had the bright idea that a sure-fire way to get more students to donate money would be to place the assistant principal on the intercom. And let him talk. And talk. And keep talking until we got $2,000. What does this mean? It means while I'm trying to explain the differences in print and non-print media with the Raisin film and the play, the principal is on the mike booming into the classroom and making it practically impossible for a soul to hear me. I had no idea this was coming. Not one warning. At first, I did not take it seriously. Oh, it's just an empty threat. No way he'll talk past five or ten minutes at MOST. But alas, the assistant principal is a man of his word, if nothing else. He said he would talk until we reached $2,000, and that's exactly what he did.
Now a period lasts 50 minutes. What's he going to talk about nonstop for that long? Oh, there's things like the syllabus, the dress code, the rules, regulations, class attendance, tardies...things of that sort. I'm grimmacing on the inside (absolutely no way I can let on to my students just how peeved I am about this. As that erodes what control I still need to maintain), but hey, it's the rules. Harmless stuff, and nothing wrong with hearing them. But oh no, it didn't stop there. Then he started to sing. Happy and You Know It. The Hokey Pokey. I wanted to cry. Or laugh. Maybe both. Exactly HOW was this supposed to help our issues with classroom management that are so important to maintaining our goals? That's practically inviting chaos to rule. It is a sad day when I have to raise my voice to keep students in their seats when the assistant principal starts singing the Hokey Pokey. All while my professor is there.
So this had the effect of completely short-circuiting my lesson. I felt blindsided. I trembled at the thought of reading the evaluation from my professor later in the day. Are you kidding me? This is a grade-A disaster. I had to restrain a few of my students from throwing pencils at the intercom...as much as I wanted to join them. I headed off pleas to cut the feed and shut it down; trust me, if I knew how, I would. My only resort was to cut straight to the film, but even cranking the volume to full blast to drown him out did not help; if anything, it kick-started a competition, or a tug-of-war between the intercom and the television.
Stuff like this teaches you to count your blessings. Both my ED professor and mentor teacher's hearts went out to me. They knew I was in an impossible situation and had to try my best with what little I had to work with. I mean, what can you do when the office pulls a stunt like this without having the courtesy to at least TIP YOU OFF ahead of time so you can compensate? And come on...it's practically extorting money from the students. Punishing them by making them sit and listen to an adult which is exactly the kind of mindset I'm trying to CHANGE. But my teachers sympathized whole heartedly. Another blessing was that this happened during 1st period. A high-quality class. 3rd period would have escalated to terror alert red level after five minutes. And I can at least look back and laugh about it now. Which is always a good thing.
posted by david @ 3:31 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home