Teaching Cuts

Well, the recession has hit my little school. We, that being the minions who teach, know that our school board is anxious to reduce expenditures and we also know that salaries are the most cost assuming expenditure. Sooo, at a faculty meeting today our principal announced that next year there will be one full time teacher and two paraprofessionals (teacher's aides) fewer and the arts, library, and phys ed teachers will each lose a day per week. My math program will be reduced although my full-time status remains intact. I will continue to teach math but I don't know how many days per week and what other responsibilities I will assume.

I don't fault the school board. Well, yes I do but only a little. Our school board is very supportive but they are caught between a rock and a hard place. Our student enrollment has declined but our expenditures have continued to rise so now our cost per student is above the state limit and the state can levy a pretty steep penalty. The sad part is that our little school is very successful at meeting, no exceeding, the needs of our students mainly because our class sizes are small, our arts program is richly stimulating, our librarian is very tech savvy, we have support services in reading and math, and the school is considered the center of the community. And so it is crushing to know that student programs will suffer and three adults will be without income.

The part that really stinks though is that regardless of how hard we work, how much training we get, how much of our personal income we spend to enhance our instructional units, we still end up being victims of the budget process. I'm thankful I still have a job but I left school after the meeting and drove to a friend's house where I sipped a glass of sherry while we visited. Before I departed I stood outside a few minutes and gazed up into the star-studded night sky. I felt so very, very insignificant.

Geometry Success

Back at school as of yesterday. I'm a K-6 math specialist which means that I work with individual students who usually need remediation, small groups of students who may or may not need remediation, and whole classes in tandem with the classroom teachers. My schedule is packed everyday with a change of setting every half hour. I find that after 15 years of teaching sixth grade kids all day in the same room that this nomadic teaching suits the Gemini in me. I have a small room which can accommodate up to six older kids or 8 little ones. I like having my own space and I have plenty of cabinets to house books, binders, materials, and math manipulatives. I've brought in flowering and hanging plants and a faerie house that the kids like to watch for an unexpected faerie appearance.

I've been working with two special groups: sixth graders to whom I've been teaching geometry (perimeter and area) and fifth graders who have been studying fractions. The sixth grade group was formed for only several weeks to meet instructional requirements for a graduate course I am currently taking. Two small groups met with me once a week. These students had scored below the standard in geometry on standardized tests. Anyway, I decided to start with a simple polygon, specifically a quadrilateral, and graph paper. We delved first into perimeter which is an easy concept for children to grasp and then on to area. They counted square units before I introduced the formula A=bh. With their new found confidence, rapidly the students calculated the area of pretty complicated straight-edged, right angled figures. Next, we went on to the area of right triangles, and isosceles and equilateral triangles. They grasped the reasoning behind the formula A=1/2 bh and could easily solve numerous problems. They were so proud of themselves and rightly so! In fact, one day a male student poked his head around my door and asked if we were meeting later in the day. When I answered in the negative he asked if he could come in during recess; he said that he was really enjoying what we were doing in group and wanted to continue. For what more could a teacher ask?!

Another day I'll write about the fraction group and some about the excitement the fifth grade students have about algebra. Imagine that!

November's Lament

This is a poem I wrote in response to my brother-in-law's poem about October's delight.

November's Lament

I sit in my study

fretting about what has not been done

to button up for winter.

The gardens are helter skelter

with summer's remains and autumn's detritous

blown about and leaden wet.

The peony's tall stalks are bowed

weeping with the cold,

no longer beautiful.

The garlic and basil and tomatoes and peppers

have been harvested;

turned into simmering dinners

but the beets remain in ground,

awaiting the perfect recipe,

the autumn soup that will do the earthy flavor justice

and maintain the harvest's reddish purple

of its bulbous root.

The flower bed is dead,

nothing clipped in ready for the

deepening cold.

No new bulbs to surprise

the onlooker in spring.

It is November and all I can think about

is Thanksgiving

and scraping frost from the windshield

and shoveling the driveway.

11 November 2008

When my children visit

I am on break from teaching for several days. My two adult children have come home for the Thanksgiving holiday and for my daughter's 20th high school reunion.

She, being the more social of my two kids, is wildly excited and had she a tail it would be wagging constantly. She lives 3,000 miles away and is still in regular contact with a few of her girl friends. My husband and I remember her as always being very social, very personable with a wide circle of friends. We wanted her to be more academic but she was a junior before I realized that interacting with people is her gift. In fact, when I have difficulties with my own siblings or colleagues it is my daughter to whom I turn for counsel. She is a awesome cook, a fierce debater, and a comforting nurturer.

My son is the polar opposite. He's quiet, contemplative, artistic, and has a small circle of friends, a few of whom go back to high school days. I talk to him about books, movies, technology, history, politics, and art. He's a scholar like my husband. He lives about 700 miles away.

I adore my two children. They're both interesting, talented cooks who are loyal friends, siblings, and children. They shared an apartment in southern California for 1 1/2 years after my son graduated from college. Even though they're over a decade apart in age, they've become very close. Both are still single and seek one another's counsel when life gets tough.

I love having them both home at the same time. We work in the kitchen together preparing meals; I just cut, peel, and chop while they make all of the culinary decisions. We sit and talk about politics, life, loves, food, travel, friends, family, dogs. We take walks with the dog and watch movies. They each go off to visit friends or friends come to our house. It's always good to see their friends age and mature; to watch their lives fan out to include jobs, spouses, children, homes. I'm very fortunate.