Saturday, February 25, 2012

pushed

alternatively titled: my husband is the best.
Being a teacher means that i'm around a lot of kids. Being a teacher at HP means i'm around a lot of kids who happen to live in some crummy situations. I personally have heard some awful things out of the mouths of younger and older students. Usually my gut reaction is teaching them to the best of my ability so they can rise above poverty through education. I love on them at school and send them out the door with a prayer.
This year I met Z. He's in one of my math classes. Right before Christmas, he got placed in a DHS shelter with his two siblings. I've had a fair amout of students in and out of state custody over my 4 years of teaching. I never felt pushed to do anything out of the ordinary.
There was something about it that just kept pushing him on my mind. I couldn't help but feel there was something I needed to do. Over about a 2 month period I just couldn't shake it (I know call me stubborn)
I talked to Trevor about him a few times. (more like 20) My husband is a saint. He told me to do what I needed to do. He let me take all his paperwork to school to file a kinship on Z so we could check him out of the shelter. He delt with me as I made plans to take Z out bowling and dinner after school on Friday. He showed up to meet an 11 year old he didn't know to spend the evening with. He talked to him about video games, fishing, and shooting stuff. He bowled extra bad so he wouldn't beat me and Z by more than 100 pts. He let me spend our hard-earned, penny pitched, money on a 5th grader instead of the new computer he wants to build.
Yesterday at school, as I was double checking everything with the social worker, she told me she finally found a foster family that would take Z and his two siblings. Yesterday was his last day at school. I was so happy for him, and yet sad that he was leaving. I can't help but think if I had ignored all those PUSHES to do something one more week, next Monday would have came and Z would not have been there. How terrible I would have felt having not followed all those pushes.
I know I can't change the world, but I'm focusing on the one God puts in front of me, okay PUSHES me towards.

Friday, February 10, 2012

Substitutes suck.

okay not all substitutes...but 97%.

I'll even go that only 75% of them actually suck the big one. But combine that with the 22% of the time when students suck because of substitutes and you get a whopping 97.

It's hard, I get it. You don't know their names, and don't know how things work. But if you're going to come into a high poverity school you need to be able to hang.

The writing test is in 5 days.
Winter weather is forecast for the weekend.
Parent/Teacher conferences are this week and next.

It's just that time of year I guess. I hope my students had as much fun doing their Social Studies during recess and I did missing my plan time to help them.