Month: February 2005

Well, I am feeling old. My son is now 30 and I got sick. They are not related, but they both happened at the same time. I finally went to find out why I was having headaches all the time. It seems that my blood pressure was very high. The doctor was surprised. So they did blood work on me and I am to return on the first. My blood work showed I have high triglycerides (whatever), it means I am getting old! It
also means that I must start eating well all the time. That’s really a bummer. I have always ate what I wanted all my life. I ate well, only when I wanted to.

Yesterday, we had a meeting of all the interventionists in the parish. Ms. Hardy, our supervisor, told us that we had scored very well. When she averaged the schools, we had had over 18% growth. We had to have 15%. The level that pulled us down was 3rd grade. That seems to be the norm. They did not start at the beginning like the Kindergarten and they had more growth to show. It is impossible to make them grow three years in one, but they even had a nice growth from the beginning.
Kindergarten was the highest growth. They are reading at a high level. It truly makes us feel good. Ms. Hardy says that she is not worried about the state any more, because they ask her what they need to tell others. We don’t want to get a swell head, but we are very proud. We should do even better next year, because all of us will be more familiar with what we are supposed to do. Henry was higher in the kindergarten group and second grade. The interventionist then toured our rooms. They were very jealous of the areas we had. BUT they, too, had the opportunity to
work here. Most people turn us down, because they think we have such a bad group. Well, it seems that our group is not as bad as they think. I do not feel sorry for them at all.

Well, that ought to shock my kids. But that was the way it felt. Our last visitor for the month of January came in and put every classroom teacher in shock. I was never so happier than when I realized “I am not a classroom teacher”!!!!!! He is the famous author who wrote our reading series. According to him he has been everywhere (including the middle east) with this series and he has many more places to go.
First thing, he came in and told them their rooms were not correct. They must rearrange them in the format set up in the book. He also told them they needed to move anything they did in math to the background and not let it overshadow their teaching of reading. And on and on…The interventionists listened in on every meeting. He repeated the same thing for each. The only group he was happy with was the second grade. The funniest thing was he said, ” my 25 years of reading research….” But when he repeated it with the next group he said, “my 30 years of reading research….” The other young interventionist caught this comment and was telling me that later and we both began laughing. The man actually aged while we had sat there. AMAZING. What really amazes me, is that he is much younger than I, but that means he could almost be my age. Needless to say, I was not impressed. Especially, when I heard that he repeated the same things to the other schools. It was as if he had come prepared to state these things and all that note taking was for show. He also never made a positive statement to any except the second grade teachers. I really wonder what our supervisor thought of the visit, because she sat through all of them at all the schools. She probably caught a lot of mistakes by the last visit. The teachers are already stressed, but to add this to them was not wise! As if you could actually “not leave a child behind”. So goes the ways in public school education. It changes yet stays the same.