The Office Staff

Preface: I love our head secretary. She's helpful, sweet, good-natured, hard working, and rare.

She was out recently, however, so the only office staff that we officially had was a woman who is her antithesis, someone who's been known to make out with her boyfriend in the hallway, and student aids.

One day, a teacher discovered that two students, one of whom had been busted with pot recently, were the only people in the office. There was no principal, no vice principal, no counselor, no attendance clerk, and no receptionist. No. One. Just these two girls. And the one girl should have been suspended. Instead, she's left to hang out in the office. They had been left alone in there for at least fifteen minutes. Personnel files. Phone access. Computer access. Confiscated items...

Plus, we do not have a list of teachers' extensions, so if we need a particular staff member, we have to rely on the office to connect us to them. Calling the office is nearly impossible. The phones automatically pick up when we call, and we have to stand there and sing into the phone, hoping someone notices that we're on the line. A great thing to have to do in the case of an emergency, don't you think?

Safety Issues

Impassable Hallways

I wrote the other day that we managed to get through the first two weeks of school with closed off hallways "unscathed." But I can't say that with assurance. In fact, it's much more likely that fights, injuries, abuses, and bullying did happen outside as students passed from class to class quite often and without ever being reported.

Larger kids with more violent dispositions were spotted sitting outside, watching other kids go by. Some of these kids don't play sports or do their school work. They come to school to see their friends, maybe eat a meal or two, and in some cases, to buy and sell drugs. So the last thing that our school should ever have done was to have opened its doors to students while starting construction in our hallways that would further limit our ability to monitor dangerous behavior.

Teachers on Duty

Yesterday, while standing out on duty, it occurred to me yet again that I (all 5'4" of me) was standing alone with over half the school, the only teacher supervising the courtyard, the basketball court, and the bus area. There are many students who are quite a bit larger and stronger than I am. I have no radio, no way of alerting the office or any other staff members if there were an emergency and I needed help. We have had at least four fights so far this year, and when and if one happens in the morning, chances are strong that a teacher could get hurt.

Is it common that teachers have to pull duty at school? I don't think so. The teachers I student taught with in NY didn't have duty. If they did, they were paid extra for it. Instead, since we are under-staffed, we have too few teachers stretched too thin, placed into potentially violent situations.

Challenged

Please read the following and tell me, if you're a teacher, to shut up and deal. I am dealing, but I also spend half of my time cringing and the other half of my time laughing at the current situation.

There's little laughing, however, unless it's a sardonic sort of laugh. In the next few days or weeks, I will be writing about individual inadequacies in the school and how these disrupt the mission of our school: to provide a safe, student-centered learning environment.

Currently, our school lacks:

a librarian
a full time tech specialist
a part-time tech specialist
computers that we can save our work onto
computer labs
an alternative school program
in-house suspension
after school detention
enough subs
buses that show up on time
a regulated bus plan
a full office staff
a truancy officer
adequate security
camera surveillance
internet access for students
e-mail


Up until yesterday (the start of the 4th week) I could not:

print
take attendance on the computer
put my grades into the computer

Teachers are responsible for:
duty (morning, lunch, and afternoon at least once a week)
enforcing the dress code
enforcing the no cell phone policy
enforcing the no I-pod or electronics policy
enforcing the no gum policy
enforcing the no candy or snacks policy
enforcing the no liquids policy
generating no-credit lists
curriculum maps
team teaching
correct attendance
meeting standards
meeting AYP (annual yearly progress)
meeting AIMS (Arizona Instrument for Measuring Standards)

Canyon Day Junior High Year 2

Back to school, and it's been a whirlwind so far. A third of the staff was cut or moved on, including our special ed. teacher. So we have only one special ed. teacher. We also lost our alternative school teacher temporarily, so there currently is no alternative school or in-school suspension. I didn't like the idea of alternative school at first, but when there is one student in class who disrupts the learning of everyone else in the room, as well as threatens the sense of safety, alternative school is the place for that student. This year, due to increased class sizes and extremely spirited students, some teachers have several menacing and disruptive students in one class. My friend and co-worker today was telling me how a kid was pretending to hit him and swung a chair in his face, and all he could do was calmly tell him to set the chair down.

His quote: "I realized that I'm now in a position where I feel comfortable with the fact that I have several students who could harm me." It's now a day-to-day thing. And it's not just about size; it's the knowledge that one or some or all of these kids might snap, any day.

Safety feels like a huge issue this year. We've already had at least three fights in the past three weeks. And school opened with one of our hallways closed, so the kids had to walk around outside the building. It was ridiculous, because there was no way to see or protect all of the students while they were walking outside from one class to another. Fortunately, we passed through that phase unscathed, but the fact that we started school with a closed hallway shows how administration seems rather clueless about serious safety concerns that exist in our school.

But along with the fights and the discipline issues comes an increased energy in the classroom. The kids seem more vivacious: they ask questions, answer questions, volunteer for projects, dance at the dances, cheer and scream at the pep rallies. And throw eggs: the 8th graders threw eggs at the 7th graders at the pep rally that we just had. We teachers shake our heads, grimace, grind our teeth, shudder and then chuckle.

This is going to be one hell of a year!