Disappointments. Today was full of them. I’m usually not one to let issues marinate and linger for longer than they need to but today is different. I started my morning thinking that we were going to be holding our Equity meeting in spite of a conflicting meeting. That feel through because the presenters decided that it was in the best interest of staff not to hold the meeting and cause a conflict. Would this have caused conflict? Yes, of course. But equity is important. The conflicting meeting is not a necessary event for people to attend. It is important, don’t get me wrong. But how can we say that we care about the issues when we drop the meeting when something else comes up? I’m trying really hard here to remain optimistic. However, we haven’t held a district meeting in months. It feels like the organization is on it’s last leg. 

Another disappointment is that several of the students I work with are being dropped from classes due to attendance issues. I’m not upset by the policy because I completely understand why we have it. What I’m upset about is the tone of emails going back and forth, the lack of understanding and knowledge of student background, and the general disregard each student has while at school. My biggest disappointment there is that we are a part of the cause of the general disregard. Most people are not tracking these kids until something goes wrong. It’s defeating. It’s another reason I’m not happy about canceling the SEED meeting. 

On the same topic, I tracked down some students who were sitting in the hallway wasting time. I have connected with them on several occasions, but today I was much more direct. It seems that they have already been dropped from their classes and are supposed to be in what they think is detention. While it’s not detention, I can see why they think it is. This is infuriating that our policy not only drops students from classes (again, I totally understand why) but then moves on to making them sit with other students who are in detention. This is something I will need to address with whomever is the person setting the policy. 

However, as with any day, I did not walk away empty handed of positive experiences and knowledge gained. I got to draw a train as an analogy for the three delegated powers of the U.S. Constitution, which looked awesome by the way. I also realized that there is a different way that I can teach writing cohesion. I am noticing a theme when writing narratives that I didn’t quite catch before. I think it’s because I am asking myself questions while writing. There is some movement between the macro topic of the paper and the micro sentence level information. For example, how do I know when it’s okay to transition into a tangent to give more details about a specific aspect of a subtopic? This is a difficult thing to process and explain but thinking about the problem in this light is leading me to think of ways that it might be taught better. I still haven’t fully solved it, but I think I’m getting close. I am getting closer to being able to tell students why their sentences do or do not match or should be moved. Maybe narratives are not the place to start with this. Maybe it would have been easier with fact based information. Either way, It feels pretty good to be getting this close to having an answer.