Duty Free Lunch? Don't Believe It!

Not for a minute.

I've explained before how we're supposed to have a 30 minute duty free lunch every day. Including rainy days. There is supposed to be one support staff member for each class who brings the kids into the classroom and watches them during lunch. Well, my person's only here some days, and when he's not... well, guess who's spending her lunch time watching kids. It' s certainly not an administrator! In fact, I can't even find an administrator to ask if there's someone to watch the kids! Besides, I already know the answer. There's not a staff member here (except administrator's) -who's not watching kids right now. Unless we decide to employ the gecko, I'm out of luck.

So, I'm blogging on my lunch hour - I've put a movie in for the kids to watch. I'm still supervising them, but at least only about 2/3 of them need me to be on top of them with a movie on. The other third are totally zoned out into the movie.

We are taking one of the assessments listed on my schedule this week (remember, this schedule doesn't include the three weekly tests that I am quickly phasing out (don't tell!) and guess what... we have another one next week. This one isn't from the state or the district, this is from one of our lovely administrators who somehow thinks we don't have enough tests already???? I am just absolutely baffled by this decision.

Apparently the math curriculum that this particular assessment refers tois really good, but we're not using it, so why are we taking its test? One of the other teachers asked exactly that. He said, "So.....will we be using this assessment to drive instruction?" The answer was no. He said, "So..... will we get a chance to be trained in this curriculum?" No again. "Will we get to teach this curriculum at all?" No, we're not using this math curriculum. He asked once more, "So, we're just giving the assessment, even though we're not using the curriculum and we don't know what the assessment will show us?" Yes. Moving on.

So, here we are, in the land of assessments, having a bit of a meltdown. It doesn't help that the flu is going around - it's hard to tell which kids actually feel sick and which ones feel sick because there are too many tests.

80 school days left, and I am taking a leave of absence next year. I will revisit that theme soon. Right now I'm going home to take a nap.

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Bronwyn Harris, Author

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