This morning The Principal sent an email to the whole staff to notify us that there won’t be after school activities on the 16th because the local police are going to be in the building to do an Alice training presentation/demo for the administrators. I promptly wrote back to ask why they’re planning to do that, given that there’s little evidence that Alice training works and lots of evidence that it’s needlessly traumatic. Clearly, I speak very candidly to my boss, and, lucky for me, he actually appreciates it.
He came to my classroom later in the day to give me a chance to say more, answer my questions, and share his point of view. He assured me that any training will be coming from the local police- no paid consultants making money off of the nation’s inability to deal with the issue of gun violence- and that it won’t involve the student body. I asked if it would involve the staff, and reminded him that we went through a lockdown the year before he got here, and that realistic training for another one could be triggering. He acknowledged that point- and also that this year’s hard enough without adding on any more trauma- and he’s taking it into consideration going forward. I promised I’m not going to be a total problem child about this since, ultimately, it’s his call, not mine. But I was glad he heard me out.
It’s a heavy topic to shake off before going and teaching, but I think I managed all right. I’m covering types of governments in World right now, so today I started with our own as an example of a presidential republic. I divided the class into two teams, and had them use the Constitution to find answers to various questions (ie, what are the qualifications to be President, how long are terms in the House and Senate, who chooses Supreme Court justices). The team that answered them the fastest won. It’s something different than what we normally do, so I figured it would be fun.
It went really well in my Block 2 class (everyone was engaged, we were discussing why the founding fathers made certain choices, lots of learning was happening), and pretty well in my Block 4 class (they actually had the best discussion, but I had a few students continually getting off task). It wasn’t bad in Block 1, but the teams were very chatty and distracted by one another, so I had to address that multiple times, and my teaching was choppy as a result. But, anyways, after we did that, they read an article about how parliamentary republics are different from presidential ones, we discussed it, and that took us right to the bell.
My APUSGOV students have a test tomorrow, so today was a review day. If someone came into the room during a test review, they’d see a lot of different things going on. I had some students writing in notebooks, some students on chromebooks, some just listening, some with their cell phones out to record (audio only).... I let them do whatever worked for them, and once they were out of questions for me, we did some practice MCQs together. They realized halfway through that I’d purposefully scheduled the test for the day before they have a day off- do the hard thing, take a break- and they were like, “Those are some serious planning skills, Miss M!”
I wish I could say all of my students were that grateful, but the one I mentioned yesterday is pretty pissed off that I gave Mrs. F permission to withdraw her from my class. She interpreted that as me wanting to kick her out, which isn’t what I want, really; I just want her to be successful, and I haven’t been able to help her. She didn’t actually withdraw, though, since there wasn’t another course she wanted to enroll in, so now I have to try and figure out how to turn this around. I’m not sure if I can, but I’ll do my best...
The day ended with a faculty meeting. I admittedly didn’t devote my full attention to it because I had that student on my mind, and the conversation with The Principal, and a dozen other things. But I did learn that there are some cool things coming up, school-wide and/or district-wide, so stay tuned!
