Posts Tagged ‘cahsee’
Our school’s activity director, an out-of-character middle management V.P. type if ever there was one, is in charge of senior activities during our state testing. Seniors are exempt from testing around here, as long as they’ve passed the CAHSEE.
He could have had a revolt on his hands, but he handled the senior class with admirable aplomb.
There’s been a schedule change, guys. We need you to show up at 7:45 a.m. instead of 8 a.m.
Cries of shock and defiance. Teachers around me had a hunch that this was just a ploy to make the late students show up on time, and it turned out to be correct. Our graduating seniors didn’t, as a whole, realize this, so our activity director went on with his fake-out.
Now, now, now. Do you want to make it 7:30 a.m.?
Some jokers respond in the affirmative.
Really, now? Why not make it 7:15 a.m.? Or 7 a.m.? Or 6:15 a.m.?
While the jokers kept at it, the protests from everyone else got louder and louder at each suggestion. Our director then almost took on the manner of a charismatic preacher.
But I’m not going to make you get here by 6:15 a.m., and I’ll tell you why. There’s a reason. I was falling asleep last night, and I was wondering out loud what time I should make you guys come on Thursday.
“We have so much to get done, and so much to do,” I said to myself. “Maybe I should tell them to show up at 6:15 a.m.”
Then I heard this voice down from Heaven. He said: “No.”
And that’s why we’re sticking with 7:45 a.m.
Students laughed, and were ready to move on. Because of his authority, and because he joked at the very end, students accepted that arrival time. I said aloud something about establishment of religion, and I think he heard. Into the microphone, he told the students:
By the way, the voice I heard was Mr. Goldsmith’s.
Mr. Goldsmith is our principal.
My sophomores were fried after the four-hour morning block of CAHSEE testing. Some kept testing through lunch and into the middle of class.
My master teacher and I had mercy on them. He’s saving Schindler’s List for later, so I put in a 71-minute documentary on World War II and let them sleep if they wanted to. Of course, I also told them that if they were energetic enough to talk, then they were energetic enough to take notes.
That approach keeps them mostly quiet.
The movie-film ended with about 20 minutes of class to go, and so I let them have a little bit of chill time. My university supervisor would have called it “dead time.” Ugh.
My master teacher was quite a bit savvier. He busted out some classic riddles and mind puzzles.
You throw away my outside, and then you cook my inside. Then, you eat my outside and then throw away my inside. What am I?
I had forgotten this one, but my students got it right. He kept it going until they thought of the answer, and he didn’t accept “I give up.”
You have a 3-gallon container and a 5-gallon container. You have an unlimited supply of water, and you need exactly 4 gallons of it. How do you get it?
He closed with an easier one.
As I dry, I am damper. What am I?
Compared to the other two, this was a piece of cake. Not that cake is the correct answer.
Moral of the story? Never accept “I give up.”
He must have missed the Super Bowl. Belichick’s team lost.
For background, the superintendent of Grand Rapids would have all his teachers reapply for their jobs. From the original article:
High school teachers will have to reapply for their posts under a plan to boost school performance, one of a series of reforms planned for the Grand Rapids Public Schools.
Beefed-up security, a truancy crackdown and reaching out to the suburbs also are topics Superintendent Bernard Taylor plans to reveal this weekend in a “State of the Schools” address that mixes celebration and straight talk about challenges facing the city schools.
The plans — which include giving principals more of a say in their building’s staffing — could further raise the rancor with leaders of the teachers union, who said they weren’t told about Taylor’s intentions.
The union president, naturally, rankles with rancor that the super would have principals select teachers “like a football draft.”
I think selecting teachers like a football draft would be pretty fun, myself. I wouldn’t mind the salary incentives or the ludicrous signing bonuses. I’d teach six preps of anything at a continuation school — mixed freshman P.E. and CAHSEE intervention included — if I had a 5-year, $40 million contract to back me up.
Wishful thinking, much?
Anyway, the idea is clearly manifest of the standard get-those-teachers-accountable approach. Would it work, or would this maneuver only serve to undercut the credibility of the new guy in charge while sowing the seeds of insurrection among his subordinates?
I’m thinking the latter.
