Well, it occurred to me this week that I have been here about 6 months. I really do love it and am having a great time with my job. Yes, I do miss my friends in SC and some of the things that I did but I love this new adventure and always learning. And let me tell you….this has been a learning week. One of the other assistant principals is out of town. His daughter got married and family from all over the world was coming in so he took some time off. It has been crazy because I have taken his discipline along with my own for the most part and it has been hard to get anything done but discipline. I thank Trevor for splitting it all up between Megan, Rich and I after this week but I also feel for my friends like Victor who do nothing but discipline all day. So on Monday I decided to knock out as much as I possibly could, which resulted in meeting with kids all morning on Monday. On top of that, it was so busy with everything going on that I did not get the 25 students I needed to into SSR (Supervised Study Room) / ISS. Oops!! My secretary is out on maternity leave and Ms. Sonia is filling in for her but Jaque does so much without me asking / remembering or that I just plain don't know about that she makes my life easier. Needless to say, Sonia and I have been laughing all week at the craziness of the week and what we are figuring out together. So, I got through the majority of the referrals from the previous week and then low and behold guess what I found, more referrals!!! A lot of them were electronic violations. Now, electronics violations are not hard to do, the kids used their phones or something incorrectly. It just takes a little time to go through the paperwork and get the items done. So I decided Tuesday was going to be assembly line electronics violations. Hee Hee Hee!!! Monday afternoon was our dress code committee meeting, which went very well. There were a few suggestions and some changes but overall it went well and there was no major issues with the teachers. Now we are presenting this to some of the student groups for their feedback and we will move forward from there. I am a little nervous about this part of the process. It is a fair policy with clear cut guidelines but when you go from nothing to something I know the kids are going to feel suppressed. Honestly, we just want them to cover their underwear, not have anything hanging out, and watch the vulgarity, nudity and profanity on the shirts as well as the drug references.
Monday night I made it to the gym after work. I walked with Megan at the track and then at Gold's on the treadmill. I have gained some weight due to the lack of teaching 3-4 Zumba classes a week and my erratic schedule. On top of that, my diet has been awful. I have got to stop eating the chocolate and chips that is laying around the school for us and make better choices. I did really well at the beginning of the week with my apple slices and food choices but at the end of the week it got nutty!
Tuesday
Well today I picked up bagels for the campus supervisors who we met with on Tuesday morning to remind them to be in their areas and double check their lunch schedules and time. This is something that Rich does but that I picked up while he was gone and it has been interesting working with these seven adults to get coverage for events and try and make sure that everyone is where they are suppose to be when they are here as well as if we have coverage for them when they are gone. We have had a couple out this week for various reasons and therefore we have to move people around due to supervision in the locker rooms as well. It has not been hard, just something else to consider. :)
So today was mass electronic violation day. I put up a sign with three Saturday schools they could choose from, sent out all 46 violations and went to the Multi-Purpose Room to wait for the little darlings to show up. They started trickling in and I explained what was going on and they could choose one of the three dates, fill out the paper completely, sign and date it and then to read and sign the rules. I signed the forms, stapled them together and sent them back to class. It went well and I think I counted 32 of them out of the 46. The others I recognize as kids who are absent a lot, don't come when asked or I am hoping they got lost along the way. Needless to say, I kept Sonia busy with paperwork today.
I can tell teachers are having difficulty with their classes and we are in the tired stretch. This is that stretch where the only thing now to look forward to is Spring Break. However, from now until April there are no holidays or breaks since we just got out of January with Christmas and MLK day. This is the time of the year where you look for a conference to go to so that you have some kind of break from the kids and the kids from the teacher. I am getting more referrals for things like, will not sit in his seat, will not do work, will not do…, refuses to ….. and the kids are tired and comfortable with the teachers. They are starting to drop some inappropriate language with them and talk with the teachers too casually as well as with one another and it is beginning to cause some problems. I had a stream of students in and out of my office today with a variety of issues and wouldn't you know, they never do anything and it is always the teachers fault. LOL!!! It is interesting to see their perception of what they do verses the teachers perception.
Tuesday afternoon was our Response To Intervention (RtI) / Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS) meeting to get ready for next week. We met and decided what we what to plan for so that we could create a strategic plan for moving forward. I will not be at the district meeting and am trying to get everything put together for the team so they can work and make progress with the intervention plan. Tuesday evening I spent some "me" time at the Karen Allen Salon trying to relax a bit and taking a break from the craziness!
Wednesday
Today I met my new dentist. I was suppose to have a dentist appointment in January and realized that I obviously had to find a dentist here in CA. Since insurance is so different out here I had to pick one from a list. I went with a dentist that is near school since the office is usually not open on Saturdays so it is easier for me to go before school or after school when it is close by. My dentists is a nice guy and his favorite color is yellow as well. The hygienist was very nice and had a gentle touch but she was not Megan, who was my hygienist in SC. The really cool thing is they do their x-rays digitally so they took 18 photos fairly quickly and I got to see them as well. Pretty cool.
Today was a pretty busy day. Lots of students needed attention. I also got to meet with the Promethean Board guy about our Active Votes and to take a look at some of our boards and find out what year they are. We actually have about 5 different types of boards in the school and each one has a little something different about them and will only work with certain things. While I get they were bought at different times, it is irritating the materials (Activotes) don't work with all of them. UGH!!!! On top of that, the representative and I got started talking about projectors that have a replacement bulb cycle so schools are not paying for extra bulbs at the tune of $400 each when they go out. You can never know how many you will need each year and we have so many different projectors that we do not order and warehouse the bulbs so we end up with teachers who do not have a LCD projector until the bulb comes in. This other type of projector would allow us to keep a bulb or two on hand because the company has a lifetime replacement cycle.
Wednesday evening I had the honor of supervising the Choir Concert. It was fantastic to see the kids sing. What I really like about these performances is the kids sing as a group but then there are individual performances from students and the performance ends with the groups singing again. It is really nice to see the kids sing items they are interested in. The concert ended at 9:20 and I got home at 10:15 after I waited for a number of the students to leave. Getting home so late this week is causing me to have a bad attitude at times and to get ready to snap at students without thinking. Ugh!! I need to get some sleep. Squeak kept talking to me the entire night and let me tell you she can talk and keep you up. I love her but she was getting on my nerves since I really needed to go to bed.
Thursday
The rain has started! While this is not a big thing for me it seems to be for a lot of other people in CA. It really does not rain here and therefore people get very worried when there is talk of rain. The schools were canceling events this week and there seemed to be less cars on the road. We also had a number of students miss school as well. I mean, really, it is just some water. However, I did notice the roads are not set up to drain as well as they are in the Southeast - because they don't get rain that often.
We did another assembly line electronics violation discipline line today. Letting the kids determine which day they want and filling out the paperwork seems to be a great way to handle these since we have so many at this point and have worked with the students so much in the fall when we first started school. It is our repeat offenders and they always want to tell me their mom was calling, or they were just checking the time but not using it. But the teachers get to set up their own policy for electronics so we have to follow our consequences.
Thursday night I went to the ASCA for the Women's Leadership Symposium. It was fun and great to touch base with some different people and see some that I met back in October. Megan, Dee and I went together so it was nice to be there with others and I met some really cool people. Very excited and looking forward to keeping in touch with them and seeing them again soon. However, it was another late night for me and therefore I knew that Friday was going to be hard.
Friday
Meeting at 7:30 am at Child Registration Services, Admin Meeting when I walk back on campus, three kids sent out of class for me to work with, and lunch duty. Not a single chance to sit down. At lunch a Hooka Pen with all three boys providing information but trying to get out of trouble. Then a Fireworks ring with 7 students who are all trying to stay out of trouble. These lovely students put some fireworks in the bathroom, in an apple and threw it and also in a bottle and put it in the trashcan, therefore causing it to smoke. The problem is all these individuals could have caused a major injury to any student and damage to the school. There was a lot of interviewing that happened, a lot of written statements and a lot of questions asked. Basically a student brought them on campus and began to hand them out to a variety of people who then set them off and were busted. Ugh!!! They don't seem to understand the damage that could have occurred to themselves or anyone else. We had to take home one of the students because his dad would not answer the phone. After this visit we were on our way back to the school but we had to do a Starbucks run in hopes to get something to keep us up for the basketball playoff game.
The game did not start until 7:00 pm and we had sold 400 tickets, the opposing team sold 400 tickets and we only had 200 at the door. We rearranged the entire gym and what we had been doing with basketball to get more people in the gym. It was a completely packed madhouse and trust me, our gym is smaller than any other gym I have seen. It actually compares to a middle school gym in SC. Just kinds of surprising considering how good JW North is in Basketball, it seems that maybe there would be some additional bleachers that were added at some point. We have no-where on campus, not even the stadium that could fit all students for a presentation. The game was much closer than I like. It was tied at a variety of times during the game and was a nail-bitter. I am including some pictures here so you can see. It was much closer than these pictures reveal but here is some ideas.
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| Huskies Win!!! |
Saturday
I work up several times throughout the morning due to the fabulous rain. I love having the window open and listening to the rain. I had a wonderful morning. I got a lot of stress relieved and got some things done around the apartment. Laundry was started, clothes put away and some packing for the conference this week. I had to be at work at 12:00 today for Open House but when I got there it was still raining and all activities were moved into the gym and the theater. There was not a lot of people that came. One of the reasons is that so many of our students walk and the parents would walk but with the rain, I can see where they would not want to go outside. The event was fun and I loved seeing the performances. One of the songs performed back in November was done again. I love the song and the dance that goes with it. I have posted it below for this of you that would like to see it.
Leaving North, I ran a few errands in hopes to get things for this upcoming week. It has rained pretty much all evening which made running the errands a little unpleasant. Of course, when I get to the apartment, it decides to stop - always the way!!! I tried a new recipe tonight. Couscous stuffed peppers with mushrooms and pico. It was pretty good. Stuffed peppers are harder to eat than you think, they fall apart very easy since you have to cut them and all the stuffing comes out. :( They were still good and I am excited to find something new, even if I made up the recipe. :)
We really do have some talented students at North. This is from a performance in November but I love this song and the performance itself. The guy in this video wrote the song and performed it as well as had it choreographed. The kids are fantastic!!! I tried to embed the video here but if it does not work, you can see it on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXtu0gxAX7M&feature=share...
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