Well this has been a very weird and hard week for me. Harder than most weeks anyway. I about two weeks things will start to settle down a little but right now it is early mornings and late nights as the Master Schedule changes happen to balance classes and yes, you read that correctly. There are still changes to the master schedule and there will be / can be until the 25th day of school. Now, let me explain this. California is a Teacher Union state. Remember that South Carolina is not so the Union is new to me. While I am not part of the Union because I am considered a Manager, I have to be careful of the Union contract which by the way is different in each district in CA.
Teachers in Riverside are only suppose to have 36 students in their classes. Now, remember that not all classes most likely have 35 or 36, there are some classes which are smaller but we are only funded on a 30:1 student:teacher ratio and therefore we should have plenty of space….EXCEPT, we have added over 100 students in the last few weeks. This is good because the district has given us additional sections to address our extra students. Now, this would be great but we have some teachers who are on release periods because of district requests, or programs we have at school so therefore they do not have classes on certain periods. We also have a odd situation were almost 30% of our students take more than 6 classes. Most of our students on a 7 or more period day is because either 1) they are trying to boost their GPA or 2) they messed up their freshman or sophomore year and therefore they are trying to fit in as many classes as they can to be able to graduate. This creates another problem in itself because we have a lot of period 0 classes which happens before the "normal" school day or 7th period which is "after" the normal school day. In addition, we have some classes that should be full not full like our PE classes which can have 52 students in them or band classes which can have unlimited students, within reason of course.
Here is the issue; the Union contact for Riverside Unified School District for High School says teachers are only suppose to have 36 students in their class and only reach 175 in a day over the 5 courses they teach. So if you do the math, 36x5 = 180, which is 5 students over so you really have to think of it as 35 students per class. This past week was about balancing classes and making hard decisions. Do you have any idea how terrible it feels to realize you have to force students out of a class because it is over 36? Now teachers can sign a wavier saying they will take students over the 36. I get that as teachers you would not want to sign waivers for 5 kids in each class because that is actually another class but when it is a class that only has one or two sections and a speciality class that is only a few over it is hard to take kids out knowing that you cannot put them anywhere else because there is not another class. I totally get it if it is 6-10 kids over but for only 1-5 in this situation it is heart-wrenching. Students and parents don't understand and in some cases don't care so guidance counselors and administrators get beat up over it, which puts everyone in a no win situation. In South Carolina, we always called kids in before school started and had students make choices ahead of time as compared to balancing classes after school started. I am not looking forward to the "fall-out" that will happen over this starting Monday.
It has been so crazy around here that I have to say that I missed an appointment on Friday that I had after school. I got the times wrong…..and it was on my calendar. …… Okay, so that should tell you how crazy it has been and how stressed I have been lately. I really do need a great massage and some stress relief. Jessica and I decided to try to relieve stress by visiting Disneyland. We had a great dinner at the UVA bar on Saturday night.
While it was a fun trip it was over a busy weekend so we did not leave until Saturday afternoon around 2:00 pm and we got back on Sunday around 1:30 pm. While we had a lot of fun, it was a short trip and I am still tired. Of course I have tried to take a break from looking at emails and doing work but today, Sunday, there has been several emails going back and forth about school situations and balancing questions so it is constantly on my mind and I am having a hard time letting it go…. so two more weeks and maybe this will pass…….
So, not sure what my next adventure will be. The next few weeks are a bit fully with the Homecoming Dance next Saturday night, a doctor's appointment the next Saturday and then we have hit October already….. Wow, where has the time gone. I miss hiking and my slow Saturday mornings with breakfast and relaxing. I think I need to get back to that soon for my own piece of mind. I have started teaching Zumba at North and have done two classes. There has been a really good turnout and it has been fun. Here is a picture of one of the kids of one of the teachers that attends, the young lady was excited that we were wearing the same colors. This is actually a much needed outlet for me and I had forgotten how much I love teaching Zumba.
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| Lily and I after Zumba |
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