a meeting? how revolutionary of you to suggest

staff meeting at 8am today, held in my room, of course. last year i requested that staff meetings (and things like baby showers, surprise parties, and locks for love hair cutting events) not take place in my room due to the food-eating (and hair everywhere) nature of these types of events in the proximity to computers. logical to me, not so much to P.S.Q.

AP Scarecrow (if i only had a brain) stood watch at the door with a clipboard to see which poor saps would walk in 20 seconds after the 8:00 gong, and be faced with a letter in their file. terrifying.

it opened with PSQ discussing role models, and finding the professional you admire and making every effort you can to see and model your life after that person. charlie manson came to mind, briefly, but i knew that if i ever requested to attend a PD with any of the ed tech specialists i look up to, i'd be denied.

after the meeting, which included a gruff "AM extended day is NOT working and everyone may need to work PM" even though the numbers are equally as abysmal as the PM extended day, and we have an SBO vote that gives us the option to choose AM or PM, i was approached by AP Scarecrow and told it would be in our best interest to meet at lunch with PSQ to discuss my extended day role.

have i explained the debacle that has been my extended day role? i was told i would not have a roster of kids because i would spend the 40 minutes 4 days a week doing repairs around the building and training teachers. then i was told the lab needs to stay open, so i kept it open and tried to do both repairs and have an open lab. then the progress report debacle, which has been a complete failure since i haven't stood at the helm this year, and now the meeting.

preps periods 1 and 2 afforded me the opportunity to make a spreadsheet with all of the tech repairs i've done all year, which totalled 5 pages of requests. i gathered the sheet that listed all staff assigned extended day duties, which excluded my name, and the email exchange AP Scarecrow and i have had. i taught periods 3 and 4, and by the beginning of 5 was starting to panic.

UFT boy had said the only thing they have on me is possible insuboridnation. (only!?) because i did not begin doing my extended day in the afternoons this week as the email from scarecrow had requested, but continued on in the morning. he said grievance is a last resort, but certainly an option if necessary. we'd see what they were putting on the table first.

i hadn't eaten all morning, was too nervous. went into the meeting carrying my folder of files, heart pounding hard. scarecrow had a large binder, and PSQ mumbled something about closing her door for this meeting, and did so with a fell swoosh.

scarecrow started babbling about extended day not having as high a turnout as hoped. of course not. teachers don't want to spend an additonal 150 minutes a week doing test prep, and neither do low-performing kids. there's no chancellor mandate or consequence for non-attendance, so kids don't show. whose job it is to call parents on this is very unclear. why we don't offer exciting morning programs like dance, tech, drama, freakin comic book writing, music, and sports is beyond me.

uft boy wanted to know what the morning % was compared to the afternoon. scarecrow flipped through this huge binder but didn't turn up any relevant data on the subject. only photocopies of my hand written rosters of students who'd signed into the lab during my extended day mornings, and copies of the post its containing tech requests. photocopies - really.

psq said the extended day time is to be used for improving learning, meeting our learners' needs, and instruction, not tech support. if kids were not coming to tech in the am, they would come in the pm. um.... i don't have a roster. kids have never been told to come in the first place. all this will be changing though.

the meeting ended with scarecrow saying that for monday i'd have a roster of students to do ELA work with. (i'm so not an ELA teacher, but i'll find a way) and with me setting the expectation that 12 minutes of AM homeroom and 5 minutes of PM would not be sufficient time to provide adequate tech support to the school and that staff should be made clear on the new timing expectations and should feel free to contact central helpdesk if they don't want to wait for my visit. scarecrow agreed staff should receive communication. psq agreed. scarecrow asked me how i would communicate. i said i could send a memo, or email, or discuss on an as-need basis, whatever is preferred by administration. scarecrow agreed. psq looked out the window, bored, chewing on a hangnail or something. nothing was solidified regarding the best communication method.

the phone rang, psq got up, scarecrow did too, and so did uft boy, so i followed suit and made for the door. uft boy is willing to take this to grievance level if need be, as am i, but i'd prefer not to have to stand alone. luckily there are a few other teachers catching some flack for low attendance during AM extended day. interestingly they are 8th grade teachers. i wonder if 8th graders just don't want to attend extended day. maybe someone ought to ask them. the people whose extended day classes fail to show up in PM ext day don't suffer any repercurssion. that's likely b/c PSQ books out the door at 3pm sharp and isn't aware.


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And my head I'd be scratchin' while
my thoughts were busy hatchin'
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