A Missed Week . . .

OK, I know I've missed a week. No post last weekend. Almost made it a whole month. How about I do two posts today?? Well I'm doing it anyway, lol.

The last two weeks have been extremely stressful. Things at work have been pretty sucky. The first semester, I had a boy who felt like he was being picked on, and frankly, I should have taken it more seriously. His parents felt like it was in his best interest to remove him from our school. I am always thankful for parents who care about their children (trust me, many don't). I respect them a great deal for making a difficult decision to change schools at mid term, and he is doing great at his new school. His mother, however, felt the need to bring her grievances to the school board (which she has every right to do.) I was extremely disappointed in the school board's response to this issue. I feel like I need some real guidance on discipline - some criteria -- on what discipline to give and when to do it, etc. They basically told me they didn't approve of my discipline plan, but had no suggestions on how to change/improve it. Meeting was shelved until later in the week to address this issue. However, instead of addressing the issue I needed help with, they picked over my daily schedule and after 2+ hours decided that I was teaching subjects at the wrong times during the day, that my students had too much recess, and that I should only have 15 minutes each day for both planning and lunch. Which directly contradicts what they said in our meeting (that I should have 30 minutes for lunch AND 30 minutes planning each day). I guess they discovered what we had already told them. Three teachers cannot have this much time off AND have 2 teachers supervising students at recess and lunch. huh. Plus they didn't like that I had the children miss recess as a consequence for unacceptable behavior, yet later took away 30 minutes of recess daily from the entire class. wow. It's been a very frustrating time...rant complete.