Lockdown!

Lockdown is awful. It was disorganized, chaotic, and extremely challenging. And yet, it's worth it to know that the kids are even more miserable, and that they might learn from this.

I've realized just how important my routines are, once again. Change the routines, and it all goes to hell. The kids were a disaster. I feel like I spent the entire day shouting at them. And, of course, all the work I've done to take dominance over my classroom went away when the other teachers rearranged the tables in my room. Great. There goes the seating chart. On the bright side, the other classrooms have desks and better setups than mine. Also, the kids by the end of the day were especially rowdy.

To make my day more challenging, I had a meeting that got started at the exact moment my lunch period started, and ended just in time for me to get back to class. No missed class, all missed lunch. And the meeting was a challenge. A parent, a DCF case worker, the principal, the special ed teacher, the school psychologist, and I met to discuss a student with severe attendance problems. As in, since second grade (he's now in seventh, and did fifth grade twice) he's missed at least 35 days of school. For the last two years, he's missed at least 80 days of school. That's out of 180 total. The student's mother can't get him to go to school when he doesn't want to.

We suspect that he was bullied as a younger child, and began staying home, and got away with it, so he kept staying home. There are still bullies, so that's his excuse. When he was invited into the meeting, he shed a few tears and shrugged his shoulders a lot. The principal made it clear that she would get him into any other school he would rather go to. He shrugged. I started to think that he was manipulative-crying rather than repentant-crying. His mom was definitely crying for real, and it didn't help that everything had to be translated into Spanish for her. I need to learn that language.

I was let out of the meeting just in time to take my class back from lunch, but not in enough time to get my papers from my classroom. I also couldn't find a staff member to cover for me for a moment. Most of the class had to take an online standardized benchmark test, but I didn't have work for the others. I felt bad, but they sat and drew with markers. This lockdown thing is tough.

Two days until vacation. Tonight is trivia. And last night I cooked a delicious pasta with fresh chopped tomatoes and eggplant, and some chopped up turkey meatballs. And some garlic and olive oil, of course.