Weird Week!

What a crazy week it has been!! And it's only Wednesday. I'm a little scared to see what happens next! *wink*

Monday I was supposed to have surgery to deal with an issue I've been having a super hard time with the past couple of years. Unfortunately, the surgery was not successful so I'm back at square one. At some point while I was under, I bit my tongue really, really hard turning it black and blue and leaving huge owies on it. Not exactly fun when you need to talk and chew! 

I've had some summer school training meetings this week. I was excited to learn I will have 6th graders! I was very excited during our meetings today when I heard that we would have a built in SSR block so we can really get the kids reading since that is a huge issue we have--they just don't read. I got an updated copy of our schedule, which is supposed to be a co-teaching situation...and we aren't co-teaching. We have one course of materials to share and we're not teaching it together. Does that make sense to you? Me either.

It gets better. We have a huge block of time in between our first classes that I assumed would be the SSR time. Then I hear that the principal decided we would all read the same book during that time and that the books are WELL above the heads of these kids. Stop.Right.There.

SSR means they choose what they want to read! Not what we tell them to read. Oh I have all kinds of issues with this. No, no, no. All research shows that kids make progress in reading when they read what THEY want to read about. So I talked to our ELA curriculum coordinator. We go way back. My first class had her last class of kindergartners in it. So she knows me very well. I said that I would find out what the deal is tomorrow but that I absolutely will not participate in that. It is not appropriate and it's the exact opposite of what I have had drilled into my head for the last seven years that I have been in the district.

I am crossing my fingers that by the time I leave my meetings tomorrow I won't feel like I'm on a spinning wheel with no way to get off. I don't do disorganization very well and this kind of thing is the absolute worst. No one is perfect of course but this stuff should have been all planned out, given a green light by the curriculum people and THEN given to us. Sounds like some of the principals are just doing whatever they want. That's wrong. Summer school is for kids who didn't pass the first time around--we don't have time to waste having them read a book they could care less about for 40 minutes every day!