First off, thank you to everyone for your messages of encouragement! Knowing there are people who believe in me, even when I don’t believe in myself, is a huge pick-me-up!
Since I last posted I spent a weekend at home for Thanksgiving, which was wonderful! It was so good to see Mom, Dad, Lauren, & Mima (and of course the animals too!) and have a few days to relax. I didn’t really want to come back, but these weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas have actually gone pretty well. I've been going to the same church I think I mentioned before, which I love, and I think that has helped my outlook a lot. And Zoey always keeps me on my toes!
I expected my students to be totally off the wall these couple of weeks between breaks, but for the most part they have been pretty well behaved and have stayed on task. They had their district interval assessment last week and the final exam (for the semester – I have these kids next semester too) next week, so there’s a lot on the line still. I told the kids who are failing that if they got an 80% on the district interval and an 80% on the final, I would pass them for the semester. It’s a pretty good deal for a couple kids I have who know the material and who are very smart, but are just too lazy to do any work. I’m not seeing a few of them work harder than I have all semester – it’s great!! I’ve also started a system to encourage good behavior by awarding points to each class at the end of each period in 5 categories – then on Friday I bake for the class with the most points. I’ve made a couple kinds of brownies, no-bake cookies (which none of them had ever heard of, is that a New England thing??) rice crispie treats and this week they are getting Mrs. Marston’s Famous Chocolate Chip Cookies.
I heard from A’s mom a week or so ago (my student who brought the gun to school) – she called to see if his teachers had any work he could do while he was suspended since he hadn’t started at the alternative school yet. I told her I would put some together and ask his other teachers as well (who were pretty unresponsive), and she commented that A told her to call me because I “would be nice.” Apparently he told her “Ms. Roedner is the only one you can talk to.” I was so happy to hear that I could cry, maybe in some little way I HAD reached him, and I told her how much I enjoy having him in class (even though he can be pretty disruptive) and can’t wait to have him back. He has to do 45 days in the alternative school then, because he is Special Ed, will come back to Higgins. She seemed surprised, but pleased, to hear that. Today the story unfolded further and I got a summons to Juvenile Court regarding his case. Unfortunately it’s being heard the day I fly back to New Orleans from Maine after Christmas, so the principal and one of the officers on campus were going to try and get me excused. But I would really like to go, I don’t know if A would wonder why I wasn’t there, but even if he didn’t I want him to have a friendly face there. So I’m going to see if there is a way I can change my flight without paying an arm and a leg.
On a lighter note, we had a lot of fun at school when the Patriots were down here playing the Saints. Of course the Saints are all anyone talks about here, people are SO excited and SO proud. My students know I am from New England, and a lot know that I am a Patriots fan, so on that Monday (they were on Monday Night Football) I wore my Brady jersey to school. And very quickly the entire school knew who I was. My principal came in during second period and “fired” me – the kids loved it. My assistant principal summoned me to her office during fourth period for violating the dress code, and the kids had fun with that too. It worked out really well though because they had a whole project to work on in class relating to the game (imagine a coordinate grid over the football field, every pass creates a line on the grid with a corresponding equation, solve a system of equations and see where/if the pass will be intercepted. We also compared statistics between the two teams and quarterbacks). It was a really fun day and the kids actually did a lot of math to “prove” the Saints were going to win. And then they did win! My assistant principal the next morning got on the announcements and said, “Before we say the pledge, we must all send our condolences to Ms. Roedner and her boyfriend Tom Brady. Unfortunately she picked a boyfriend from the wrong team.” Then there were easily a half dozen people who asked me if Tom Brady really was my boyfriend – I informed them that if he was, I wouldn’t care if he won or lost! Then during second period my assistant principal, the deans, and a handful of teachers came into my room with noisemakers, wearing all their Saints gear, and singing the “Who Dat?” cheer. My punishment was to wear a black and gold feather boa all day – any student who saw me without it was directed to go straight to the Principal. My kids had so much fun over those two days, and even though my team lost, I had a lot of fun too!
This week has been kind of strange, I’ve had a bad cold so I didn’t go to school on Monday. We’ve also had a huge amount of rain (over 11 inches) in the last week, so there has been lots of flooding, including this morning. There was about a foot and a half of water in the parking lot of my apartment complex (luckily NOT in my car) so I didn’t get into work until about 9. We had the same thing happen Saturday night, and both times there were all kinds of accidents, lots of flooding and road closures, and lots of people with flooded cars. It amazes me how fast it floods here, a heavy storm and roads can be impassable. We’ve had so much more rain than usual that the ground is saturated and the canals are high, so the flooding is happening even more. What’s neat though is once it stops raining, the pumps get the water out very quickly – all that water in the parking lot was gone in about half an hour after the rain stopped (the math teacher in me was thinking about how that was a cool problem for my kids to compare rates of change). It was a very quiet day at school, I only had about 1/3 of my students, but that’s about all I was feeling up for today, so it was ok.
Tomorrow we start final exam review in full force and hopefully get our district test scores back. The last interval test went pretty well (relatively speaking) – our District average was 53%, the school average was 57%, and I don’t remember my class average but my second period class got 74%!!!! I was astounded!! I made a big deal about that success this time around (and there is a nice Interval 2 World Champions sign in the class to remind everyone) so I am anxious to see the scores. I promise to post sooner this time and report on their interval test and final exam scores!
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