The job is good
Well so far the new job has been great. It is really good to be back in a school and working with kids. I do wish that I was teaching. I just finished 13 truancy letter for the elementary kids (5th and 6th graders) warning their parents that they are missing to many classes that are unexcused. If the problem continues they will have to go to court and be court ordered to be in school. 13 students is more than 10% of the elementary kids here. What are kids that young doing skipping school. Where are they going? There is nothing here in town to do. It just blows my mind. At least these letters will, at least hopefully, have an impact and get their butts to school. Some of the middle schoolers and high schoolers could care less and skip anyway. They find out real soon the judge doesn’t mess around after they meet with her will get picked up if they skip again. It doesn’t last to long after that before they start to take it a little more serious.
I’ve started to see more and more kids as the days go by. I have a group of kids that come in usually a couple times a week for some math tutoring. I have a group of kids that come in after they are done eating to sit and chat and draw on my white board. I’ve started meeting with another group that wants to be peace agents, anti-bullying. We are trying to get across to them that if they are going to be apart of it they can’t say mean things to other students though. It’s hard for 5th and 6th graders to understand that. A few kids come in to help boost their self esteem and a brother and sister come to talk about the grieving process of losing their grandma.
So I get a wide range of students who I help with some more serious problems to just needing some math help. I’ve also started going into the gym before school starts. The younger kids like to go in there and play football and basketball in the morning. I am there to watch and join in every once in a while.
I am also on the student assessment team, we get students referred to us by teachers that might have social and/or academic problems. We do some interventions to see if something can be changed to help or additional help can be given to take care of the problem (math tutoring group). If the problem goes away then that is good. If not then we probably have a bigger problem and then refer them to the psychologist to do some testing to see if they are in need of special education.
A variety of work but I am truly enjoying it. Also the temperature is warming. We have had rain all week, the snow is melting rapidly, but we have a lot of mud which sucks even more.
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