The Week in Review

So in Middle school this year they are going to something called "standards based grading." So really if you are doing everything the teacher asks you to do you would be at a "B" not an "A". A "B" means proficient. An "A" means Advanced. Well Joe is Advanced in Math and Literacy so he actually has A pluses in those. He has an A in science and a B plus in Social Studies. And a B- in art. Yet he has spent two hours just on the drawing on the right. So it is certainly not for a lack of trying. I think he is supposed to fill up the whole page, so we'll see what he does. I think it looks great. I go to Art with one of the Special Ed students and the teacher gave us this to draw. I couldn't even begin to do it. I am very proud of Joe. Joe has one quarter of art, one quarter of computers, one quarter of PE and one quarter of Tech Ed.

Jessica has 4 AP classes, AP Environmental Science, AP Calculus, AP US History and AP Language Arts. Then she also has Spanish 3 and the Newspaper (the Orange and Black). She has A's in all of these. She is still swimming but we have EXTREME shoulder pain and are checking on insurance, etc. to get an arthosgram of her shoulders to see what is up. We need to know if we are done with swimming or what. In October we are going to visit Colorado College in Colorado Springs. The swim coach there was my swim coach my sophomore year at Cal State Hayward. She is going to eat lunch with us and introduce us to some of the swimmers. We are going to take a tour of the school also. They teach on a "block" system. You take One class at a time for maybe three or four weeks. Then you switch to another class. Sounds very interesting.

Ben is doing well in 4th grade. His big project this weekend is the salt dough topographical map of the state of Colorado. Joe had to do this in 4th grade and I kept it as a model. So we'll probably work on that tomorrow.

Our classroom is going well, but the young aide decided to not show up again and not call. Just really unacceptable. Makes for a very hard day. She didn't show up Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday. On Friday she texted that she had strep throat. Wednesday there was just three of us - the teacher and two aides. On that day one of our kids had a major blow out - which we know he can do. The teacher handled it beautifully without fear and called me in the room with her and I was very calm also. Not so sure he's had people on his side for quite a while. In fact there is a whole committee of people who meet and the teacher went to her first meeting last week. The teacher said everyone of them wants him committed to a youth detention center. We'll see what happens. I see her making great strides with him, but if no one else in your support structure believes in you it makes it tough.

I do believe the next time the young aide shows up she'll be shown the door, but there are protocols to follow. In the meantime we are putting in for subs to cover her. The older aide's husband got ill on Friday and she left midday. So we resorted to putting a video in - something the teacher does not like to do and has not done up to this point. So with me and the teacher being the two constants, I still come home exhausted. I am not sure if I will do this particular job another year. We'll see. I love the kids, but it is hard mental work and constant vigilance.

How was your week?