Paul's Infrequently Updated Blog

At Gering High School, teachers do, of course, have to have observations in order for the administration to see how teachers are doing in class. I have never been a fan of these observations because I do not think they accurately show how a teacher is teaching in class. What I sometimes think administrators fail to realize is that the very presence of a Principal or Assistant Principal in the classroom completely changes the dynamic of the room. I do think they have their place, but I do not think they are an accurate and fair way of assessing how well a teacher teaches (and neither are standardized tests for that matter).

At Gering, Probationary Teachers have to have two formal observations each year, one in the fall and and in the spring. Once you gain tenure, you are only observed every third year, but still have to fill out lots of paperwork to show how you are achieving professional development and meeting professional development goals (this is true in most school districts).

In addition to all this paperwork and formal observations we have, here at Gering we have what is known as the “informal walk-through” (I got one of these in my email yesterday). Every so often, one of the administrators will walk into your room to see what is going on. I honestly do not see the point of this and especially the little form I get in my email saying how I was doing. The issue I have about this is that teachers are supposed to be professionals, yet I always have this feeling that administrators don’t think teachers are doing their jobs properly.

I do wonder if this is the way other people are treated in other professions. After all, teachers have to have the minimum of a bachelors degree to teach and many, like myself, have a master’s degree too. I would think that, after all this education, a person would be trusted to do the job they have been entrusted to do with a certain level of independence. Unfortunately, in U.S. education this appears not to be so and teachers have very little control over what they teach and also in regards to school policy. I have worked in other school districts that often treated the teachers as little more than hired help. If this is the way teachers are to be treated, then you have to wonder why you need someone with a college degree teaching students.

A few weeks back, I wrote about how the Gering football team had won the last game of their regular season and had qualified for the play-offs. Gering won their first play-off game and so yesterday played another play-off game. This, of course, meant another half-day of school was lost, which is more time that students are not in a classroom.

What I found particularly offensive about these play-off games, is that the administration gave us the choice of staying at school and working or going to the game for which we would have to pay an entrance fee. You may ask what is the problem, well I feel that teachers and staff should be able to go to the game for free. In this case, those teachers that had passes to regular season games could not use them for play-off games.

I certainly was not going to pay to watch a game, so I opted to stay at school. It was not that big of a deal since, even if the game had been available to me for free, I think I would have chosen to stay at school. The point here is that these games and events should be open to school district teachers and staff for free. The reason for this is that the administration always harps on about how important it is for tacters to show there support to students. I might be a bit more inclined to support the Gering sporting event if the events were open to staff members for free.

Of course, the Activities Department has a program whereby a teacher can sign up to participate in at least two school sponsored events and, in return, get an activities pass to most school events. The issue here is that most sporting events I have no interest in and actually find boring. I think the problem is that the big sports are “football” and basketball, which I don’t understand and don’t care to understand. So why would I want to go to events I have no interest in?

Today, I did not go to school. Instead, I attended a work shop at ESU #13 just down the road from me here in Scottsbluff. I normally like to sign up for a workshop in the fall because I find then that you can pick and choose the professional development opportunities that are available when you can get more out of them.

This particular workshop was about closing achievement gaps among students through the use of vocabulary. It provided some useful ideas about encouraging students to learn and build up their vocabulary because research has shown that students with stronger vocabularies do better in school.

Another reason I like to go to these events is because sometimes I get burned out in class and it is nice to get away from the kids. It is also good to meet with other teachers from other schools to find out what they are teaching. It is also nice for me because where the workshop was held is only a few minutes walk from my house. I did not have to leave home until 7:45am this morning.

Because I left home later that allowed me to take D’Argo outside for a walk. For the last few months, we have been letting him outside on a leash. We do this because there are a few busy roads in the area and we don’t want him to be hit.

The trouble with D’Argo is that he is now a fully grown cat that always wants to go out. He is a pretty big cat, about 16lbs, but not fat. We are pretty sure he is a Maine Coon, which is the largest species of domestic cat. When I took him out this morning, it was very hard for me to get him back inside when we were done. He ended up getting very aggressive and he hissed at me and also bit and scratched me.

This sort of behavior has been going on for a while now and also he always wants out at night. Recently, we have had to keep him in his kitty carrier at night because otherwise he will not let us sleep. I am hoping that as he gets older he will settle down and grow out of this behavior. I guess we will see.

Yesterday, we had a pretty bad snowstorm out here in the Nebraska Panhandle. The snow started to come down in the morning and, by lunch, it was already pretty bad. Everyone expected school to be closed for the rest of the day. This was especially so after both the City of Gering and Scottsbluff County declared a snow emergency. Instead, school continued until 3:20pm, by which time, parents had pulled many of the students out of school. For my last period class, I had a grand total of 13 students out of a total of 31.

While I do not think we should be canceling or delaying school every time we get a dusting of snow, the storm yesterday was serious enough, in my opinion, to close school at lunch time. This would have allowed all students and staff to get home before things got any worse and before any accidents occurred. When I got out to the parking lot at 3:30pm there was a good two feet of snow around my car and I had to spend time digging my car out of the snow. In the end, I almost did not make it out of the parking lot. If the school district expects students and staff to be in school during a storm then, at the very least, they should keep the parking lots clear.

At the end of the day, at least they had the good sense to cancel last night’s Parent Teacher Conferences. I doubt that anyone would have shown up and I think I might have ended up having to spend the night at school with the amount of snow on the ground.

Finally, as I write this, school was canceled for today. This to me is another bad decision since we went out this morning and the roads were quite decent. The school district must make much better decisions when it comes to closing schools during inclement weather.

Tonight, Irene and I went to the annual Scottbluff High School verses Gering High School “football” game. We are, of course, talking American football not the real variety, which Americans like to call “soccer.” Here in America, high school and college sports are pretty big, I think too big, and to the determent of academics, but that is another story.

So, we went to the football game and the Gering team won by a score of 30-22. At the end of the game, I actually thought that Gering might blow the game, but, in the end, they came out ahead. What this means is that Gering finish their “football”  season at 8-1, which is pretty good. Gering have qualified for the play-offs and are also district champions.

Next Friday afternoon, Gering are supposed to play Lexington at home in the first game of the play-offs. From what I understand, this has been scheduled for mid-afternoon, meaning school will release early so the kids can go watch the game. Only in America do kids get out of school to watch a football game.