This afternoon, a partial transcript #SOL24 27/31

PA system: “We are in a secure school. Please clear the hallways and lock your doors. I repeat, we are in a secure school.”

Email: “If you see [student name] please contact me in the main office right away.”

Email: “Photo”

25 minutes pass

PA system: “We are still in a secure school. Please remain in your classrooms when the bell sounds.”

50 minutes pass

PA system: “The secure school has ended.”

Email: “We will be having a stand up meeting at 3:35 in the auditorium.”

Person: “First, I want to say that under a difficult circumstance, we got to the best possible outcome because so many people came together to do the right things. Even the students in question cooperated with the police.”

Person: “Police entered the classroom and made an arrest. Afterward, social workers were available for students in the classroom.”

Person: “The police recovered a replica gun and a knife from the student.”

Person: “The police also recovered a knife and a replica gun from a second student.”

Person: “The students involved will not be returning to school.”

Person: “Ever?”

Person: “Well, I don’t want to tell you something that might not be true, but they will not return any time soon.”

Person: “An email will be sent home to parents.”

Person: “Social workers will be available at the school tomorrow.”

Email: “Thanks again for all that you did today in support of students and colleagues.”

Washroom Woes #SOL24 26/31

“Excuse me,” an unfamiliar adult leaned through the office door, “can you tell me where the staff washroom is?”

One of my colleagues looked down and tried not to snicker.

“Um…” I started, “well, there *is* a washroom on this floor, but the light is out, so you have to use your phone as a flashlight.”

The poor supply teacher looked a little startled. I quickly continued, “Probably the easiest one to find is” and then I gave a set of complicated directions to a washroom some distance away from us. She looked at me, wide-eyed, nodded, and left.

Glenda at Swirl and Swing has written before about trying to find a bathroom in a school. It seems like a small thing, having a restroom available, but apparently, in schools, it is not.

We have one one-seater staff washroom on the second floor that serves about 30 teachers. Also, it has been out of service for literally months of this school year… so far. For at least half of the first semester, the toilet wouldn’t flush. The care staff helpfully put tape over the seat to remind us not to use it.

For the first few days, none of us worried.

After two weeks, someone started a “days without a washroom” count on the whiteboard in the office. It was funny, but by week – what? three maybe? – we started to fret that our lovely care staff (who were in no way responsible for fixing the toilet) might feel bad, so we erased it. Another week passed, and someone started a “guess the date” – when will the toilet be fixed? Weeks later, even that was erased – our most outlandish guesses had been left behind.

“Never,” said one teacher.

“Not until next year,” said another. No one dared ask if they meant 2024 or next school year.

Eventually, the Chief Custodian caved and told us that he hadn’t been able to fix it himself. Given this almost unthinkable turn of events, rumours started to swirl: they had called a Board plumber who was booked for weeks in advance, said one teacher. “I heard the plumber came and declared that they were going to have to turn off the water to a whole section of the building,” said another. Someone else swore it would take an entire weekend to fix.

Every few weeks, someone worked up the nerve to email the principal and point out that we still did not have a working washroom on the second floor. He rarely replied.

“Just use the downstairs toilets,” groused the custodian, tired of us pestering him.

“It’s actually really inconvenient,” grumbled a teacher.

Then, one day, months after the toilet had been taped shut, with no warning whatsoever, the washroom was working again. Everyone was relieved (ha!), and life returned to normal.

Until last week. Then, someone came out of the washroom and said, “Um, did you notice that the light isn’t working?”

We had. Again, we emailed the custodian. This time he told us right away that they had tried changing the light bulb, to no avail. “We’ve put in a work order for an electrician,” he told us. “He should come soon.”

That was early last week. Since then, we take our phones into the washroom, and use them as flashlights. No one dares ask when the electrician might arrive; the custodian has already reminded us that we can use the bathrooms downstairs at the other end of our wing.

Someone suggested another guessing game on the whiteboard, but there were no takers. Some of us are pretending it’s perfectly normal to take a flashlight to the only staff washroom on our floor; some people make sad little jokes about it. Mostly, we try not to think about it – unless an unwitting visitor needs to use the bathroom, which is down one hallway, down the stairs, around a corner and to the left – oh, and unmarked. You just sort of guess which door is which.

I’m thinking of drawing up a map – or stocking up on flashlights.

High school in March, by the numbers #SOL24 22/31

(After Harper’s Index)

Number of pencils borrowed by grade 9 students during period 2 today: 4

Number of pencils returned: 1

Number of pencils lost while students moved between desks, ≈6 feet apart: 2

Number of days in school so far: 11

Number of fire alarms pulled: 1

Temperature on the day of the pulled alarm: 2C (35F)

Highest temperature in March: 17C (63F)

Date of highest temperature: March 5

Lowest temperature in March: -14C (7F)

Date of lowest temperature: March 22 (yeah, that’s today)

Number of hours set aside for parent-teacher interviews last night: 4

Timing of these interviews: 3:30pm –7:30pm

Number of minutes planned for each interview: 10

Number of parents who requested an interview with me: 3

Number of their students I am concerned about: 0

Number of people at Iftar dinner after parent-teacher interviews last night: ≈150

Number of those who were teachers: ≈20

Number of hours I slept last night: 6.5

Number of hours of sleep I really need: 8

Reason for the missing hours: finished Tom Lake; a cat sat on me until I woke

Number of five-day weeks left in March: 0

Chances we will cram five days of drama into four days of school next week: 98%

Number of days left in the March Slice of Life Challenge: 9

Chances that I will manage to write every day until the end: 100%

Maybe a myofunctional therapist #SOL24 21/31

“Ok,” she said, “push your tongue hard against this popsicle stick for thirty seconds.” He does. Then, they repeat the exercise once on each side. Next, she has him hold his tongue to the roof of his mouth “as if you were going to cluck like a chicken, but you stopped in the middle.” He chuckles, but he does it. Later he will hold water in his mouth and breathe through his nose for three minutes, then hold a spacer between his teeth and move his tongue in various figures. At some point during the session, she says, “I’m just really interested in tongues!” Fascinated, I text my friends – the ones who will understand this kind of text – about how cool this all is. This morning, for his fourth dental appointment in ten days, I took Mr. 13 to a myofunctional therapist. This is basically a physical therapist for your tongue. Who knew?

I get a kick out of anyone who is passionate about their job, and this therapist was clearly passionate. As we discussed her work, she asked if Mr. 13 knew what he wanted to do as an adult. He does not, but he had several great ideas when he was little: first, he wanted to be an animal translator who learned animal languages and then told people what the animals were saying; then he wanted to be an inventor who lived in the middle of the jungle and just invented things and gave them to someone who came to his cabin maybe once a month; more recently, he wanted to be a fountain designer to design the cool fountains where the water jumps around. Now, he just wants to be rich.

I was still thinking about unusual jobs when parent-teacher interviews started tonight. My first one was with a parent whose student will graduate in a few months. The student is fantastic, so the conversation was easy, and eventually the parent shared some of her concerns for “the next step.” Her biggest fear right now? He has no idea what he wants to do. I nearly laughed. “Stick with me here, but do you know what a ‘myofunctional therapist’ is?” She did not. “Neither did I,” I said, “until last week.” I explained the job and continued, “Nobody offers this as a job option when you’re in high school. Nobody says, ‘hey, you could do this really fascinating niche job, and you might love it.’ Kids have to explore and learn and find their own way for a bit – and who knows where they’ll end up? He’s not really supposed to know what he’s going to do with his life – he’s only 17.”

Parent-teacher conferences often leave me convinced that most things will work out, one way or another. The students will grow up. They’ll make mistakes and they’ll learn. Most kids figure things out, more or less, along the way. I’m pretty sure her child will, too, though I don’t see myofunctional therapy in his future.

Runaway #SOL24 20/31

He rarely comes to class, but when he does, we do what we can to make sure he has at least a little success. He’s in grade 9 and is currently illiterate in three languages. Research says that students with strong reading skills in their home languages often also have strong reading skills in their second language (see Short & Fitzsimmons, 2007 or this shorter article by Fred Genesee), but he doesn’t have strong reading skills anywhere. We can’t turn back time, but we’re doing what we can to move forward.

He’s lucky because this class has a push-in support teacher. She’s technically there for other students, but no rule says that she can only help them, so we’re using what wiggle room we have to create as much space for him as possible. When we were writing 100-word memoirs, she just happened to be sitting near him and just happened to be able to scribe for him. As I circulated, their heads were close together in front of the computer, counting words. When he realized he had written a story of exactly 100 words, he was so proud that he asked her to read it to him again. He beamed. Then he skipped for three days.

Then next time he made it to class during reading time, I sat with him and quietly talked through The Invention of Hugo Cabret, which he likes because it’s thick and he says it makes him look smart, while Ms H kept an eye on the other readers. Even the pictures were hard for him to understand, but he liked talking about them. Then he refused to do anything else.

Sometimes, he comes to class (late) and then asks to get water or go to the bathroom. I put him off as long as I can, but I am not the arbiter of his bodily functions; when he says, “Miss, I really have to go,” I let him. Sometimes he comes right back, but sometimes he runs. Two days ago, he swore he would only be gone for two minutes, then he took the hall pass and disappeared. I found him in the lobby later that day, skipping a different class. While we walked to where he was supposed to be, he told me that he had thrown up that morning, so he couldn’t return to my class. Given that he was practically bouncing up and down with energy as we edged towards his class, I reminded him that usually someone who throws up goes home, but he said he called home and his mother said no. Ahem. I found him in the hallways again that period and once the next period. He told me he just can’t stay in class.

Yesterday, Ms H had a breakthrough. She saw him (in the hallway, of course) and made some sort of deal/ bet with him – and then he actually showed up to English class a mere 10 minutes late (thus missing most of reading time). Meanwhile, she had hatched a plan. She took him to a quiet room – but not the resource room; he refuses to go there – and she started a phonics assessment with him. She praised him for what he could do and talked about ways we could help. She told him she could start with what he can do instead of expecting him to be able to do impossible things. He was eager.

Ms H was excited that we’d found a way to start giving him some real support. That afternoon we talked through her plan. But this morning, he saw her in the hall during first period, turned around and went the other way. Then, he saw her at the beginning of our class. This time he ran away. Ran.

We stayed after class together, Ms H and I, trying to figure out how to help him accept our offers of support. We reminded ourselves that years of failing in school, years of hiding his weaknesses, mean that he probably thinks he’s beyond redemption. He may be afraid that he’ll just fail again and disappoint us in the process. We walked into the hallway partway through lunch, and there he was, right by our English classroom. Gotcha! Gently, we reminded him of his (broken) promise. I told him that it hurt Ms H’s feelings when he didn’t come. She told him that she had been really excited to see him today. He shifted his weight back and forth, back and forth. When we finished – maybe a 30 second “chat” – he said, “OK” and then… he ran.

Sweet runaway boy, how I hope you’ll let us try to help you read. Reading will make a bigger difference than you can imagine. It’s worth sticking around for.

Noticed #SOL24 19/31

One afternoon, early in my teaching career, a colleague/friend and I got manicures together after school. The next day, in the middle of science class, a 7th grader raised his hand and said, “Did you and Amanda get your nails done together?” She was surprised that this young person – who could not reliably remember to bring his backpack from my French classroom to her science room next door – had noticed something so small. She was also surprised that he chose the middle of class to comment on his observation.

Over the years, I’ve gotten much more used to the idea that the students are always watching, but it can still catch me by surprise. Like yesterday when we came back to school after a week of March Break. I had gotten my hair cut (bangs!) the first Saturday of March Break, so I was used to it, but obviously no one else was. I was quickly reminded that my “look” had changed because students started to comment – in the hallway, in the lobby, in the classroom. Students who have never even had me as a teacher said, “nice haircut, Miss.” The kids I’ve actually taught were even more forward, one yelling, “you look good, Miss!” as I passed by.

I said “thank you” all morning long. The unexpected compliments put me in a good mood and I was sailing through the day. Then, during Grade 9 English, in the middle of a discussion about whether oral histories from “regular” people are important, a sometimes-reticent young man raised his hand. And despite my years of teaching, despite having been noticed in the hallway, despite everything, I still wasn’t ready when he said, “Um, did you get a haircut, Miss?”

“Yes,” I said, because what else was there to say?

“Cool,” he nodded, “It looks good.” And he went right back to doodling in his notebook.

I paused long enough to say to the class, “Well, that’s how you do it. If you’re going to ask someone if they got a haircut, you should definitely follow up with…” I paused for dramatic effect. The same young man looked up and said, “It looks good.”

Then we all went back to discussing oral histories as if nothing unusual had happened. And maybe it hadn’t.

Throwing in the towel #SOL24 16/31

I give up. It’s not that I haven’t written anything today. Oh no, it’s much worse than that: it’s that I haven’t *finished* anything today. When I realized I was struggling to write, I looked through my photos, thinking that a photo essay might be just right. I even got as far as creating a March collage. Then I decided I didn’t like it. Harrumph.

I considered writing about my pets because I love posts with pets, but this morning Hera stood on my chest and purred until I woke up, and the dog was kind of a jerk at the dog park this afternoon, so no posts for them.

I looked back at ideas I’ve collected from other bloggers this month and got deeply involved in a prompt from Steph at Steph Scrap Quilts, but it’s definitely not done enough to share. Or, more true, I like it too much to share it too early.

I tried to shake off my writing blahs by doing non-writing things that sometimes help me write: I took a walk, baked (banana bread – delicious), talked to my sisters for a long time, worked out, read other blog posts… Still, nothing.

And here I am. It’s almost 8pm, and this is what I’ve got. I’m giving myself credit for writing something when nothing would have been easier, and I will publish my imperfect writing.

Now that I think about it, I’m going to dedicate this to my students. After all, I started blogging as practice so that I could be a better writing teacher. I think it’s worked. If nothing else, I know what it means to stare down a blank document, knowing I have a deadline, knowing that others will read my work, knowing that another day, another hour might make it better. And then, I publish anyway. This is what I wish for you all: the strength to do your work, even when you aren’t inspired, and the courage to turn it in, even when it’s imperfect. This is me, practicing what I teach.

Учителката #SOL24 8/31

We had only been talking for a few minutes when her phone rang. She glanced at the screen and said, “I have to take this. It’s my father. I’m so sorry.” With an apologetic look, she answered. I looked down at my notebook to give her what little privacy the conference room afforded.

“Говоря с учителката на И”

I looked up, startled. I had perfectly understood that sentence. She said it again, adding “да, да но…” Yup, my student’s mother was definitely speaking Bulgarian.

She hung up and started to apologize again – after all, she’s the one who had asked for this parent-teacher conference – but I interrupted and said, “Are you Bulgarian?” She looked at me quizzically, so I added, “I speak a little Bulgarian; I could understand what you said.”

Soon, the parent-teacher conference had taken a decidedly friendly turn. We talked about Bulgaria, which city she was from, where I had lived, and more. She told me a funny story about getting married in Canada: Bulgarians nod their head up and down to say “no” and side to side for “yes.” As she stood in front of the judge, answering questions so she could marry her fiancé, she kept saying “yes” but, in her enthusiasm, moving her head “no” – to the point where the judge decided he couldn’t accept her verbal answers. They had to call in an interpreter to verify her responses. “I tried to explain,” she laughed, “but I could tell the judge was worried.” In turn, I told her about trying to gauge students’ understanding during a lesson and finding myself completely bewildered by the sea of heads shaking all different directions.

“But… when did you live there?” she wanted to know.

I had to calculate. “Um… 1995? Nearly thirty years ago!”

“And you still remember the language?!” Her astonishment was clear.

“Oh no!” I laughed. “You just said about half of what I remember. The first half of what you said was more or less what I memorized so that I could leave phone messages for people. And the second part was about teachers.”

I spent a year teaching in Bulgaria. I loved it – the teaching, the country, the people, the language. As I started to make friends, I also started needing to call people. The problem was, no one lived alone in Bulgaria, so I always needed to ask to speak with the one person I knew – who was almost always the only English speaker in the home. I quickly learned to say, “May I speak with…?” (Мога ли да говоря с) Then, I waited. If there was silence followed by a familiar voice, I’d found my friend. If instead there was a long string of what was gibberish to my years, I took a deep breath and said, “Кажи му, че Аманда се обади”… “Tell him that Amanda called.” And then I hung up. Because that was all I could say. I was pretty much terrified every time I made a phone call all year, which means that those two phrases are tattooed in my brain.

I can also still remember bits of what I used to call the “train conversation.” That’s the conversation you have when you take the train from your town to the next one if you’re a blond foreigner in a sea of dark-haired Bulgarians. It’s pretty much always the same: Where are you from? What are you doing here? How long have you been here? How long are you staying? Do you like our country?” The whole train conversation lasts just under 10 minutes, and I must have had the conversation dozens of times in several languages.

All of this came together this week when the parent was speaking because what she said was, “Dad, I’m speaking with I’s teacher.” And I can 100% remember all of those words – apparently even 30 years after I last needed them.

The rest of the conference went swimmingly. Shared language can do that. I’m confident that we can work as a team to support her child for the rest of the semester. And I get to spend a few days reminiscing about a year of amazing experiences – and trying to call up a few more words.

(Written for “Multi-Lingual Friday”)

Knock-on Effects #SOL24 7/31

Today, I got an *AMAZING* message from a former student. She is graduating from university and is “almost an RN now.” I am aglow with happiness for her – and for us: she’s going to be a wonderful nurse. I am proud to say that a tiny part of her story relates to my post from yesterday.

You see… back when Mr. 13 was Mr. 6, he was driving his teacher up a wall. They butted heads regularly (in a first-grade sort of way – the kind where it turns out that six-year-olds need to follow rules sometimes), most often in reading group. There, Mr. 6 would some days read fluently, then other days act silly, “reading” words that were not on the page. We were baffled. The story goes that one night, angry with my insistence that he try to sound out words, he “read” his entire book without looking at the pages *even once*. But he couldn’t read individual words.

Because his teacher was both kind and deeply experienced, she had already flagged his reading as potentially problematic. Because I knew that dyslexia ran in my family, I already knew to pay attention to my children’s reading. Because my colleague’s wife was a child psychologist who did lots of educational testing, she advised testing Mr. 6 asap, rather than following the school system’s recommendation to“wait and see.” Because we have good health insurance, we could pay for private educational testing. And because of all that, we discovered that Mr. 6 had dyslexia when he was, well, 6.

The chips continued to fall in our favour. First, even though I am a high school English teacher, I was already learning about how people learn to read, so I knew that people with dyslexia benefit from early intervention. Then, when the principal said it was “too bad” that Mr. 6 was going into Grade 2 because the school’s reading intervention program started in Grade 3, we were wealthy enough to pay for tutoring. Then, I began researching dyslexia and found Dr. Sally Shaywitz’s book, Overcoming Dyslexia which recommended specific research-based tutoring programs. In a final bit of good fortune, a local tutoring company specialized in exactly this.

Y’all, that is a lot of good luck. Learning to read should NOT be a matter of luck.

Now, let me tell you about my student. She had struggled to learn to read when she was little, but she was an incredibly hard worker, so she managed to stay on top of things. She was seriously smart, so she was able to figure things out, even though reading remained, well, not easy. By the time I met her, she was in 10th grade, and she was working her butt off. She was also doing extremely well in school.

Still, as we got to know each other over a few years, she confided in me that she wasn’t “as smart” as her friends because she took “three times as long” to do her homework and made “stupid mistakes” if she wasn’t focused. I believed her, but I didn’t know what to make of this… until about ¾ of the way through Shaywitz’s book. There, I read a description of a high school student with dyslexia. Right away, I thought of her. Pages later, Shaywitz listed some common signs of dyslexia – and suddenly I had concrete questions I could ask someone.

I explained to this young person that I had an idea about her learning. Then I read her the description in Shaywitz’s book. Recognition dawned: “That’s exactly me!” I am not an educational psychologist, so I can’t diagnose anything, but at least we had an idea of what might be happening. All we needed was some testing – which our school system couldn’t provide because, first, our limited resources go to students who “are not able to access the curriculum” and this student was on the Honour Roll and, second, those same resources are meant for students in our system, and she was nearing graduation. We fought on. One thing led to another, and things stayed plenty dang complicated, but in the end she was able to get accommodations when she went to university. Things weren’t easy, but they were, at least, easier.

Looking back, it all feels awfully precarious. What if my child’s teacher hadn’t noticed his uneven reading? What if we hadn’t known to get him tested? What if I hadn’t been reading about dyslexia? What if?

I think about all the people who will benefit from having this brilliant, determined, caring young person as their nurse. I know this is supposed to be a slice of life – and I really want you to know how much I admire the student I’m writing about – but I have to end with what I already said: learning to read well should not be a matter of luck. As a profession, we are trying to make changes so that more students learn to read well. I hope our systems don’t give up when our first attempts aren’t perfect. I hope our system doesn’t write off students who are already in high school. I hope we have success story after success story to tell in years to come. And I really hope you’re lucky enough to have this person as your nurse. That would, indeed, be lucky.

Par, pars, parsh, parch #SOL24 6/31

“Hey Mom! Can you come help with my English writing?”

I’m supposed to be doing my own writing – this writing, to be precise – and I’m still knee-deep in grade 9 projects, but he knows I won’t say no. Mr. 13 is an excellent writer – effective vocabulary, interesting sentence structures, good grasp of punctuation – and he is dyslexic. Years of Orton-Gillingham-based tutoring means that he reads well and knows how to make good use of extensions like Grammarly or Language Tool, but when push comes to shove, he still benefits from a once over by someone who’s not dyslexic. Also, he knows I like to read what he writes.

He’s reading his sentences aloud under his breath as I plunk down next to him. “Um… I need a word for like ‘kind of was related to the point but not 100%.'” My eyes widen as I try to figure out what on Earth he’s talking about. “Oh!” he snaps his fingers, “got it: partially!”

He types parsley.

He keeps going, then circles back to fix it. Parshly. Spellcheck suggests harshly as a replacement, so he changes it to parchly – and the new suggestion is archly. “Um, Mom?”

“Partially means ‘in part’ so it starts with the root part,” I say.

“Part isn’t really a root,” he interrupts. Then, “sorry.” He would know. He knows Latin and Greek origins of words; he understands spelling rules in ways I have never had to.

I laugh, “Just start with part.” He does. I break the word down orally so he can hear all the syllables, then I spell. “Now i a l…” I pause because he is looking at me like I have two heads. Finally, I reach over and type the word.

He stares for a long second, then shakes his head in wonder. “There is no way that word looks like /parshully/. I would never have guessed that.”

And he wouldn’t have. Which is why I was so angry last night when I found one of his old math tests where the teacher has circled his attempt at the word “isosceles” and written “Really???” with multiple question marks. He brushed it off – “I mean, she did tell us we had to be able to spell all the terms” – but she doesn’t see how hard he works to spell these words.

But now he’s moved on and is enthusiastically excoriating someone’s weak debate argument. He doesn’t need me again until the end, when I do a check for capital letters and other words that spellcheck didn’t get. This time, he’s mostly good. I ruffle his hair and head back to finish my own work.

I wish all teachers could understand his truth – the kind that looks good on the surface but is working awfully hard to stay afloat. “Isosceles,” I mutter, and his exasperated voice trails behind me, reminding me to let it go. “Mom!”