Phone Calls

I officially got the call from Lakeville North saying the position had been filled.

A few hours later, I got a call from Lakeville South, asking me to meet with their principal!

This is me, doing a little dance...
I got a second interview-I got a second interview-I got a second interview...

(In a sing-song voice)

I also had a really great day teaching, so today is really fabulous! I need to go grocery shopping, so that's a bummer, but I had a good professional day, and that makes it a great day overall. :)

I was able to speak to guidance counselors about two students who had journal entries that worried me. I spoke to XH, and told him that I was worried about him, and I spoke to his counselor, so she might call him down, and he said that he had already set up an appointment for 2:00. I also spoke to the Hmong liason officer about it as well. XH feels like his parents don't care about him, and he's been depressed. I responded in his journal about how I appreciate having him in class, that he's been improving, that I think he's a great person and he deserves to be happy. I was a little nervous about talking to him, but I was able to catch him on the way to the bathroom, so it wasn't a big problem. I also told MS (the one whose father died... he wrote in his journal that he wished he had been a better son--so sad!--I told MS that his father knows he loves him and that's important) that he could use my class to talk to his counselor if he needed and that processing this loss was important. I said we would get him caught up, but some things take priority.

I also was able to scold my four students who wrote the inappropriate prom article without a hitch. I focused on how I expected more out of them and that all four of them are great kids and that I knew they were testing me, but I was upset that they would do something like this to me and that I knew they knew they did wrong. I said they were getting a zero on the assignment and were getting off lucky--next time, parents and administrators would be contacted. They seemed sufficiently humble and sorry (even if they were pretending), and I don't feel like they hated me for it, which is good, though if they're angry, then they're angry. That's fine too. I just don't want to ruin a good student-teacher relationship.

I also caught a person ditching my class... one of the kids from the newsgroup that never came back to class last Friday too! Two days in a row, ugh. I e-mailed the assistant principals about it and marked them truant. I had given JB a pass to go to the library and when he didn't come back (ten minutes left to the hour), I went up and checked myself. Sure enough, there was no JB. He's the one the kids thing took ZJ's pen too, so it might have been a good thing that he vanished. Who knows? It's now in an administrator's hands (too), so that's good.

And my kids were, for the most part, on task today. Shock of all shocks!

I had my English 10's write poems in twenty lines with ten syllables per line to appreciate iambinc pentameter. No, I didn't make them write in iambic pentameter, but I did have them count syllables. They were actually chatting with each other about the assignment and not about softball or prom.

My Journalism kids had a computer lab day to do final revisions for their news magazine. Tomorrow we will go to the library where Gregg Martinson will teach them how to put stuff up on the internet, and they will have two days to work on that. I am pretty excited that the news magazine is actually starting to get to that on-the-internet point. I will be sure to link it to the blog as well as my webpage as soon as it is up!

Well, I'm going to leave today's posting at that. Lots of hope and good feelings today, and I even was rejected for a job! :)