Monday, March 08, 2004

Days Until the Science Expo: 15

Early Saturday afternoon, I called my principal, left her a message saying that I'd like to talk when she had a few minutes. Saturday passed, then Sunday - nothing. I was giving her the benefit of the doubt, albeit somewhat irritably, but this morning, no acknowledgment whatsoever of my messages. So I got really pissed off again, and I guess I showed it by obviously avoiding her for most of the morning (though I DID say good morning quite pleasantly). Third period, she approached me about a laptop security issue, and finally we talked about what had happened on Friday. I apologized for what I saw as my bad behavior, she apologized for hers, and that particular storm was over.

Good professional development today from our AUSSIE consultant.

A student confided in one of our teachers today that the deep scratches on his neck were "punishment" for his misbehavior this weekend. So, tomorrow we have to report abuse. We tried to report this family last year - the abuse is not hard to spot - but the process didn't get very far due to stonewalling by his family (you would think the systems in place would prevent this... but they don't always work). The boy and his siblings are already living with their aunt and grandmother due to prior abuse by their parents. All have been in trouble with the courts before. It's a terrible situation.

Spent an enjoyable lunchtime supervising an experiment about whether musical genre (classical, R&B, rap, jazz, latin music, etc.) affects concentration (measured by how many free throws kids make). I volunteered as a subject in the study, but I made shockingly few shots! Ouch. I don't think they're going to find much of a correlation between music and basketball skills, although marginally more shots landed while Charlie Parker was playing... There was a certain loveliness to standing in the gym, holding a pink cd player, listening to Bach and watching my students shoot baskets and collect data and have a good time doing both.

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