These would be hilarious if they weren't so dead-on accurate

Have you heard about the next planned "Survivor" show?

Three businessmen and three businesswomen will be dropped in an elementary school classroom for 6 weeks. Each business person will be provided with a copy of his/her school district's curriculum, and a class of 28 students.

Each class will have five learning-disabled children, three with A.D.D., one gifted child, and two who speak limited English. Three will be labeled with severe behavior problems.

Each business person must complete lesson plans at least 3 days in advance with annotations for curriculum objectives and modify, organize, or create materials accordingly. They will be required to teach students, handle misconduct, implement technology, document attendance, write referrals, correct homework, make bulletin boards, compute grades, complete report cards, document benchmarks, communicate with parents, and arrange parent conferences. They must also supervise recess and monitor the hallways.

In addition, they will complete drills for fire, tornados, and shooting attacks.

They must attend workshops, (100 hours), faculty meetings, union meetings, attend curriculum development meetings. They must also tutor those students who are behind and strive to get their 2 non-English speaking children proficient enough to take the Terra Nova and EPA tests. If they are sick or having a bad day they must not let it show.

Each day they must incorporate reading, writing, math, science, and social studies into the program. They must maintain discipline and provide an educationally stimulating environment at all times.

The business people will only have access to the golf course on the weekends, but on their new salary they will not be able to afford it anyway. There will be no access to vendors who want to take them out to lunch, and lunch will be limited to 25 minutes . On days when they do not have recess duty, the business people will be permitted t o use the staff restroom as long as another survival candidate is supervising their class.

They will be provided with two 40-minute planning periods per week while their students are at specials.

If the copier is operable, they may make copies of necessary materials at this time. The business people must continually advance their education on their own time and pay for this advanced training themselves. This can be accomplished by moonlighting at a second job or marrying someone with money. The winner will be allowed to return to his or her job.

Pass this to your friends who think teaching is easy and to the ones
that know it is hard. They will both benefit!

-----------------

And now... a little fun with metaphors.

No Child Left Behind--Football Version

1. All teams must make the state playoffs and all MUST win the championship. If a team does not win the championship, they will be on probation until they are the champions, and coaches will be held accountable. If after two years they have not won the championship their footballs and equipment will be taken away UNTIL they do win the championship.

2. All kids will be expected to have the same football skills at the same time even if they do not have the same conditions or opportunities to practice on their own. NO exceptions will be made for lack of interest in football, a desire to perform athletically, or genetic abilities or disabilities of themselves or their parents. ALL KIDS WILL PLAY FOOTBALL AT A PROFICIENT LEVEL!

3. Talented players will be asked to workout on their own, without instruction. This is because the coaches will be using all their instructional time with the athletes who aren't interested in football, have limited athletic ability or whose parents don't like football.

4. Games will be played year round, but statistics will only be kept in the 4th, 8th, and 11th game.

It will create a New Age of Sports where every school is expected to have the same level of talent, and all teams will reach the same minimum goals. If no child gets ahead, then no child gets left behind.

If parents do not like this new law, they are encouraged to vote for vouchers and support private schools that can screen out the non-athletes and prevent their children from having to go to school with bad football players.

*cue Darth Vadar theme*

*dum dum dadum daa dum dadum dumdum* If you're any sort of Star Wars fan you'll (of course) immediately recognize this as the Darth Vadar theme music.

The proper tone must be set to announce that...

I have officially handed in my resignation letter. March 9th, the last school day before Spring Break, is my last day.

One small step, one giant leap

Until the final word is in, I say nothing definitively; however, I will most likely be putting in my two weeks notice as of February 23rd (next Friday). This seems the most strategic and convenient time (perhaps I should say least damaging and least inconvenient time) to all involved as it would make my final day immediately before Spring Break.

After reaching this breaking point and coming to this tentative decision, I can immediately feel the proverbial weight lifting from my shoulders, albeit temporarily. And yet... I have not yet been able to conclusively and absolutely say "yes, I will quit" or "no, I will finish out the year". To make it though this far... to quit when the end is in sight... to abandon responsibility, challenge, and commitment...

...and for what? To leave the security of a stable job - a guaranteed "known" - for a blank, empty unknown... Can I find a job that I enjoy? Can I find a job that makes enough money for our lifestyle to continue? How long until I find that job? Will we have to work second part-time jobs until then? And what if I find a new job and end up in the same boat as now? What if I'm just a habitual quitter??

Which is better - to guilt and scare myself into staying in a job that chews up and spits out my soul on a daily basis, leading a miserable, depressed existence - or - giving up everything I have worked toward, my profession!, abandoning all security because I'm a quitter and a coward.

But if I stick it out three months, finish my year, and then exit gracefully - how will my situation be so very different from my position now? I will still face the unknown, the paycheck-less nightmares, etc. If I finish the year, would I convince myself that I should teach another year? And if I did that, would I regret every day or rejoice that I stuck it out and learned from my first-year mistakes?

No one can make this decision for me; no one knows door leads to misery and which leads to happiness.

Can I do this? ...and which door is this? I fear that my inability to act on any decision will in itself seal my fate. Inaction, after all, is still an action.

One small step... one giant leap... if only I weren't paralyzed like a deer in headlights.

Modern-Day Miracles

To heck with summer - we actually got a snow day today! Granted, Missouri schools would have never closed for such a wussy amount of white stuff - we didn't even get an inch of snow, and the streets are fine - but hey, who's complaining? ...especially when the skies and streets seemed to hold no chance of precipitation when I went to bed last night! ...especially when I was not even moderately close to having a coherent lesson plan for today. ...and especially after having a team meeting yesterday in which it was summarily implied that we should either shape up or reconsider teaching because we were ineffective teachers. After fighting high stress-levels and self-induced feelings of inadequacy, this slap in the face was hardly helpful. What was worse, no steps for improvement were given, even when directly requested. If what we have been doing is so clearly ineffective, how is telling us to 'continue doing what we've been doing' going to change anything?!

It's not that I disagreed with most of what was said - at least about my inadequacies as a teacher - but what good can come of undirected beratement?