Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Work Email In Box:



Dear Teachers

It has come to our attention that some of you feel your 30 minute duty-free lunch is being compromised when parents show up for unscheduled conferences while you are eating.  Please know that while we support your right to a noon meal 100%, we hope you will still make every visitor to our building feel welcome by addressing their requests in an interested and efficient manner. If you feel such an encounter has unnecessarily intruded on your private moment with last night's reheated leftovers, keep a strict accounting of your missed minutes, enter them onto an Excel spread sheet of your own making,  submit it to our already overworked secretary and she will repay your lost time with a 50% OFF coupon for dry erase markers. Please do not remove any school-funded supplies from campus.  

Thanks for all you do!!
__________________________________________________________________________

 Faculty:

To ensure that every learning day is focused on teaching excellence from "bell to bell", we discourage any teacher-led activity which might distract from the objectives at hand. We must teach to the test ready our students for the end of the year and all that this entails. Please refrain from imparting information which isn't covered on the test is not expressly mentioned in the curriculum. We LOVE it when you are creative, however content which veers sharply from tested materials targeting the intended concepts does not contribute to an optimal learning environment. Every classroom minute counts!!

Additionally--we ask that, following the Pledge of Allegiance, the state pledge, school pledge and  moment of silence, you devote a consistent part of each and every morning to a student uniform check, chewing gum check, attendance check and tardy count. Please help the office clerk by collecting the brown Beginning of Year envelopes containing emergency cards, free lunch forms, media release, home language survey and PTA membership form. Use the attached spread sheet to record forms turned in and keep track of all forms not signed or turned in. Please do this every day.

REMEMBER! MANY HANDS MAKE LIGHT WORK!!!!

________________________________
URGENT TO ALL TEACHERS!

  Students may not carry a backpack to class after the first week of school. If a student persists on bringing the backpack to class and you feel you MUST confront student, you must lawyer up first contact parent (phone/email/conference) for permission to enforce a district/school/classroom policy. We repeat: Parents must be totally cool with any rule you are required to uphold before you can go forward with it. After you have received approval, wait one week for angry parent to go over your head to call downtown and complain. Then, check the computer system for evidence of a 504, IEP or BIP which might provide the student with special permission to carry one of the following: blackjack  (sorry...this is currently not yet approved) backpack, emergency water, emergency Gatorade, low blood sugar snacks, emergency candy, cell phone, inhaler, epipen, hand-held/battery-controlled fan (for hot days!), small pillow (for sleepy days!), iPod (comforting music for those with anger issues), worry rock, pet rock, Rubik's Cube, ice pack. Please attempt to address these issues outside of class. It's all about the learning!!!!

DID YOU EVER KNOW THAT YOU'RE OUR HERO??????
_______________________________________________________
Faculty and staff:

Students may not be allowed in hallways before 8:30 a.m!!  This is a safety issue and it is of the utmost importance that we work together to discourage loitering, isolated moments between adolescent students, potential vandalism or theft. Students must have an official pass from a teacher before being allowed to enter the school during non-instructional hours. Of course, some exceptions can be made. For your convenience we have provided a list of those students who may not be approached or questioned about their presence in the hallways during non-instructional hours:

*Students with a pass signed by a teacher
*Students who had a pass signed by a teacher and then lost it
*Band students
*Choir members
*Students being tutored.
*Students who say they are being tutored but you know damn well it's a lie.
*Students whose mothers are on the PTA board and get testy when you don't let their children retrieve their cheerleading "pom-pons" from their lockers.
*Cheerleaders
*Spirit Team
*Coach's "helpers"
*Team managers
*Any female student claiming she is having her period. (Do not confront!!)
*Students retrieving instrument from locker
*Students placing instrument in locker by mistake and then coming back again to get it.
*Students with no pass but whose indignant parent is accompanying them.
**6th grade peer tutors
**7th grade free breakfast eaters
**8th grade Whiz Quiz kids
*White Board Monitors.
*Office Assistants
*New students
*Any student with a mysterious rash needing to see the nurse.
*Angry parents with no appointment and a small-caliber weapon.

All others must remain outside until bell rings!!

TEACHERS!!  YOU'RE THE WIND BENEATH OUR WINGS!!! SERIOUSLY!!!

_________________________________________

Note from Attendance Clerk:

Some teachers are still not pausing to take electronic roll every class period!! Dammit, people!!
The following teachers are screwing it up for the rest of us:

Coach Jones
Coach Shannon
Coach Tribble
Coach Mayhew
Coach Overton
Coach Longstreet-Preston
Coach Hayes
Mrs. Peckinpaugh

____________________________________________________________
FROM THE SUPERINTENDENT TO ALL TEACHERS:

It has come to our attention that your respective unions have advised teachers to question the seemingly mountainous amount of clerical paperwork being required of them. While it is true that such work was previously the domain of office staff members at the campus level, budget cutbacks demand that these tasks fall on the apparently too-delicate shoulders of our teaching compatriots. My bad!

 In compliance with the Paperwork Reduction Act we are now obligated to work around any and all legal prohibitions by limiting your paper workload to only those tasks which are directly relevant to the teaching day (ie: student work, grade book, lesson planning tools/forms and professional training materials).

If you feel unnecessary paper duties have been thrust upon you, please record any and all incidents (including date, time, place, reason, person who asked you and a detailed account of the paperwork's educational value) on an Excel spreadsheet of your own making. Please make extra copies for your records as well as those for your campus as well as one for me. Please submit the entire packet to your principal in person. You'll be sorrrryyy! And then wait.

REMEMBER: THAT WHICH DOES NOT KILL US MAKES US STRONGER!

Yours for the children,
Superintendent Clay


6 comments:

  1. Yep. Don't miss it at all.
    And they wonder why good teachers shut their doors, hunker down and ignore the memorandums.

    ReplyDelete
  2. And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche....

    Of course, he didn't have email.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Makes me kind of glad not to be a teacher. The teachers I know seem to be worn out with this stuff, and when they complain about their job, it's never the actual kids who are the issue.

    ReplyDelete
  4. None of this is even a tenth fictional. And all of it is why I left.

    That, and being told that the network was down VIA EMAIL.

    ReplyDelete
  5. You are making me happy to not be working in a public school.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Good grief. Funny about the no backpacks rule, though. In our district, it is the norm for kids to lug their backpacks and all their other stuff to all of their classes--there are no lockers or homerooms, so they have no choice.

    I've been discouraging my children from becoming teachers, because it seems like the frustrations far outweigh the rewards nowadays.

    ReplyDelete

Be nice. It's not as hard as it sounds.