Dear Universe.

Stop killing my awesome former students.  It's the third in a year.

While I may be upset about his death, having him pass away, at home, on Mother's Day was a cruel thing to do to his mother.  She's a lovely woman and deserved far better than the hand you dealt her.

No love,
Spy

PS: Awesome former students encompasses all my former students.  I don't want you to get any ideas.

I've forgotten about how much it hurts to write an exam. 

First of all, I stress out like crazy, so everything is tense for the better part 24 hours before an exam.  My shoulders, back and neck are killing me.

Next, I'm writing for three hours straight.  This wasn't one of those three hour exams that you can finish in two.  No, I was just finishing my editing when I was told time was up.  My right hand is killing me.  The poor tutor, having to read my writing.  Good luck to her.

Thinking of the stress I mentioned earlier, I have one hell of a headache. 

Dear TDSB & the press,

I've not written about the tragedy at CW Jeffreys collegiate for one simple reason:  I'm not surprised.  Anyone who didn't think this type of event was imminent, knows nothing about teaching secondary school in the greater Toronto Area.

What changes my mind now?  The news coverage focusing only on the TDSB as if this tragedy is unique to that board.  It's not.  The persistent complaints of the teachers in the newspapers -- the lack of admin support, the fear of calling the police and having one's school in the news, teachers being intimidated about either filing complaints or pursuing the suspension of a student, is very common in my board as well.  I found the description in the paper yesterday about trouble students getting a "counselling" session from the admin as opposed to any form of punishment for offenses as serious as attacking another student or threatening a teacher, just happened in the last week at my school.  I won't speak for all boards, as I just know mine, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was common elsewhere.

When the news story broke about the shooting death of student at CW Jeffreys, initially, the news cycle focused on the hunt for the suspects.  Once they were arrested, I expected long diatribes in the press about the lack of safety in schools. 

What I got was a pile of nothing.  If it were not for the several teachers from CW Jeffreys coming out to the press and speaking about the conditions in their school -- there would have been nothing about the real situation.  In fact, the first 24 hours after the shooting was all about how well the school and administration handled the shooting and lock down.  If it hadn't been for those two teachers willing to be named (one about to retire and one on stress leave) all the press would have done is publish the news releases from the board.  All of these would have contained praise for the board's policies and procedures as followed by the administration.  Shame on you press!  I've checked all the major newspapers / sites (G&M, TS, TNP, ctv.ca City News, MSN.ca, Yahoo.ca, etc.) and nothing is actually investigated.  Why isn't the press figuring out how unlikely it is for the TDSB to be able to come up with a substantive report in three weeks?  Why aren't reporters looking into this as a systemic problem, as opposed to one isolated incident?  Have you all lost your ability to investigate anything that doesn't come nice and neatly wrapped up in a preprinted press release?

Here, use this:  my school has one of the "top 32" (air quotes used with snarky intent) in Canada.  This *quality* principal has petrified her staff into fearing "please see me" notes from any member of the administration.  Usually, those mean that we're going to get told off for not calling a parent over attendance issues, even though said child has been reported to the office a dozen times for missing class.  Kids see attendance monitoring as a joke.  One teacher commented that we don't need to hold assemblies, we just need to do an all-call in the hallways over the PA.  This is the chance these kids need to do something stupid, like what happened at CW Jeffreys.  Kids don't often get shot in the middle of a math lecture.

Once, when a child was caught on tape, showing another student a butt of a gun, our esteemed leader tried to convince us that 1) we couldn't be sure the metal tucked into the sock was a gun or 2) that if it was, if it wasn't a real gun.  Should that matter?

We have a character education program which most of the students and half the staff see as a joke.  Why?  How can we talk about responsibility and follow up when all a kid has to do is get a parent to complain and the punishment goes away?  How can a Vice Principal at my school tell a teacher, before a child walks into their classroom to "Think pass" or the admin won't stand behind them if there are any consequences?  How does that teach any character education?  Why, when one of the best teachers I know, leaves the school because he's tired of keeping control of his classes but having to keep his head down in the hallway as he knows that if he intervened in anything he saw, he wouldn't be supported by the admin, is does this continue to happen? 

If we did step in the middle of things, we'd probably wind up on youtube, or having our own hate group on facebook, being told by the admin we deserve it.

All the staff can say, the more we read about CW Jeffreys is how eerily that school sounds exactly like ours.

The best part, we keep winning Bertelsmann awards.  Hoo-fucking-ray for us!

The way I see it, the press has done such a hatchet job on the teaching profession over the last decade and a half (let's call it the Mike "I got fired from teaching and this is my revenge" Harris-ing of education) that I think they'd choke on the amount of ink they'd have to eat if they realized how bad things have become.  The tragedy happened in the TDSB (and no, I'm not getting into a character debate about the victim.  It doesn't matter if he was an angel or a hellion, the one place he should able to be safe is the school bathroom!) but it could have happened anywhere.

In short, this isn't the TDSB's sole responsibility, no matter how desperately they're trying to shove it under a pile of reports and news releases.  This is a much bigger issue, except that nobody can see this, particularly the press, whose job, I thought, was to pay attention to these things.

Right now, the only people who are crying foul are the teachers, but who listens to them?  It's nice how the Toronto Star hides behind what the teachers write them, instead of saying "We actually looked into this ourselves, instead of publishing only one person's opinion so we can hide behind that in case the TDSB gets it's panties in a twist."  Cowards.

Not sincerely,

Spy.

A list of things I have not done since I left the house first thing this morning.

1)  Sit

2)  Eat

3)  Leave the library.  (I'm glad I only had one cup of coffee)

4)  Had a minute where there wasn't a crisis, as the end of first semester in summer school was today and all the teachers of the first semester had to have their marks in.

5)  HAd a single person listen to my instructions to try and circumvent #4.

So, I was going through last year's presentation, thinking about what needs to be changed. I edited the powerpoint, took look at the movie I made and...

I'm still really happy with it. Of course my bitchy presentation partner's stuff still needs to be added, so who knows what that means, but I'm happy with what I've got. (Okay, I'm damn proud of the movie.)

I talked to my grade 10's yesterday and asked if there was anything they'd want me to add. It was like opening the floodgates, so a few new things will have to be added next week.

All right, so, I usually only record silly travellingone quotes but this one I have to record was said by a colleague and I had to share.

One of the students was wondering around all day declaring herself Helen of Troy.  (It actually was for a project in one of her classes, she just chose to wear the laurel leaves all day.)

So I point out said student to a colleague -- the Latin teacher, because this would be the person to find the Helen of Troy thing hilarious.

Colleague turns around and responds, "That's nothing!  I feel like Helen of Troy everyday!"

Why did I find this funny?  Our Latin teacher is a guy.  A "I coach the cross-country team and a bunch of other sports" guy.

Stuff that I should be doing:

1) Organizing paperwork
2) Not stuffing paperwork into a bag
3) Marking -- I've got 72635 papers to mark and credit endangereds come out next week.
4) Thinking this weeked will be fun when I'm done numbers 1&2.
5) Not be disappointed that neither Supernatural or Numb3rs is on tonight. Stupid sweeps being over.
6) Finding my leather mini and seeing if it still fits for the party tomorrow.
7) Not be disappointed if 6 doesn't work out.

What I'm actually doing:
1) Not having fun
2) Not organizing my paperwork
3) Not marking.
4) Stressing over sick father. At least he's functioning now.
5) Procrastinating by writing on my LJ.