Peter Kupfer's Blog

Hello…

Summer has begun and it is a little boring. I went to camp for a week which was nice. I did a lot of manual labor and came back 5 pounds heavier. I am telling myself it is muscle, but I ate a lot of food while I was there, so I’m not so sure. I actually bought new shows yesterday which is rare for me. They are of the slip on variety with no laces. Something new for me, but a fun little change.

While at camp I did a lot of hiking and some alone thinking and I am really being eaten up inside that I really pissed off a friend and I don’t know how to make things better. I am mailing a card now to that effect, we’ll see.

Next week I am off to my physics conference for 3 weeks with sweet, sweet dorm food. I get to learn about teaching physics using models. I don’t fully know what that means, but it is supposed to be pretty sweet. Then I return and football camp starts and then it is downhill until school starts up.

I am supposed to study for my GRE some time this summer, but I have been pushing that off. I guess it has only been 2 weeks since school ended, but it is going to fly past. Although, after this physics thing, I have very little else to do.

All for now.

Popularity: unranked [?]

New Challenges…

One of my co-workers is very sick and so now I have been thrust up to teaching AP Physics-C (The C stands for Calculus). This is a very scary proposition since I haven’t used calc since college and really not since junior year. It is only for a limited time (we think) so I think I will survive, but I am apprehensive.

All is going. I learned recently that I don’t get paid for another 15 days which means almost 1 month with no paycheck, coupled with a lack of sub calls for Gina, this means very little income. But bills have been shuffled, and all will be well, I think.

If you know of a school looking for an el. ed. teacher, let me know.

Football is going well, although it is sukcing up A LOT of my time. This is the first Saturday I have had off, but I had to trapse up to the doctor to get a referral now that I have ventured into the exciting world of HMOs.

The cat is healthy, so all is not bad.

Take care.

Popularity: unranked [?]

New Job…

So, I have a new job. I will be teaching at Lake Zurich high school next year.

Part of me felt odd/wrong that I would be getting a job were I will be doing less work, easier work, and being paid more.

Then a very wise friend of mine said, “perhaps you’re looking at it from the wrong perspective.. Maybe you were doing more work, harder work, and you weren’t being compensated appropriately”

That totally blew my mind.

Popularity: unranked [?]

The Real Survivor Show

An e-mail I recently received from a teacher friend:

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, tornadoes, and shooting attacks. They must attend workshops, faculty meetings, union meetings, and 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 End of Grade 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 and 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 20 minutes. On days when they do not have recess duty, the business people will be permitted to 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–if there is enough paper and ink.

The business people must continually advance the 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 all benefit.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Motivation

Some of my students (I’m not sure how many were involved) played a trick on me today. I found it to be very rude, but they of course didn’t.

I let a student go to the bathroom, and he was gone for a while. Another student kept asking about it and I let him go check it out. He came back and said the first one was stuck in the toilet. I sent a second to try to help, and he came back with a similar report.

I was concerned, and the class was laughing about it and I talked to them about how rude they were being and that they needed to be sensitive. They just kept laughing.

During this, we were trying to study for the final the next class period. This whole episode took about 25 – 30 minutes and pretty much distracted the whole class. There were three main instigators. 2 will probably fail regardless, and the others will probably get an A, so the review didn’t matter for them, but others were trying to listen.

Anyway, it turns out that the student who was allegedly in the bathroom had been hiding in the room the whole time.

In general, I don’t like pranks, but this is my least favorite kind of prank, because it preys on people’s trust and caring. I was generally concerned for this student’s health and was trying to make sure the class wouldn’t make fun of him when he returned while he was in the room laughing at me the whole time. It destroys my trust a little in every student.

It did make me realize something though, and if you are ever dealing with a teacher again, remember this. There aren’t a whole lot of extrinsic rewards to teaching, so what has to drive me, are intrinsic rewards. These intrinsic rewards are why I became a teacher, to help students learn things and to try and school fun and worthwhile for them. Events like the one I just described really kill my intrinsic drive to teach. I used to think it was the only thing I could ever do, but now a days a lot of other things are looking attractive. So, if you are parent or a student, please remember this.

Popularity: unranked [?]

The problem with schools…

This is problem: Schools hire good people.

I know you are all (the two of you at least) are thinking that I am crazy, but here is my logic.

I hate that many of my students don’t take responsibility and come & remember to take their late test and do their missing work. So, I go and hunt them. Even after I have done this, most of them still don’t do the homework (even though I hand it to them while they are sitting in study hall) and all I have really accomplished is enabling their behavior. In many ways, I am just perpetuating the behavior that I hate!

Why do I do this? Because I am a good person, I don’t want to see people fail. This problem is pervasive in our school & in all schools. Teachers and school employees enable the behavior that we hate because we care about students and think we are helping them. Maybe we are really hurting them by taking all of the responsibility off of their shoulders? At what point/age do we assume that people should start being responsible for themselves? Does it change for special needs kids? (I guess that is rhetorical, because it has to legally whether it should or not.)

I don’t have the answers. If I did I would be rich and writing books. I really don’t think anyone has the answers, or else we would all know what to do. I often wonder if I can handle this job.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Positive Enegry

There is no positive energy source in my school right now. People are either mourning a person who died a year ago, upset about the new gradebook disaster, or overworked to the point where they have forgotten why they went into teaching in the first place. It is not a happy place to be.

How though, do you find a positive energy source. Every time we talk around here, it is about a problem. There is positivity coming from any where. I am in the mopey mood, and I don’t know how to break out of it and be the positive energy, because I really don’t have much to be positive about.

It is a vicious cycle. I have negative energy so I go talk to people and there is more negative energy there. I can’t change there negative energy because I have no positive energy myself. I don’t want to complain it, because that will just lead to more negative energy. So, I turn to the anonymity of the internet to vent, and I probably just depressing people here.

Sorry about that.

Popularity: unranked [?]