Stupid School Tricks

[Ms. Matterhorn]

It's only Wednesday, but here's how my week has gone so far:

Monday: A teacher from the room adjoining mine runs in to tell me to call the office because the LCD projector fell out of the ceiling! It barely missed a kid's head! That's bad enough, but when I went to the office during my prep, I told the AP-in-charge-of-facilities what happened. She barely stopped snapping her gum long enough to say, "Edgar (IT guy) will take care of it." (Can you say lawsuit?)

Monday, part 2. Kid has cell phone out, texting while she was supposed to be watching the video, "Christmas in Mexico". So I took her phone away, and while walking back to my desk, i tried to figure out how to turn the thing off. After school, the principal called me to tell me that the mother had complained that the girl told her I was scrolling through her text messages and reading them. As if!

Tuesday: Dumbass kid is using his cell phone during the video. He tried to hide it but I found it and took it away. After class, he said, "I wasn't texting, I was only playing a video game."

[Ms. Matterhorn]

Me:"A vdeo game? Is my class so boring that you have to play a video game to entertain youself?"

Dumbass: "Well I saw that video last year and I already know everything that's in it."

Me: "Well, then you should do just fine on the POP QUIZ I'm going to give the whole class tomorrow!

Tuesday, part 2:
I'm walking thru the library and see a kid sliding his cell phone under his book. I go over and grab it, asking "What do you think you're doing?" He says, "You don't have to yell, I'm right here." I said, "Oh, so you're a smartass too!' (I have tenure and a LOT of seniority!) He keeps ranting and I say, "I have your phone, and if you ever want to see it again, get out a pencil and a piece of paper and write down your name and ID number. It takes the idiot about 5 minutes to locate those common school supplies in his backpack. Then he asks me if he can just turn it off. I tell him,"No, the LAW requires that once I confiscate the phone, it cannot leave my hands until I hand it over to the principal" Hahahaha, that was a TOTAL LIE! :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

[delsdad]

At my daughters school, the kids are prohibited from having ANY electronics in their possession. There's a steady parade of kids dropping off phones and ipods in the morning at the office. If they are caught with it, they loose the phone or ipod for a week and the parents are called immediately. It seems to work !

[DisneyMom]

:twisted: Only phones allowed in school should be like my 10 year old Virgin Mobile Prepaid Phone that doesn't even take a picture-no distractions :twisted:

[GaTechGal]

Y'all must not have the jamming equipment that our school has. I have to go out of the building and several yards away in order to get a clear signal. And that's from the ROTC gym. I kind of miss back in the day when it was just notes in class and if you needed a phone, you had to go to the front office and queue up.

[sean1966]

I've done some work in university class rooms filming students. A lot of the students use laptops. What I've found is most of them are watching other stuff on their laptops. Watching hockey highlights, doing Facebook. Not paying any attention to the professor. Makes no sense to me. I'm not talking a few here, over 50% aren't paying attention...

[DragonFox98]

and this is why, despite my qualifications, I don't think I could be a teacher. :) I give you a round of applause, Ms. Matterhorn, for dealing with this crap. I just don't think I have the patience for it. I'm sorry you're having such a crappy week, but look on the bright side - winter break isn't too far away.

Hope it gets better!

[Mayonnaise]

I've done some work in university class rooms filming students. A lot of the students use laptops. What I've found is most of them are watching other stuff on their laptops. Watching hockey highlights, doing Facebook. Not paying any attention to the professor. Makes no sense to me. I'm not talking a few here, over 50% aren't paying attention...

I remember one of the calculus Professors at my alma-mater, (where laptops were not just popular, but actually required, each student had to prove they had one) had a little portable wireless internet jammer.

Of course that only meant his students were playing minesweeper instead of WoW... I mean not me because I suck at calc so I had to pay attention to pass...

When I was in highschool... and this wasn't THAT long ago, cellphones had to be left in lockers with videogames. The only electronics any student was allowed to have in a classroom was a dicsman (or if you were behind the times a walkman. Only one kid I knew had an MP3 Player. It was the size of a discman and could hold 30 whole CDs worth of music!) to be used only during work-time and only with teacher permission.

Or if you were on an IEP, which I was, you could have a PDA. I had a Palm m125... for which I am still occasionally nostalgic. (I don't know if it was a requirement but the only other kid I knew with one also had one on Palm OS, his was a Handspring Visor.) I used it thru the first two years of college too, till the ever-presence of my school required laptop caused it's obsolescence.

It did cause me some trouble once or twice with teachers who didn't read my IEP before they met me, asking me to put away my "Gameboy." Aside from one jerk Health Teacher who was apparently of the impression that having an IEP meant one was a delinquent and therefore I was lying, putting him on and surely trying to use the system to play games in his class, it was rarely a problem much beyond that. Heck, my physics teacher had an m130 so he never even mentioned it, except to compare model notes with me one day. of course his m130 kicked my m125's butt in that comparison.

8^)

[DisneyMom]

It did cause me some trouble once or twice with teachers who didn't read my IEP before they met me, asking me to put away my "Gameboy." Aside from one jerk Health Teacher who was apparently of the impression that having an IEP meant one was a delinquent and therefore I was lying, putting him on and surely trying to use the system to play games in his class, it was rarely a problem much beyond that. Heck, my physics teacher had an m130 so he never even mentioned it, except to compare model notes with me one day. of course his m130 kicked my m125's butt in that comparison.

8^)

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaagh! You hit on the PET PEEVE I had about my son's IEP!!!!
I had to REPEATEDLY insist the instructors READ it- several times they didn't figure out he was Autistic until halfway in the semester They just thought he was disruptive when he'd ask some off-the-wall question

[Mayonnaise]

Tell me about it. *Sighs.* In the 5th grade I had a math teacher who used to let the class pets loose in the room, and then send home notes to my mother about how I was choosing to pay attention to the loose animals in the room and not the teacher. Hello. Even a completely "normal" kid is likely to do that. I have distractability issues ant there's a fricking hamster-ball and a turtle running wild in the room!!!

I had to take a lot of responsibility for my own in High School, with so many teachers... point out things like "Excuse me I'm supposed to be seated near the front." It didn't always work tho, like in 10th grade I had a math teacher (my math teachers were never very good... I wonder if this is why I never liked math?) who sat me next to the only other kid in the class with an IEP (I know, that sort of thing isn't public knowledge, but as with many things, from the inside who does and doesn't have an IEP is pretty transparent.) front row center... all well and good except she had the desks arranged in twos abutting one another so you were literally right on top of your neighbor bumping elbows, and he was "Emotional Disturbed." I tried all year to get her to move me away from him, and she wouldn't stating her reasoning that I was the only one in the class she felt could put up with him (presumably because I'm also an IEP student... bullSHIT.)

*Sighs.*

Sometimes I wish there was IEPs for the real world... not that I want super special treatment or anything, but just that well frankly I'm not really sure why some places weight "soft skills" so strongly in for technical type people. I'm not dealing with customers. I live in a cube.

I'm very fond of where I work at the moment tho... they believe my technical skills outweigh my lack of "soft skills" here.

8^)