(Suspicious moans have been heard from the district board office, but no one has gone to explore the little brick building across the street. Frankly, Jocelyn is pretty sure she will be better off if that office is now filled with zombies. Nobody inside has appeared to be using their brains for quite some time now, but they keep issuing directives anyway. With luck, her administrators will be unable to figure out how to open the office doors and will remain trapped inside, unable to figure out how to work their phones and computers. If so, we will all be better off.)
Where are the posts, you say? Where has she gone? She is busy building spreadsheets, trying to find spreadsheets, and trying to tease useful data out of spreadsheets. She does not intend to bitch about her job in this blog, so that’s enough said about spreadsheets. This year’s crop of students have been hit up the side of the head by increasingly rigorous academic requirements. Scores have been so low for so long that she is willing to try to teach the new requirements, whether students are willing to board this train or not. They’ll get on the train eventually.
She plans to drive to North Chicago this Saturday morning to tutor a group of boys at McDonalds. She even intends to feed them. A few years ago, a guy named Francisco Rodriguez took a group of similar kids and managed to get a few of them into high school honors math classes. Right now, her group consists mostly of the hopelessly lost who keep trying anyway. Soon she’ll add the ‘somewhat less lost than most of them’ and see what she can do.
So that’s Jocelyn’s latest.
As to the moans across the street and the probable zombification of all her district administrators, Jocelyn wishes to quote Stephen King in “The Stand.”
“No great loss.”
She does not understand how inability to read one’s tests does not at least merit a discussion on possibly, just possibly, adapting tests and materials to meet student needs.
