The ringing of the bell was almost like a combination of excitement of a new day and the twisting of the spine as his least favorites began to show up. Internally, he knew that he should love all 160 of his children, but there were a special few that were a pain in his ass on a daily basis. It was though his first period and the "little darlings" (as he referred to his 8th graders) were not quite awake and not as active. Then again, neither was he. The students had an unspoken agreement with him that they were not to test the boundaries too much.
The routine of starting off with a hook to capture their imaginations had a 80% chance of actually accomplishing that daunting task. Looking around, he mentally checked off who was with him and who wasn't. It was the brain-drifters that he began to work on to hopefully stir them from the morning stupors. His first class was typically his best and favorite class for many reasons. First of all they were a true mish-mash of regular learners, ELLs, special education, and some GTs sprinkled in. Next, they were the only class to have a population under 27. Finally, they just seemed to like his class, or really were good at pretending that they did.
The 45 minutes to teach the wonders of the Declaration of Independence came and went so quickly, the bell took them all by surprise, as it quite often did. Dismissing them, he looked at his desk calendar for the first time and realized that his conference was crowded once again with a meeting and an ARD conference. The meeting was held weekly and ARDs occurred at any time of the week. This time he was fortunate enough to have warning and began to gather information on the child that the conference was about. Trying to sneak out to catch the cafeteria staff before they threw out the coffee, he was able to dodge his department chair's roving eye.
Just barely making it before the second bell, he was just adding a bit of sugar to the concoction that barely passed for coffee when his chair's voice penetrated his slight musings. "You don't want to be late today." Her voice sliced through him like hot steel for it had that kind of tone from a teacher with too many years of experience; the kind that forgets when an adult is being addressed. He just mumbled through his first swallow and nodded. Looking at the clock, he had about 20 minutes before the ARD and made his way to the Chair's room where his fellow teachers were assembling.
Smiling at each of them he felt fond of them all knowing that they were a strong team who depended on each other for support. The Chair entered and all went silent, talking was a sure-fire way to earn a death stare. The meeting began with the usual flurry of half-felt compliments and litany of pressurized statements about the upcoming state assessments. Comments were made on the need to maintain bulletin boards and a schedule of classroom visitations from the administrations.
He was almost relieved to see the somewhat agitate counselor standing at the door, pounding her wrist, indicating that he was late for the ARD. Excusing himself from the droning of the department chair, he got up and made for the door. The counselor was prattling on about keeping schedules and so on. Arriving to the main office, he noticed that the parent was not there. Almost wanting to give an accusing stare, he walked slowly into the counselor's office and raised an inquiring eyebrow.
"Yes, I know," she bristled, "but we must maintain a sense of professionalism." Internally snorting, he crossed his arms and legs at the same time and stared at the clock. It seemed odd that he only had this one child for 45 minutes a day and he was required to be at this meeting and the parent was not. The meeting was delayed another fifteen minutes just in case the parent did decide to show up. Finally, the counselor began to shove papers left and right over to him for his signature. ARDs were quite often arduous and full of opportunities to sign. He always took his time to read over the paperwork to ensure that his students received the best services possible. Of course, this irritated the counselor to no end.
Finally, everything was signed and placed in its proper order. He got up and thanked the counselor for her time and then checked his watch. He had about 3 minutes left of his conference to take care of himself since he had another 90 minutes before lunch.
(to be continued)
-WTS
