{"id":39,"date":"2003-05-01T09:25:27","date_gmt":"2003-05-01T13:25:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lopeyland.com\/?p=39"},"modified":"2006-06-29T18:12:25","modified_gmt":"2006-06-29T22:12:25","slug":"teaching-8th-grade-proms-etc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/?p=39","title":{"rendered":"Teaching, 8th grade proms, etc."},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to another day in the continuing struggle of my wife. Believe it or not, Laureen teaches in a place that holds an eighth grade prom. I kinda wondered about that, but I realized that sadly, for some of these kids, that’s as far as they’re going to go, whether it be by choice or by default.Anyway, the prom is coming up, plus many other social events (trip to six flags, movie days, etc.), and so the kids are really wanting to go. However, there’s a slight catch: you have to be a good student (where good = studious, hardworking, no trips to the office, no infractions of any kind, etc.). One of the girls (I’ll call her S) has already purchased her prom dress at a cost of approximately $125. It also costs $30 for a ticket to the prom. Of course, S is a discipline case. She obeys only the rules she feels like obeying. So after school yesterday, S comes to Laureen’s classroom and asks if Laureen would put in a good word for her with the pod leader, Mama G. Background info: Laureen’s school is divided into “pods” with each holding approximately 130 students.<\/em> Mama G is a resilient teacher who has been through the wars, both here and other places, and she’s tough as nails when it comes to dealing with students.<\/p>\n

Now, S has been to pod court before. She’s failed at least one class. She’s been to the office on quite a few occasions. You get the picture. So when she asked Laureen if Laureen would put in a good word, Laureen’s words were “I’ll tell Mama G. what I’ll tell your parents when I call them.” (Insert ominous music here.)<\/p>\n

S gets the idea that Laureen isn’t going to say a good word. S then asks Laureen if she could ask another teacher to put in a good word, even though S doesn’t want to ask that other teacher herself. Laureen says she will, knowing full well what that other teacher thinks of S.<\/p>\n

So Laureen goes to Mama G. Mama G. expresses what would be called a certain amount of frustration and notes that she’s had 25 messages from parents about why their kids can’t go to event X or event Y. “We send home three failure notices, and they don’t call. We call them and leave a message, and they don’t call. We tell them their kid is in Pod Court for a hearing with all of her teachers and it would be great if at least one of them could be there, and they don’t call or show up. But when their kid doesn’t get to go to a special activity…then, they call.”<\/p>\n

Sigh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome to another day in the continuing struggle of my wife. Believe it or not, Laureen teaches in a place that holds an eighth grade prom. I kinda wondered about that, but I realized that sadly, for some of these kids, that’s as far as they’re going to go, whether it be by choice or … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Teaching, 8th grade proms, etc.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-perspectives","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}