IS Days for me

IS days are built into our school calendar at the beginning of each school term. These are days that students are not required to attended school, but teachers do. At my first school appointment, we used these days to do things in our classroom, such as clean, prepare materials and plan. This helped a great deal. I could rearrange seating plans, post new material on walls, decorate for upcoming holidays, grade papers that have piled up and file materials so that they were easy to find in my file cabinets. I could also take time to review student work and plan for individual strategies to help those students. I had less to take home to do and more time with my family for a week or so. We also had a staff meeting that usually lasted only about an hour or so.


IS days at my current school is set up differently. We are required to send home invitations for students who need help to attend these days. I sent 7 invitations this time. Two of which decided to attend; a brother and sister pair that are both in the same grade. I teach reading, while another teacher does the math. She sent home about 6 invitations, One came. She did not work on IS day.


Here is the way the day transpired.


I arrived at the school at 8:00, my normal time. I went straight to my room and began to work on trying to get a online test posted for my students for Monday, to no avail. The math specialist came in to tell me that she would take my attendees for the first 30 minutes and send them to me at 9:30. I state that would be fine. I prepare graphic organizers, for each of the three students to take home to use when they read and write.

At 9:30 the three students enter my classroom. I explain the graphic organizers to them and allow them to sit at the computers and work on Riverdeep (a program that works with reading, language, vocabulary, and math). They are only allowed to work with reading. During this time, my boss enters the room to ask me if I would take time later that day to show a colleague how to get her lesson plans from the success net website. At 10:15 I send the three to our title one teacher, why I'm not sure, because our math specialist tells me to.


I leave my room and travel downstairs to the first grade classroom with my lesson plans in hand. I show these to the teacher and she informs me that she is not about to do hers like mine. Yes, mine are detailed and time consuming. I spend about 30 minutes talking with her and the 2nd/3rd grade teacher. I leave her room and travel up two flights of stairs to the cafeteria.


Title one has scheduled a fund raiser today as well and asked me on a previous day if I would help. We are selling spaghetti and ham dinners for pick up by the community. I arrive to find that only one person is helping beside me. Surprise! I jump in with both feet and help. At around 12:00 other teachers arrive to eat their lunch, while the other teacher and I are still preparing dinners for the fundraiser.


At 12:25 my boss arrives to find us still working on dinners. She informs us that we will be having a faculty meeting at 12:30. Wait! We haven't had our lunch break yet! I want to say, but I don't. I are almost done with the dinners, so I leave to get my lunch. I walk into the staff lunch room and heat my can of beef stew. I tell those in attendance that I would see them after I eat.


I never eat in the lunch room for one major reason. Lunch time is the only time in the day that I can have my addiction, a cigarette. I have to go outside to my car. Drive off of school grounds and park at the top of the hill in a wide spot to have one. I eat my stew and smoke one cigarette. It takes me about 15 minutes to do this. I immediately drive back to the school and back to work.


I walk into the room expecting someone to say, Where have you been?, and I am ready (not in the mood for any lip). No one says a thing. We have a staff meeting until 2:15 and we are told we can leave today at 3:00. Now I can finally get back to my room. Wow! a whole 45 minutes to spend on what I want to do! Catch me I'm falling!


I walk into the room and begin by cleaning the blackboard; it's now shiny and black. I rearrange the student desks into groups of 6. I clean the tops of all 24 desks, they were nasty. I shut down the four computers located in the room and gather my stuff. I have a rolling crate and today it is filled to the top with books, papers and manuals. I guess I will be spending my Saturday on work.

I walk out the door at 3:15. I would call this a wasted IS day. Nothing important was accomplished and I still will have to take my own time this weekend to complete work I should have had the chance to do in school today. I guess my point is, why invite these students for reading help? I can't move ahead, because I just have to teach the rest of the class at a later time. Math help was playing games on the Internet, no specialized help there. What was the purpose? I know! I know! To make the school look good, on our days free, we invite students and do things for the community.