Taking Off My Teacher Hat

and putting on my mommy hat.  Not always easy to do when you work in the same building as your colleagues.  I now understand why I had to be the bad guy for all those years when there was something that we were unhappy with in the classrooms and J was teaching in the same building.  For the 3 stooges, our youngest three, it is actually okay.  Even though I teach for the same school as the their teachers, I am in a different building.  So I am seen as just the mommy.  With N, he has joined my school now that he is in 6th grade and I don't like this.  Treading lightly is what you have to do when you are criticizing a colleagues lessons or procedures.  Treading lightly is not something I do well, literally or figuratively.  

This school year, I have pretty much stayed out of things.  We are in our 3rd and final term for this school year and I sent an email to all N's teachers.  We are working to find out where the delay is for him.  He loses it somewhere between his head and the paper.  Orally, he can tell you anything you want to know.  He is a wealth of knowledge.  With that, we have found that he does better with his laptop, as opposed to with paper and pencil.  Well, you'd think, being at a 1:1 laptop school, this would be a perfect fit for N.  Unfortunately, not all of my co-workers have tapped into their inner-geek like I have, ahem, despite "encouragement" from above.  So, many classes teachers are still not allowing OneNote for notetaking or to copy down spelling words, etc.  Makes me crazy. Ummm, why do you think everyone of these kids has a computer bag over their shoulder?  But, I digress...  I have tried subtle hints in the mail room, I have offered one to one time helping set up various programs or ideas. And, well, ummm, how do I put this lightly?


IT 
IS
JUST 
NOT
WORKING
!


So, I sent off my first email, requesting that he be allowed to use OneNote and that they encourage the use of the assignment notebook tab.  We'll see. I also asked if they were using Moodle or Canvas for their assignments, maybe a touch passive aggressive, ah well. Loose papers or even regular notebooks don't work with N.  I can always ask my teacher turned firefighter to come in and have a meeting with the staff if there is too much of an issue.


Now, I am going to go back to watching the snowfall and starting my weekend.  Happy Friday!