Doing Everyone Else's Job

That was the story of the week and it was a hellish one. I am about to halt my science curriculum for a while to work on math with my students. We have a high percent of kids who are looking like they will fail the Math TAKS test. When we got this news I felt that the best thing for the kids would be more time with math and offered to rearrange my curriculum to give time for math instruction. It's too bad that it has come to this but as Spence Rogers says "Our kids are worth whatever it takes." So here goes nothing. I hope it helps because the math teacher of most of my students is refusing to tutor due to "health issues" so this will be very important extra help for them.

I also received word that I am going to be attending Family Leader Meetings starting next week (our grade level faculty is broken up into families who have most of the same students and we meet each week to disperse info and talk about students). I'll probably start doing her duties as well. I'm not sure I'll be getting the pay for this but it needs to happen because our current family leader is having health issues that are affecting her ability to do the job.

My neighboring science teacher recently had liver surgery to remove some benign tumors. It was successful and she is doing well. Her long term sub however got "sick" for 2 days this week and didn't leave anything for the subs and here comes Jill to the rescue AGAIN. I also covered an ARD meeting for another teacher who just didn't attend on Wednesday. I was called to do it again the following day but my wonderful Assistant Principal told me I wasn't to cover for her again and that my conference period was mine. She really was the joy in all of this. She knows I will do what has to be done to get the job done but doesn't abuse that about me. She asks what she needs to of me and then lets me do my job and have the time I need. Thanks Karen! She makes my job good on those bad days. She has also had a really rough week but took it all in stride. When my rough week started to show up on my countenance, she made sure I was taken care of at work. She was meant to be a boss and is great at it.