March Madness

Mr. C, my co-TA teacher, is setting up his bracket. A half dozen TA students, randomly assembled, are choosing each match-up winner for him as he enters the info into his laptop. There is a men’s bracket and a women’s bracket at TJ this year. 

Meanwhile, for the past two weeks Student K, who is chronically absent from school, has spent every day she’s been here doing test make-ups for the ACCESS sub-tests and then yesterday, the NAEP. Because of all these make-ups and the absences themselves, she is so far behind in every class that coming to school is an overwhelming burden each day.

Speaking of the ACCESS, that albatross of an English proficiency test has finally left the building after taking up residence in our classrooms for all of three weeks. Four sub tests that each require 45 to 60 minutes for over 250 students to complete, while missing all that class time, is beyond madness.

The NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress), for which students are randomly selected, is shrouded in enough vagueness that the opportunity for parents to opt out their student is virtually nonexistent. Nevertheless, one of our TA students faced down the tenacious federal testing official, to whom he latched on like a dog to a bone, until she finally relented and put him down as “refused test”.

That’s right… a test of national educational progress in a nation that is currently dismantling its federal Department of Education.

March madness indeed.

Your Voice Matters

Every time I leave an appointment, use a service, buy a product, or turn around, someone wants me to fill out a survey. Data! We need data! How can we improve our service, product, market position, prospectus, etc. without YOUR input?! I am weary of surveys. I dare say we are all weary of surveys. Even my TA students are weary of surveys!

One of the several surveys that students and teachers take at school twice a year is the “Your Voice Matters” survey put out by our school district. Our voice matters! But does it really? My students often wonder, and so do I. Is it our VOICE that matters? Or our survey participation that matters? Participation alone is often the data point they seek. “We need 80% participation,” they say. Why? Does my voice only matter if 80% of my colleagues participate? Wouldn’t non-participation tell them something they need to know?

There is no place on this survey to speak originally. No free answer questions. Only categories to click: Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree. We have to instantaneously form an opinion if we don’t have one already. Or go eenie-meenie-miny-moe. 

So really, does MY voice actually MATTER?

Much Ado About Something

I’ve been home from school for about four hours now - enough time to watch the Oscars that we recorded last night -  but other than a bit of rain, the “severe weather” that we are expecting has not arrived. Not that we need it to arrive.

This past weekend I spent an hour just picking up limbs of all sizes from the backyard. I do love my trees, and I understand that this is the price I pay for my expanding canopy. I filled the whole yard waste bin with those limbs. There is no room left for whatever is going to come down this evening.

They are saying “around 8:30pm”. So we’ll see…

Fan Interferece

We’re halfway between the Winter Olympics and the opening days of Major League Baseball. Spring is oh-so-close, and yet still not quite around the corner. Enter the World Baseball Classic!

Featuring espresso in the dugout, for Team Italia, and a Dominican Republic lineup that is ready and able to kick USA butt, these games have been exciting from start to finish. Many MLB players chose to honor the heritage of one parent or the other by playing for a team other than the USA. This dilutes the talent pool across teams and creates exciting match-ups day after day.

While the players are missing part of their traditional Spring Training in order to compete, this event is a reasonable substitute for them. It’s also like Spring Training for fans. Especially for the one poor guy who reacted wrongly, but understandably, in reaching over the yellow line on top of the outfield fence, and down far enough to catch a ball still in play. 

His initial jubilation at catching what he assumed to be a certain grand slam heading straight for his seat gradually descended into face-in-glove despair when he realized the ruling. The camera roasted him an embarrassing number of times, but thankfully the outcome of this game is not likely to turn on his play.

Grounded

I’ve referred to the phenomenon of Frequent Flyers at school once before, and I am linking that post here.

Once again we find ourselves in the twilight zone between Spring approaching and Spring Break still a couple weeks away. Last week in our 8th grade team meeting we collectively decided that we needed to add several more students to the No Fly List.

This morning a colleague who was reviewing notes from the Leadership Meeting held yesterday remarked at how emblematic our current school-wide “No Fly List” is of the middle school arc in general:

6th grade: 1 student

7th grade: 4 students

8th grade: 28 students

It’s very grounding to me to keep that arc in mind, realizing that those 28 eighth grade students will all have a fresh start next year in their respective high schools.

Remember to breathe. Remind your students to breathe. Especially if they are eighth graders.

Cat on a Hot Shingled Roof

The warmer days of early Spring have spawned some unusual activities within the wild kingdom of my Douglas Park neighborhood.

Early this morning, one neighbor posted the following FYI on our neighborhood listserv.

"Just saw a very fast fox chase a black cat across my backyard [1700 block of South Pollard Street].            Hopefully the cat was faster than the fox. Providing as an FYI for those who have outdoor pets."

A reply to her FYI by a second neighbor reported another concerning event:

"A few days ago a huge vulture feasted for a long time on a dead squirrel on the roof of a neighbor's backyard building on South Monroe near South 12th Street."

So imagine my concern when I arrived home on this first 80 degree day of 2026 to some breaking news of our own: the more adventurous of our two seven month old kittens had stranded herself on our front porch roof! 

Apparently she'd pushed through a screen in the upstairs office window and could not figure out how to get back inside. Fortunately, my son heard her confused meows when he headed outside to take his daily walk and was able to coax her back inside from upstairs.

So now we have collectively placed restrictions of 1-2 inches on bottom-up window maneuvers, favoring instead the safer top-down maneuvers for the foreseeable future! 

How Lucky Am I?!

Being an Emotional Support Person is a job that entails precision. My desk sits in the same alcove as my client, but facing 90 degrees to the right. Close enough to be a sounding board, but not in the line of vision. 

Being an Emotional Support Person is a job that entails boundaries. If her headphones are on or her “in a meeting” tent card faces forward, she’s either in a meeting or doing intense spreadsheet work. 

Being an Emotional Support Person is a job that entails personal sacrifice. It’s a gorgeous early Spring day, close to 80 degrees outside, and I’m sitting here in this windowless room giving moral support at 4:00pm, until tomorrow’s ACCESS make-up schedule, test tickets, and related emails for are complete.

Being an Emotional Support Person is a job that does not go unnoticed. I receive more kudos from my client than she receives from her Admin team, even though she has taken on the Herculean task of coordinating all of the WIDA ACCESS testing for 275 English Learner students in our building.

I do this job because my client is an Extra Special Person.

But really, I ask myself, how lucky am I to sit in this cramped, windowless, mice-ridden room, in a fifty-five year old building that is falling down around us, working late with my two all-time favorite colleagues, knocking out our desk work in preparation for the last day of make-up testing, our upcoming Student-Led Parent/Teacher conferences, or any other task that comes our way?

Pretty lucky indeed!