It isn't 500K but it sure is entertaining.

Teachers, like most professionals, love to talk shop. We often talk about the incompetence - a running theme, strategic implementation, and the lives of the children. Since Shelby Middle School is recognized for its leading role in disastrous decision making it is the regular butt of jokes and point of comparison for other schools. My buddy G… put it well when he said, “My school is incompetent, but at least they don’t do anything, your school is filled with ambition and motivation to make life as painful as possible for everybody.”

We have entered the third nine-week period of the school year. The administration has granted us the right to create our own pacing guides and pre-tests. They of course gave us this information yesterday, once school had already begun. I tend to think it’s a workload cop out since we are supposed to be finishing our remaining benchmarks this 9-week period anyway.

We had a faculty meeting today. The principal, in classic SMS style, told us that this nine-week period would be cut two weeks short leaving us with a seven-week nine-week period. A cumulative exam will be given which will in turn allow us to see which benchmarks still need to be covered by the end of the year. My prediction is that the benchmarks that would have been taught in the last two weeks of the period will still need to be taught. You could here the buzz of hallway talk beginning to swell before the meeting ended.

On another note, word has it that one of my buddies, age 25, made half a mil this year. I wonder what kind of talent would be attracted to my current industry if they doubled the pay or implemented a merit based bonus system? Maybe slacker talent that likes to cheat on tests.