Cruella is Disturbed

Well, you already knew THAT, didn't you? But I have a new and Different sort of Being Disturbed!

Yes, kiddies, this week Cruella is Disturbed, and for reasons which remarkably have nothing to do with Trey- - -

The reason we are peeved is that last week another student was put into my class; one of the hurricane victim students. Now I already had 33 in that class, and then they put another one in from North Carolina this week, so now I have 35. I am only supposed to have 32. This is something of a problem because it’s first year French, which means that I really need to have a lot of interaction with the students and it is difficult to give all the students an opportunity to speak because of the sheer number. I’m happy I don’t have big 2^nd year classes. But I am finding most disturbing the fact that the student has never had French before- and has missed 8 weeks (!) of classes- and is in a very stressful situation already what with the hurricane and so forth, and says that she has to miss some school because of having to help her family with the hurricane re-establishment. Now, this is also a problem because the girl is in the 11^th grade and needs two years of foreign language to graduate in Georgia. There is no way that she is going to make it through this semester- because this student is not one of those who will catch up. She doesn’t seem to catch on- all the other students are beavering away on their work and she sits there stumm (I don’t know what that word is in English) with her book closed. I really don’t think, in high school, I should come round and ask O Honey why don’t you open your book? At this point, they should have that figured out. Besides, that is not me. I really don’t know what to do about this- I emailed her counselor, and the administration, and my department head, to see if she could wait until summer school to take the course and then take 2^nd year as a senior, but that is impossible unless she fails it first- she can’t take the course in summer school unless she fails it. This is rotten, if you ask me. They need to make an exception for her and some of the other hurricane victims, and let her take the course in summer school rather than fail it now. Or perhaps she can go to open campus. I am very concerned because I feel as though she will get discouraged if she fails this term, and drop out, and a failing grade is going to hurt her G.P.A. We are setting this child up to fail! So I am upset. I feel as though I have violated the unspoken teacher’s version of the Hippocratic oath.

Ooh, and the other thing that disturbed me greatly was that- there is a lady who teaches the Math part of the SAT in our school, so I generously offered to share all the materials I have accumulated over time with her, including some posters. Now she came to get the posters on Tuesday- and what was disturbing was that she was wearing the EXACT SAME OUTFIT that I was. The SAME dark gray chalk pinstripe suit and blue collared shirt. I was not prepared for this at all! I was seriously considering taking a picture and suggested it but never did- - -

In other news, Alex is being difficult (AGAIN). We had to remove all our previous commentary on this particular issue out of respect (believe it! Really!) for the people concerned. Next time I'll just change the names or write it up as a soap opera or something.

Incidentally, Daniel tried to make me embarrassed by pointing out that I was the “catcher”- and I put that in quotes so that slow people may understand that it is a euphemism (a fancy word meaning that Trey does not actually - - O, never mind.). Of course this did not embarrass me in the least. Why SHOULD it? As I pointed out, if Trey were pitching at you, you’d catch with alacrity.