Another School Rant

I can't help myself. I am so angry that I need to vent. I HATE junior high. I especially HATE junior high math and at this point it is taking everything in me not to tell Nico that I don't care what he gets in math this quarter. I just want him to be done. We decided to drop him down because we cannot go through another year the way the last two have been. I went back and looked at his grades and ISAT scores up to 6th grade to see if there were any red flags that would lead him to struggle this much and as I suspected, there were none. I'm telling you...teachers have more power and influence than we think. As a teacher, if more than half my class failed, I would think something went wrong with the way I taught it and I would throw the tests away and reteach it. Am I alone in that? How can a teacher feel good about what she has taught if more than half her class failed? Apparently, the teachers where Nico goes to school don't feel that way and they don't even give them a chance to fix their mistakes. An "F" is an "F" and that is it. I am so done with this subject. I like his teacher in that she has never given up on Nico but lately some of her decisions and comments have been irritating. First, and this was not just Nico's fault, we had a time management issue when he went back on his twice a day treatment. He had a baseball game and a huge homework assignment. He didn't get it finished and my kids are so trained to not use CF as an excuse that when she asked him why he didn't finish, he said it was because of baseball, which it was but since they only do the twice a day treatment every other month, we forgot what it was like to have the treatment and baseball and homework. Nico struggles with math homework when it is quiet. There was no way he could concentrate on what he was doing while the treatment was running. She sent me an email and I explained what happened. I revoked the 504 plan so I expected that his grade was what it was and didn't want special treatment. Lesson learned and we would make adjustments. I did not like when she said that Nico said he put baseball ahead of academics. I wanted to say that I wouldn't blame him for putting baseball first. He's getting a lot more out of baseball than he is math at this point. I didn't say that. I didn't say anything because I don't have anything nice to say at this point. Then, last night, after half the kids failed her test, she assigned 80 math problems. Nico finished 20 of them in her class and had 60 left to do. Wouldn't it figure that he had a baseball game last night? He hit two doubles, he caught and threw a guy out at 2nd and pitched three innings. He came home with a big smile because they won their game so a future as a mathematician? Probably not. Baseball player? Maybe...

(The reality is that I can see him as a middle school social studies or language arts teacher and coaching. Not that I don't think he has what it takes but he is only 13, so I have no idea if he has what it takes.)