End of the Year vid

So this video came from my phone a few months back.  I'm not trying to embarrass my teacher or the kids, we were having a bit of fun one day, and I was able to capture the events on my phone.  We are an A.N. room with a majority male population, and a male lead teacher--so of course there will be a bit of competitive spirit in the air.  I know this post is kinda random, but it's been that kinda year...

Random Pics, some repeats, and maybe some poetry, or commentary

Sooooo....it's Tuesday, and instead of doing an intricate doodle, I cleaned out my phone of pics from this year, and decided to post them.  Some of them are repeats, some not.  The other thing is I will post either some poetry, or do some commentary about the pics.  

 I decided to keep the pics kinda small as to somewhat protect the identity of the kids involved but, well...you get the jest right...hope so.  At the park we took a small group, and we had a good time.  We did have a snowball fight that day, which was....AWSOME!!

 Yep, I had some zip-line trip stuff on my phone, so, I wanted to make sure they were somewhere before I totally deleted them after.  So if there are repeats here, sorry, sometime a picture is like food, it gets better the second go-round!

This was a pretty fun day.  We had the boys work the majority of the morning and then go outside. (Don't worry, it was a beautiful spring day)  But this was a team-building activity we did with the boys.  Mr. Gilbert had a couple of pipes he taped together and filled with water.  The boys had to act as a team and carry the pipe around the soccer field.  They struggled, and only two gave up...I kinda felt like it was a win for them...they tried hard and the majority didn't quit.

So this is the end of the pictures.  I think I'll come back this afternoon and maybe do some more.  For now (5/14/14 @ 11:38am) this is it.











I wanted to come back to this doodle because I doodled an absolute fact.  At my school the criteria for passing onto the next grade level is to ATTEND 95% or better of the time, however the MASTERY OF CONTENT is ONLY 60% or better??....Is it just me, or is something not adding up?  So what my school is saying is "if you attend, you can pass."  At least that's my understanding of it, because what child really learns if they're only mastering 60% of the information?  So if you're at school every day, but not paying attention in your class, then you still pass???---sounds like some Affective Needs/SPED shit to me.

And unfortunately, this is a school-wide policy, not a special ed. policy!  I did say this would be commentary, not a fuss session, so I won't get all ethnic about what I think of the statement, however I will state it is not the best thought out statement.  Now I know with our SPED children, a 95/60 ratio may be pretty good, but this is due to factors such as unstable home-life, poor decision making abilities, and having arguments over how bad or good the Raiders are.  

My boys are super loud and it's pretty hard to concentrate here, so I'm going to check out amazon and feel better about my life.....

Survived the Week of the Sub 5/5-5/10

So as stated in the previous post (I believe) we had a substitute for the majority of Wednesday, and all the rest of the week.  To kill the suspense....we killed it!!!  For the most part, our kids (boys majority) did a great job of respecting the substitute and listening/following our directions/directives.  I was so very proud of them, they did surprise me a great deal.  Behavior- wise, we only had one "problem child", but the others did very well maintaining themselves.  Now I admit, I was pretty worried that they would blow their stack, or not listen to anything we said, but they didn't.  We had no major incidents, and not one time did the school security officer had to visit our room. 

(will be inserting doodles here)

So the week was like a fun week; we worked on some poetry, (I performed for the class :) ), we made paper-mache piggy bank, and of course we got some work in.  Here are a few photos of us getting our pigs painted.

 This was our wonderful Sub Ms.Tambiens...or Ms. T for short!

And today, Mr. Gilbert has returned and so far, so good.  The boys are pretty much behaved, the paras are relaxed, and we got donuts!!!...I'll update this entry later on

....And here is the doodle from today Monday 5/12/14

5-4 Update!!....and poetry

Well, well, here we are once again, updating the last bit of blog we got folks.  It's 5-4-14 around 12 AM, and I am doing my damn-dest to get this done and get it out.  I want to give thanks to anyone who has come by and checked out the blog, the doodles, and the poetry.  Even if you are not commenting, you're at least viewing, and that is a big help.  I do appreciate comments, so don't be afraid to comment.  I'm actually sitting here watching the muppet most wanted movie because I kept telling myself that I was going to go and watch it, but when I went out today, I never made it to the movies...sad face.  It has been a hell of a week, but on to the doodles...I'll get to the week as the doodles go on....

So Wed the 23rd wasn't too bad of a day, the kids did what they needed to do, and overall the week was pretty good...but that wasn't last week--the week of the 1st....onto Monday.  Sorry I don't have doodles for Thurs. the 24th or Friday the 25th; I did attend work, but I must have been working...lol

Monday was a trip because I had hella errands to run so I wasn't really focused on the room, however, Mr. G. did continue to prep the boys for our first ever sub.  She will be there this week, on Wed, Thurs, and Fri, so there may not be doodles, but hopefully I'll be able to post some stuff.  Also on Monday, I was looking at my horoscope and I learned a new word which fits me perfectly: Plegmatic!!  It means not easily excited; calm composed.  I thought it was fitting, so I did a doodle around it, and tried to make a scorpio....that didn't work out too well though...lol...onto the next

I had to combine Tues and Wed because we were re-affirming good decision making to our boys.  They continue struggling with their behaviors ie rudeness, entitlement, etc, but we continue keeping on them.  Also on these days, I was doing some clothes shopping because it was close to the end of the month and I was suffering from my shopping addiction.  However, our children do love structure even though they fight against it tooth and nail.  Also on these two days, I began training at EYC for supervisor sub.  I was dog ass tired all week, but I worked it out!!

Thursday was the first of May, and I was late due to having to run around and getting my rent paid.  My apartment complex is on some bs and I gotta go through ACE check cashing to pay my rent, it ridonkulous, but I had to do it....side note, the muppet movie is classic muppet shenanagans...I love it!!!  Also on Thursday I got a email from a band that I had started to set some things up, (or so I thought) and then they flipped the script and said that I was too much of an artist to be a sax player with their band.  It irritated the shit out of me, and I'm going to work on a response poem for them.  But yea, Thursday was good in the fact that I was nearing the end of my week--I was, dog ass tired.

Friday, I ended up doing two doodle, one at school, one at EYC.  They're not too detailed because I was working and on top of stuff.  So the week was rough, and hecktic, but I will love my check :)  I am going to leave you with this poem I'd been working on, and posted on facebook, so I hope u enjoy it....and hopefully next week won't be too hard....love peace and hair-grease till next week!!

Inverse

Gone are smokey lounges and

platform shoes, with big hair

under disco balls.

Ramona is no longer brave,

Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys

failed to solve the mystery, as

young eyes become

increasingly old

behind  

soft, glowing, touch activated

screens.

Libraries,

no longer exist--

So….how do I cite that

website, again?

There is

no more,

“or else”

because,

the pages teachers are on,

are not

the same books administrators use.

Expired are teachers

with,

Little House on the Prairie dresses

or

Misters with neck ties and

tight buttoned collars.

Gone

is the teaching of respect.

Split

are two parent households.

Absent

is the strap, or

belt.

A two-fold tool

that daddies had;

one,

because he wore the pants, and

two,

because he was discipline.

Gone

is the stability

of two parent households.

Mamas are still around--(though)

changing, evolving, or

de-evolving,

as the case may be.

Sending their girls to school

like they’re

“ladies of the night”,

strollin’ the street.

Little boys,

not much better,

waddling side to

side, like

fat ducks

on rippled waves

pants,

can’t rise

to the occasion.

AWOL seems to be

the community;

no mo’ candy lady, or

Aunties in windows all night.

We just,

neighborhood watchin’

ready to fight

when hooded youngsters come around….

Entitled to our gun because

the government told you to

Stand Your Ground.

AWOL seems to be

the community;

we got

preachers for profit,

doin’ more than

store-front screamin’,

they gettin’ down on

reality t.v.

And apparently,

catholic preachers

took a powder, pumpin’

little boys,

full of sin.

God may be an absentee land-lord,

as christians hold on to

the tale of the

second comin.

Gone are

smoky lounges and

platform shoes;

no more

“or else”;

un-present are

two parent households,

along with discipline,

respect and stability;

AWOL is the community,

and god is,

an absentee landlord.

Moral standard

which would seem to

last forever,

has sunken into soil

sprouting a yield

which is a far cry from

“the greatest generation,”

atomic revolutions,

and great-grand-babies

of integration.

No longer do we

actually hope, or

actualize change

in our cornea’s REM moments,

veiled under skin.

Alarm clock sounds

causing the opening of pores

and moments of

never more, continue.

©2014 C.Barbee

Update 4/23

So....please excuse these latest doodles, I'm at work away from my scanner, so I had to do this via "dumb-ass, smart phone."  It's 2:53pm and hopefully I can actually get this updated.  So here goes with the first one....it's actually not the first one, its the second, but maybe I'll be able to fix it later

Sorry if the doodles are not as clear, had to take a phone pic instead of scanning them in.  So it's like Friday, I started updating this thing on like Wednesday, so I'm just gonna doodle it up on this and then hopefully come back and do some writing about some decent news from eyc....heeeerrreeessssss doodle!!

yea, the pencil doodles didn't do as well as what I thought...sorry, maybe I'll get a chance to update and scan them in to see if they'll do better.

Random Stuff--April

So every month we do a "character trait" which is suppose to define certain words and traits for our kids.  This past month (March) was "perserverance", and I did like the kids did and produced a poster for it.  This was my poster, and it contains things like the definition, as well as things that I am perserving with--such as trying to get to work on time.  I liked doing this, because it gave me a break on doodling.  It also gave me a bit of strength to keep going on with this blog.

See, either no one reads this blog, or at least no one comments on it, so lately it's been hard for me to come home, scan in the doodle then try and blog about the happenings of the day.  So today (4/14/14) I am perservering and updating the damn blog....lol.  So here are the doodles....

So this is the 3-26 doodle...and as you can see, it was done around the time of the zip-line trip.  The day we went was a great day, I've already bragged on my boys, but really I had a lot of fun, the boys did too, so i had to do a doodle about it.  And you may see something about me screaming, or special ed para's being special...because I screamed and para's are special!!...lol, on to the next.

So after our field trip zip-lining, we went on break for a week and a day.  I say a day because I got a ride to go on Monday, because I found out my DUI case was fucked and I'm not suppose to drive.  However Tuesday we talked about affirmation statements, which was great!  We went around writing down positive affirmation statements about each other.  It was nice; one of the boys put down that "my boots were thoughtful"...I thought it was classic so I put it in my doodle.  BTW...if you want to use my doodle for a screen saver or anything like that....please do, we all need confirmations in our affirmations.

Forgive me for putting two days on one, but I got an assignment from my teacher to do some grades, so I was mostly doing that for these two days.  However IDK was the phrase of those days, so thats what I put in and put down.  I did get some insight about some of the suspects that I had about the room....thats why there is a note about the politics of the room....boys that look like me will always be profiled...just sayin

So apparently Friday was poetry day, I don't think its a
good piece, but sometime you gotta go thru some shit to get somethin good.



Dear me; you
are still the greatest
on this hater filled
Friday. Even if
my paranoid feelings
are false; any great-
hood is not. It's
like team teacher
vs. me & I
play shadows & back-
grounds in order
to blind the barrage
of bullies who pose
as educators--provokers
of pre-pubescent
adolescents. Bout done
w/the lessons & politics;
puffed up chests & egos
that need to be arrested--
(use as much force as necessary)
It's like they love givin' grief
to little black boys; then I
have to be that buffer for
anger b/c what child
can lean when their
chest is on fire--
Do I deserve another year?

Today was a good day, not a Ice Cube Good Day, but a decent day.  Granted we did have a little shovin' goin' on between two boys, but I think we're at the time of year to let em do them, be them and handle their consequences.  They were pretty defiant, that's why it's getting majority doodle, but all in all, nothing that we haven't faced all through the year and in life--so eh.

Hope you enjoyed the doodles and what-not.  But if not, then please leave a comment--change only comes when you ask or demand it.  I'm bold enough to remind you of that, if you're reading this....duccies