Now that I am mainly blogging at BluLob.com, I haven’t checked for comments in a while. The last six comments have been approved. Thank you for all the kind words.

I am writing again today because I have to say that the school really did me a favor by getting rid of me in February. At least I have had time to prepare for my next source of income (back to freelancing). I work at Natomas Unified in Sacramento, and the budget news that comes today is particularly grim.

The high school will no longer have a real police officer on campus. At least 40 more people will be laid off. The grand jury is investigating old real estate deals.

It gets worse. These are the cutbacks approved last night:

• Reassign teachers facing layoff s into a pool of longterm substitute teachers, savings to be determined – potentially up to $1 million
• Increase class sizes in grades 2 and 3 to 30 students to 1 teacher, $750,000
• Close under-enrolled Regional Occupational Program (ROP) classes, $232,000
• Increase student meal prices by 50 cents and open new points of sale at Natomas High ’s Terrace Cafe to generate more sales, $230,000
• Cut 2.5 positions for secondary social studies, $145,000
• Make further reductions in the support staff at the Education Center, $166,000
• Increase the distance students walk before busing is provided, $100,000
• Eliminate an unfilled elementary vice principal position, $96,000
• Reduce use of the Tungsten program, $45,000
• Cancel elementary summer school but keep high school summer school  (middle school summer school will be addressed next week), $28,000
• Implement further energy savings including keeping the swimming pool at Natomas High open only June-September and turning off the stadium lights at Natomas High and Inderkum High in the evenings, $24,500
• Trim staff development budget for certificated staff, $21,516
• Reduce the contribution to the Natomas Schools Foundation, $16,000
• Reduce  school decentralized supply budgets by 10 percent, $70,000

And here’s what they will discuss next week because they are still $5 short:

• Closing schools, $300,000 to $400,000
• Temporarily closing Bannon Creek Elementary for construction safety concerns during the conversion of the campus from a K-5 to a K-8 school (this construction project is using bond dollars that cannot be used for other expenses such as staff salaries and student supplies), $250,000
• Authorizing targeted layoffs, variable savings
• Eliminating athletics, $357,425
• Putting more/all schools on multi-track year-round schedules with a school closure, $400,000
• Having a four-day school week, $250,000
• More energy savings that include letting our lawns go brown, $40,000 or more
• Not purchasing school workbooks, $300,000
• Eliminating all bus transportation except for special education students (a mandated service), $862,000
• Eliminating all Tier III categorical programs, $1.4 million
• Staff furloughs, variable savings
• Eliminating P.E. for high school juniors and seniors and only offering the class at the freshman/sophomore level, $232,000
• Further review of increasing class sizes at the K-1 level ( the Board already approved increasing class sizes at every grade level by 1), savings to be determined

Finally, the teachers that stick around have this to look forward to:

• Freez e step-and-column increase s, $1.68 million or the equivalent of 29 teaching positions
• Implement furlough days, $283,363 per each furlough day or the equivalent of 5 teaching positions
• 3 percent salary reduction for all employees and administrators, $1.644 million or the equivalent of 28 teaching positions
• Eliminate compensation for class size overages, $236,000 or the equivalent of 4 teaching positions

I can’t think of a better time to leave public school teaching. Luckily, I have a potential college teaching job (part-time) lined up at the Art Institute.

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Another lesson learned: when you are contributing to a school, make sure that you tell admin about every single thing you do, especially if is in a digital form that can be emailed wherever without a credit line. Sometimes even when you tell them you still get screwed.

A few months ago, I drew portraits of several students and gave them to the students as gifts. Through a series of emails, which involved my permission to publish one of the portraits (with credit) in the yearbook, this same image ended up being used in the school’s WASC report without permission nor credit. Because I was let go and not told why, I am a tad bitter. I found it highly distasteful that they would use my work in this way, showcasing how great our school and its teachers are. Especially without asking me. I sent the admin a “cease and desist” email that also asked for them to give me credit for my work. I had, in fact, told everyone about the portraits right after I had done them, so admin could not please ignorance. After a week, they did email the campus, apologized, and gave me credit.

In another example from right before I was let go, I spent hours designing a T-shirt for our “Every 15 Minutes” event this week. I received thanks from the screen printing teacher, which was great. However, admin never thanked me. And now I’ve got here in my hands a program for today’s assembly. It has my T-shirt design featured on the cover. It has a section for acknowledgments and thanks to everyone who helped make “Every 15 Minutes” happen. I’ll let you guess who wasn’t thanked. If you guessed “Dawn Pedersen”, you are correct.

What do you think I should do?

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Not to offend anyone who teaches this subject and enjoys it, but this has been one of the worst decisions of my life. Near the end of last year, the Principal told me that he did not have enough students signed up for my design classes to give me a full day. He asked if there was anything else I could teach. I had passed the CSET in Biology the summer before, so I told him that. So I ended up with two life science classes at the end of each day.

Some days these classes are not horrible. Today was not one of those days.

I haven’t really talked too much here about my bad experiences at the high school. I didn’t want someone I teach or work with to read it and share with others. But it’s been truly awful. And I’m leaving on June 12th.

I feel some days like I work in an insane asylum. Most of my students are respectful, and most of my design students in particular are doing well in class. However, Life Science is for the kids who don’t do homework, and who are not apparently destined to go to college. Few of my science students are passing the class. Most of them, on the other hand, are failing most of their classes.

I am supposed to be shadowing another teacher who has allowed me to copy her curriculum binder and sit in on her class, but that’s about it. I have found her to be very unapproachable when I have questions or want suggestions as to how to deal with this population of students. I once asked her how it is that more of her students are passing than in my classes. She said, “I help them.” That was not especially helpful to me, and most of my students don’t even get started on their work to begin with. Anyway, this is not a rant about her but it just adds to my frustration and bewilderment in dealing with these kids.

It’s not so bad that they choose to fail. I’ve made my peace with that now, in spite of my earlier optimism and persistence. What is true torment is their behavior in class. It only takes two or five or eight kids to conspire to play havoc, and your day is ruined. I am continually surprised by the degree to which these kids show defiance and disrespect to their teachers at this school. I have tried being polite, I have tried being firm but polite, I have tried yelling. I have gone to seminars that coach you how to manage the classroom. Theses technique might work with other kids. I don’t claim to know all the tricks to work with teenagers but I was trying. Every time, I seem to hit a brick wall of lunacy. The kids I’m talking about, the awful ones (I’m not going to hippie this up by calling them “misunderstood” or something), never learned personal responsibility, character, and reasoning. They hate you and ridicule you if you try to teach them these things at this late stage.

Below is a sample of the things students said to me during class time today. These are things even the worst kids wouldn’t have dreamed of saying in front of a teacher 25 years ago when I was in school. I may add more later to get these things off my chest.

• Me: “S****a, sit down.”
Student: “Shut up.”

• A student chants in the back of the room, “She ain’t got no kids…miscarriage” (I had told the class about my miscarriage last semester when we were going over DNA mutations).

• One student to another: “Hey, do you want your guitar?” She then mimes as if to lift it and throw it at me. She says something about “the last day of school,” and based on her previous physical intimidation of me I’d guess she was telling others she means to harm me.

• A number of student simply ignore me when I tell them to remain seated or put away their phones.

Yes, I referred each of these students. But it makes no difference. Calling their parents makes no difference. Detention makes no difference (they don’t show up). A rewards system makes no difference. Giving and revoking privileges makes no difference. Friendliness makes no difference. Dignified assertiveness makes no difference. Yelling like a drill sergeant makes no difference. Every time I address the students I am repeatedly interrupted with some sort of disruption. When the hell can I simply TEACH?

I was doing well in the design classes this year. I used to have a pie-in-the-sky dream that my students would love my classes and make me proud. Many of my design students do. Some don’t. Some cause problems there too, but it’s rare. Most of them seem to enjoy being there.

The successes in the morning fade away. Every day after I’ve dealt with life science, I feel like my students hate me. That nothing makes any sense in this environment. All is craziness and bile.

What kind of job is this where there the people you dedicate yourself to, hate you?

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