December 15th

Well I spent my last day at the elementary school.  Teresa was able to finish the NCA strand, all 7.  She and Tonya wanted me to review and edit them.  I spent ALL morning working on the first 4.  When I returned back from lunch I worked on some other stuff and then worked on the last 3 strands until about 4:30.  I was invited to an NEA meeting at the library tonight so I went.  there are some THINGS going on in this district that just BLOWS my mind.  Teachers reading over NMSBA tests and coaching them to change answers.  Teachers taking new administrators to Florida for vacation.  Grades changing, administrators and employees getting fired and put on Administrative leave.  I plan to finish this year at TPS and then I am done there, I will not be privy to illegal and unethical activities.  I will not do it!!!

December 14th

I spent today at the elementary school.  They are working on NCA accreditation and needed a clean set of eyes to edit and review their strands of the template.  Most of the stuff was already done for me so all I really did was make suggestions. 
I also spent some of day just observing some classrooms from the door window.  It was a pretty fun day.  Also got to go to the bus barn to investigate a 2nd grade student who has been acting up on the bus. He has been written up several times and the parents were notified that he would be kicked off the bus if he didnt behave.  I believe that was on Wednesday and he acted up on Thursday and Friday. 
We then proceeded to go to the building and call the student into the office.  I had to step out to take care of some errunds while Mrs. Stephenson spoke to the student.  He admitted to misbehaving on the bus and was told he would be suspended until May 20th, the last day of school.  The School Resource Officer was in attendance sot he parents can't say Teresa coerced him into confession. 
I was in the office when the dad called back and she let me listen to his side of the conversation.  The boy had presented the driver with a written threat that said 'I hate you Jimmy, your ded meat'  The dad said he wasn't really worried about that since the driver treats his kids like crap.  I tell you, parenst are funny!!! Anyhoo, that was the highlight of the day.  I then worked on the NCA stuff somemore and will again tomorrow.
I spent a little time researching NCA when I got home tonight but it wasn't very interesting. 

December 11th

I was only there half the day today, but we finished going through files.  Especially interesting was the special ed folder. I learned how they determine the number of students per teacher and how they get paid.  Like I said I was only there half a day and it took us that long to finish going through all that crap.

December 10th

Finished up the Attendance CD. Mr. Roch sent it off.  Mr. Roch had a file drawer that needed to be cleaned out of some old files so he had me help.  Mostly he went through the stuff and I watched.  When he cam to something he thought would be helpful her shared it with me.  I learned things about transportation, like bus driver salary, and routes.  School finance(3 thick files worth) and some other less relevant things.  We didn't finish so we will tomorrow.

December 9th

Got into the office a litte later today.  Mr. Roch had a function in Clovis this morning so he got in around mid-morning.  I, again, worked on my assignments finishing the Safe Schools Plan. 
Around 11:50 a teacher from the middle school came in to chat with Mr. Roch. When she came in she was visibly upset. 
The Principal had given her a directive to change grades.  I stepped out even though she said I could stay. Since I am close to the situation I didn't feel it was my place to attend.  Not really sure how that turned out or what it was really about or what will come of it.
Anyway, a pretty uneventful day.  We did go to the PTO meeting.  It was kind of boring but part of it.  I presented the policy for review and told them that they had input on the final.

December 8th

Well I did work on the Safe Schools Plan but I was also given the task of converting our attendance policy to put it on a CD to submit to PED.  Never mind the fact that Mr. Roch submitted an email with the links to our policy.  They want it on CD only. 
I had a pretty exciting day.  I got to go to lunch with the District Judge, a rep from the DA's office, the Home School teacher from Mesa Lands, and a Juvenille Probation Representative.  The District Judge is Albert Mitchell.  He had recently sent Mr. Roch a copy from the Clovis News Journal about Clovis' ACT program.  The ACT program strives to abolish truancy in  Clovis Schools.
Mr. Mitchell wants Mr. Roch to work on something like this for TPS.  It was a very interesting meeting, not so sure if it was productive.
Afterword, we went back to the office and I worked on my two assignments.

December 7th

I spent the morning with Mr. Roch, not doing anything in particular.  He had a meeting at 9 so I sat in the office trying to figure out what to do.  I asked one of the secretaries if I could help her.  She had me put together the travel request spreadsheet for the board meeting on Monday.  At least I did something.  Mr. Roch returned at about 10.  He had me tally up the number of students who would need to take the ELL test soon.  He then rushed off to a luncheon with the district supts.  I didn't attend he did not think it would be beneficial and he said if they talked about anything confidential it would be best if I was not there.  After lunch I went over to the elementary school.  I have been given the project of finding Fine Arts programs or events for the elementary.  They received a grant that we need to spend in the spring.  When I got back to the office Mr. Roch was gone.  What was scheduled for last Friday had been rescheduled for this Monday so he went to Texico. I proceeded with my project looking up different things for fine arts.  I left at around 4 to run to the Middle School and check my mail and all that. 
Now I want to broach the subject of ethics.  I got a text message just as I was leaving town from my friend who teaches history at the middle school.  She said she got called in to talk about grades.  She said that our princpal asked her to change some of the grades of the failing students.  Is that ethical? Do we bow to that request so we don't lose our jobs?  It is the same students she has had trouble with already this year.  I think two of them are 8th graders and the rest are 7th graders.  She wants her to change their zeroes and give them opportunity to make up missing work.  She has given them opportunity for extra credit, to make up work, to make up tests even and they fail to do it.  They also fail to do what they are suppose to do in class during the allotted time she gives them in class to finish their work.  This isn't the first time or the first teacher this has happened to.  My friend said she was not going to give in, she is going to stand her ground.  The principal told her that she would have angry parents down her throat, she told me bring it on.  We will see what unfolds.  I just don't think it's ethical for us to do that when we are trying to get them to succeed.  If we GIVE them their grade then we are enabling them to think that those things will be given to them all their lives, which just sets them up for failure in the long run.  It's just frustrating!!!

December 2

I spent the entire day with Mr. Roch. Since he had been gone for two days he had a lot of stuff to catch up on so I worked on some dossier stuff.  Once he got to the bottom of a stack he told me he had a job for me. 
The district judge, Albert Mitchell had sent him an article about the ACT program in Clovis. The ACT program is Abolish Chronic Truancy.  It is a program that Clovis schools uses to keep kids in school.  It has been going on for three years now and is very successful. Mr. Mitchell wants Mr. Roch to think about doing something like this.  So together Mr. Roch and I decided to have a meeting with some of the agencies in Tucumcari and Quay county to discuss our options about truancy.  I called the DA, Ron Reeves, the judge, juvenile justice, and the sheriff. We agreed on a luncheon meeting scheduled for Tuesday the 8th at noon.  I am looking forward to this.  For the rest of the morning I researched other truancy programs throughout the nation.  I didn't have much luck finding specific programs but I did find some ideas that will be great to share with the committee on Tuesday.
In the afternoon I just really watched Mr. Roch work, he had a few people come in to talk to him.  One was a girl who had just turned 16, she had a three month old baby and was getting married.  She called him to ask about getting her GED.  The state law is that in order to get the GED before you are 18 you must be homeschooled by a parent who has a high school diploma or a GED themselves.  Neither of her parents do. He question was since she is getting married can she be her own legal guardian even though she is not 18.  Mr. Roch called the state department and the solution is this.  She will be place into the homeschool program so she isn't a drop out for us.  He teacher of record will be a professor from Mesa Lands.  This way she gets to get her GED and not be a drop out.  Win win for both of us!!! That was cool to watch.
The next person was Alicia Hatch.  She is one of our trainers at school for quality schools.  At the middle and high school we have goal teams.  She is implementing the same thing at the elementary schools.  She came in with some concerns that the elementary schools were not being very receptive to the idea and that she was getting very frustrated with it.  Their attitude is that it's just one more thing they have to do.  She was looking for suggestions from Mr. Roch and just wanted to give him the heads up.
Overall, even though I didn't do much, it was a great learning day.

November 30

I have been away for a while because I had surgery.  I spent the day at the elementary school.  I spend the morning with one of the elementary principals.  Mrs. Teresa Stephenson is the principal for K-2 since we have two elementary principals.  Mrs. Stephenson was going to leave in the afternoon so I just really hung out with her to watch her work.  She had a followup evaluation on a teacher but I just missed.  She had me help her with a letter of recommendation for a diagnostician and then we had an IEP adendum for a student who will be getting more hours of special services.
I stayed at the elementary until Teresa left and then I went back up to the admin building.  The staff were going to attend a funeral and were going to close the office, since Mr. Roch was gone they called him and asked him if I could answer the phones while they were gone.  He said sure.  So I sat in the office for about 4 hours and answered the phones.  One thing that struck me so funny was that when I answered the phone the person on the other end was besides themself that the secretary wasn't there.  It was so uncomfortable for that person because it was outside the norm. 

October 30

Today I spent the entire day with Mr. Roch. We had an admin meeting which was pretty uneventful. One thing that was interesting was the and employee got a letter from PED saying that his license could not be renewed because he did not get his paperwork in on time, however that employee has the signature confirmation and gave it to Mr. Roch signed by a PED employee before the due date.
Mr. Roch called the PED and got the run around saying they didn't know who that employee was who signed for it, all that rigamaroe! Anyway, it got handled on the PED end somehow.
I also was given the task of writing a revision to a policy about Title 1 parent involvement. It's a daunting task for an intern but I am looking forward to it. A little nervous to since I have to write a draft!!!WOOHOOW

October 20

Had another Quality Council meeting tonight. They are ok, kind of boring but they will do. Mr. Borden had A BUNCH of stuff to share with use tonight so this meeting lasted forever. Much of what was shared tonight had to do with the end of the 9 weeks reporting, MAPS data, and discipline data.

October 8th

As Mr. Roch's intern I was able to attend the Calendar Committee meeting held at the admin building.
At every other school I have been we just were handed a calendar and had no choice. Here they have representatives from each building provide feedback about the calendar for the district. Tucumcari is a 4 day school week so many people were upset about the number of Fridays we had this year.
Mr. Roch was very gracious(and smart) to provide the members of the committee with a few options. He told me later there is no sense in reinventing the wheel when we already have the rubber in stock!!!
Anyway, this meeting lasted for some time. At times it got heated because the high school staff didn't think that the elementary staff did anything the last week of school, and vise versa, but that was all clarified later.
After the meeting I met with Mr. Roch for a little while just to chat about the meeting.
This was great fun!!!

October 2nd

I spend the entire morning with Mr. Roch at the administration building. I finally met Mr. McKinney, the Superintendent. We had a TEA meeting (Tucumcari Education Association) first with representatives of the TEA and administrators. This meeting is held to make sure that the administrators are keeping open lines of communication with the union leadership.
After that meeting we had an admin meeting which consists of all administrators. I have only known Superintendent and Principal. Here they also have assistant Principals and the Director of Sped.
This was a very interesting meeting. Just listening to the administrators throw things around and talk about their building practices was amazing. I have never been in a district that had more than one building so it was cool to listen to the high school want to know what happens at the elementary during this time and how do they do this and why do they do that.
It was also interesting to hear of some of the practices that are in place that are just ridiculous. More on this later!!!
This day was spent working on different things, just listening and observing Mr. Roch. I spent only the morning with Mr. Roch but it was a very interesting one.

September 15th

I am co-chair of the EEO(Effective and Efficient Operations) goal team. Tonight I attended our quality council meeting. The quality council meeting is building specific. We meet once a month with each of the goal team chairs and parent members.
Mr. Borden, the middle school 6th grade math teacher, went over some data about MAPS testing and discipline.
Each goal team chair gives a report on what their team is doing and then asks for input from other members of the quality council and the parents.

September 8th

Tonight I attended the Bilingual Parent Meeting. This meeting was held to inform the parents of the community about the ESL and EEL programs at the schools.
Mr. Roch did a presentation about the success of the programs and talked about how important it is for students who qualify to get involved.
We had several non-English speaking parents in attendance so one of the elementary staff members translated for Mr. Roch.

August 25

Went down to the admin building to chat with Mr. Roch about what and how we were going to handle my internship. One of the most challenging things is the fact that he is a state rep, so he will be gone quite a lot for political reasons and I will not be able to get as much time in with him as I would had I been able to intern for a building principal.
He took a look at some of the duties that were listed in my packet, circled some, crossed some off. Most of the items were on my own and he said that if I did them just to let him know.