I Don't Have to Tell You.

"I don't have to tell you."

That's what I was told today. What context, you may ask? Well there's a bit of a back story to this, so let me begin from three weeks ago. At the school I work at, we have intersession classes for students that failed the first semester of math and/or English. In years pass, I have never volunteered nor have I been asked to do intersession, but this year I figured why not give it a try.

I signed up to do math, as I feel I'm pretty good at it, and it's 7th grade math...I'm good enough at the subject to do 7th grade math, so in to the lion's den I went. The week leading up to our first session, I went and talked to the math teacher, trying to figure out what theses students needed. I went to the other teacher that was going to doing the same grade and subject as I was so we could coordinate our efforts. I bought materials, created a wiki, slide presentations, worksheets, pacing plan, the whole nine yards as we could say, all in preparation for the class.

I asked the math teacher what the students need help with...what concepts did they need to learn, answer, I'll get back to you. I asked what I should be doing...answer, math. So the other teacher and myself began getting things together to teach these kids. I asked, what I should be doing...answer, "Go over, reteach things that students were suppose to have learned in the first semester. So again, working with the other intersession teacher, we created something from nothing. No guidance, no input from our principal. So for intersession, I asked what I was suppose to do. Students were to be taught first semester material. OK, I can do that.

My principal came to observe me, and then made comments that I was doing things that were too easy. This was the second class with the students, and we were going over basic operations, adding, subtracting, multiplication, division. Things that they were struggling on. I setup the pacing plan to cover everything they did in the first semester, starting with basic operations. Well, he came to my class again recently, and this time put a letter in my mailbox. The letter said, and I'm paraphrasing here, thank you for taking the time to teacher 7th grade math intersession. Unfortunately your class is being closed, sorry for any inconvenience."

No explanation, no reason, just 3 sentences. So two things popped into my head at that moment, first, "does this mean my students have to keep their F's from first semester. Second, what, if anything, did I do wrong?

I found out the answer to the first question real quick...my students were going to still have intersession, which is good, they all need it. The second however, was a bit more elusive. I went to talk to the principal, and he could not give me a straight answer as to why I was removed. At first, he told me that he didn't need to tell me why. Then he said that he didn't feel that I was preparing them for the CST (California Standards Test). So I asked what the purpose of intersession was, remediation or test prep.? No straight answer.

So in the end, I'm not going intersession anymore. I don't know what the official reason is, but I've been told by my birdies that it's because I wasn't doing test prep, and was actually doing my job of re-mediating my students.