"Not My Job..."

My mom sent me a forwarded email today. They're always very humorous, but this one really hit me...

Wow. This is SO relatable to my experiences here in the St. Louis Public School System. I had a meeting today for one of the students on my caseload. Steven is an 18 year old senior with ADHD. Steven is not going to graduate on time because he has continually failed his classes. I sat down with him and his mother at our meeting to talk about how we can improve the educational experience he is having here. After just a few short minutes we realized that Steven does not understand punctuation! His teachers had been complaining that Steven had poor grammar and wasn't trying on their assignments. I decided to do a little experiment and have him write a simple paragraph - something that every high school senior should be able to do. After TEN minutes he handed me a sentence that lasted the length of a page. I asked him to add punctuation and he stared at me blankly. I then asked him to show me where his sentences end and what mark he should put there. He put one question mark at the end of the entire 'paragraph'.

After the meeting I shared what I had learned with his teachers. Both his writing teachers shared the same sentiment - "He should know this by now, it's not my job to teach him how to use punctuation."

THEN whose JOB IS IT!?! This poor young man has been so blatantly neglected that his diagnosis of ADHD, which many people are given the tools to cope with, has made even high school graduation a nearly impossible feat.

"Shocking and Noticeable" by Cameron

One of my students wrote an amazing story for my class. It is amazing not only because the first week of school he refused to write his name on top of the paper, but the story itself is very entertaining. I typed it out exactly how he wrote it, so you can get a feel for what work from one of my highest functioning high school students looks like. ENJOY!!! (The last part is my favorite so I starred it haha)

Shocking and Noticeable by Cameron Puckett
One day there was a boy named Greg and a girl names Sarah. They were walking home after a game of basketball Greg asked Sarah "if she whould like to come in." Greg neared the door and heard the burglary alarm going off. Both of them looked at each other and ran to the neighbor's house.
The neighbors name was Mr. Jones is a blind guitarist he's been playing for many years. Mr. Jones answered the door and said "Can I help you kids!"
Greg asked Mr. Jones "Can we use your phone"?
Mr. Jones said "sure whats wrong?"
Greg said "someone broke into my house?" Greg calld the police and said "they'll be there in five minutes".
The officer said "kids its better if you don't go in the house." Greg asked "why"?
The officer was silent, looked at Greg and turned and looked at Sarah. Suddenly a tear rolled down his check and he broke out with saying "son im sorry but your parents." froze with a sudden chill and said, "your parents were shot and killed." Greg ran in his house saw his mom on the living room floor with a hole in her neck.
Soon like 5 minutes later the phone was ringing. Greg picked up the phone and said "Hello"? The person on the other line was my dad. he said "son what happened?" Greg said moms been murdered. Sarah walked to Gregs mom and looked down and it was a pouch of tobacco.
Sarah asked Greg and said "Greg does your mom smoke?" Greg said "no" "Why?" Sarah said "theres a pouch of tobacco near her". Greg grabbed an Officer who was interigating a suspect.
The officer struggled and said "what were are you taking me"? Greg said "Sarah found a tobacco pouch" "Do you think has prints or something?" "will it help"? asked Greg.
The officer said "maybe it could have prints?" Greg looked and saw Sarah crying in a chair. Greg went up to Sarah and said, "its okay". "I'll tyr to find a place to live."
****** Mr. Jones said, "I'll take him.""I may be blind, but I used to have kids!" said Mr. Jones. Greg said," Thank you Mr. Jones".******

I don't know about you guys, but I want Mr. Jones, the blind guitarist, to be my next door neighbor!!!

Hooray for Sharday!!!

Sharday, my deaf student, came to school yesterday just beaming. She brought her mother to meet me and to talk about how they're working on transfering her to a deaf school - HOORAY! It's unfortunate that we can't give Sharday what she needs here at Gateway, but she is so far behind her same age peers that she absolutely needs this opportunity. We're all very excited for her :)