The Four Winds School Independent School District

[Seymour Flops]

I teach at a public school, in district with an interesting structure. There are four elementary schools feeding student to four junior highs. They are in areas that differ from each other in racial makeup, and income, which often drives the culture and attitudes. One is in a wealthy area populated by children of the engineers and managers at a nearby industry. One is in a working class area populated by children of the workers in that industry. One is in a low-income area populated by children of first generation immigrants who live on a combination of welfare and work. One is the original junior high built when the town the district is named after was a small town, relatively far from the big city.

Don't bother looking up "Four Winds ISD," that is the fictional name I give it so I can talk about things I see there. The names of the schools, North Junior High, Junior High, East Junior High and West Junior High, will be fiction also, of course. I hope you find them interesting and I hope they are starting points for some good discussions. If not, I will have at least gotten the stories off my chest.

 

[miketx]

Groomers.

 

[Seymour Flops]

The Story of Jorge, the IT Tech

Jorge is our IT tech, at West Junior High. He is Hispanic, like most of the students are and very much the millennial. He always says, "call me George or Hor-Hey." When we need IT help, we are required to fill out a work order, but with Jorge, we can often just tell him and he will quickly fix it and ask us to fill out the work order, so he can get credit for the job. He could easily be a dick like so many IT techs are, but he isn't.

The thing about Four Winds ISD, is that it is a microcosm of Texas itself. We are all very proud of being in the greatest district in Texas, and there is no doubt among us that it is. But we are also sure that each of our junior highs is the best in the district, and we are very serious about it.

Anyway, one day at a teacher meeting in the week before school, Jorge walks in to the room to solve another tech problem. A teacher said, "why is he wearing a Polar Bear shirt?" The North Junior High Polar Bears are not hated rivals, just not our beloved West Grizzly Bears. Another teacher quickly said, "Polar Bear shirt?" and then there was general harumphing. Jorge looked around, as if expecting someone to say, "just kidding, Jorge!" No one did.

He quickly fixed whatever he was there to fix and left the room, followed by not just a few angry stares. I wish I was kidding.

Anyway, he turned up a few days later with the same shirt. This time silence. When he left, the principal looked at the Campus IT teacher, sort of Jorge's boss when he's on our campus. She said, "I'm gonna talk to him about that." Thinking to be helpful, I said, "Maybe he's wearing it because North gave him the shirt, so we should give him one." The principal, with no humor at all said, "We DID give him one." I decided to say no more.

Anyway Jorge did stop wearing that shirt, but he never put on another West Junior High shirt. Instead he has opted for those sarcastic t-shirts like "Nope, not today." and "I paused my game to be here." He still does anything we ask him to, but the spirit has gone out of him. That killing of the spirit is all too common in public schools.

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

Is there a purpose to this exercise in fictional writing?

 

[Canon Shooter]

Is there a purpose to this exercise in fictional writing?

Yeah, no shit.

This is pointless...

 

[Ridgerunner]

Is there a purpose to this exercise in fictional writing?

Yeah, no shit.

This is pointless...

I wonder if anyone said this to Mark Twain (Samuel Clements)...

2 posts and you Gentlemen write it off...

To each their own I reckon...

 

[Canon Shooter]

I wonder if anyone said this to Mark Twain (Samuel Clements)...

2 posts and you Gentlemen write it off...

To each their own I reckon...

Well, he starts off making it sound all very factual. Then he says he's making up fictional names for schools, as though changing the names somehow alters his ability to talk about them.

Just seems weird...

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

I wonder if anyone said this to Mark Twain (Samuel Clements)...

2 posts and you Gentlemen write it off...

To each their own I reckon...

OK, I gave you a chance. This is fiction and does not belong in the education topic. Reported.

 

[Seymour Flops]

OK, I gave you a chance. This is fiction and does not belong in the education topic. Reported.

You "gave" me "a chance?" For what?

Admiral, you take this forum, and yourself on it, much to seriously. Relax, we're talking among strangers, not curing cancer.

If you don't like my posts, feel free to not read them. If the moderators want to move it to another section they are welcome to. New posts go to the top of the new posts page regardless. Even if the didn't it's the mods' board, the must do as they see fit.

The "point" you seek will become clear if you keep reading. Which you will of course; your'e not the first poster that has ever obsessed about "fixing" me. Most have been women but sometimes it's a dude.

There is a political point to the story of Jorge but I decided to leave it off to start the thread on a good note.

Make today a good day or not. The choice is yours!

 

[Seymour Flops]

Well, he starts off making it sound all very factual. Then he says he's making up fictional names for schools, as though changing the names somehow alters his ability to talk about them.

Just seems weird...

So you believe it would be wise to talk about the district I work in using real names of the school, the teachers, the staff, and especially the students?

Yeah, no.

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

You "gave" me "a chance?" For what?

Admiral, you take this forum, and yourself on it, much to seriously. Relax, we're talking among strangers, not curing cancer.

If you don't like my posts, feel free to not read them. If the moderators want to move it to another section they are welcome to. New posts go to the top of the new posts page regardless. Even if the didn't it's the mods' board, the must do as they see fit.

The "point" you seek will become clear if you keep reading. Which you will of course; your'e not the first poster that has ever obsessed about "fixing" me. Most have been women but sometimes it's a dude.

There is a political point to the story of Jorge but I decided to leave it off to start the thread on a good note.

Make today a good day or not. The choice is yours!

I posted this was fiction and did not belong here. You did not request the mods move it, so I did. Fiction has no business in this thread. There are threads for that. Use them.

Fiction in this thread gives liberals and other education bashers the opportunity to distort and lie. Why provide ammunition to the enemy?

 

[Seymour Flops]

I posted this was fiction and did not belong here. You did not request the mods move it, so I did. Fiction has no business in this thread. There are threads for that. Use them.

Fiction in this thread gives liberals and other education bashers the opportunity to distort and lie. Why provide ammunition to the enemy?

All posts that I will post here are and will be true with the exception of not using real names. If you really don't understand why, give us your employer's real name and yours so I can call and explain it to you.

Liberal Democrats are not my enemy and neither are conservative Republicans. They are people I often disagree with, since I'm libertarian. I also disagree often with libertarians. It makes life more fun.

You clearly like the role of perpetual turd in the punch bowl at every party. Enjoy!

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

All posts that I will post here are and will be true with the exception of not using real names. If you really don't understand why, give us your employer's real name and yours so I can call and explain it to you.

Liberal Democrats are not my enemy and neither are conservative Republicans. They are people I often disagree with, since I'm libertarian. I also disagree often with libertarians. It makes life more fun.

You clearly like the role of perpetual turd in the punch bowl at every party. Enjoy!

Nice post! I leave in the hands of the mods.

Perhaps you can answer a questions for me! Why does Seymour Flop?

 

[Seymour Flops]

Nice post! I leave in the hands of the mods.

Perhaps you can answer a questions for me! Why does Seymour Flop?

Hyuck hyuck!

In fact, the point of the post about Jorge is that crying over or nagging a person who makes the world better for something like using the incorrect pronoun, the incorrect ethic label, or the incorrect t-shirt is silly and counter-productive.

I meant to attribute that silliness to liberals but now I see that would have been proven wrong immediately.

 

[Seymour Flops]

A disturbing trend in mask wearing

Even now, with the pandemic declared over by Overlord Fauci himself, many students at West Junior still wear masks. In a small group I was teaching, one female student asked another why she still wears a mask. She said, “I don’t like the way I look without it.”

I asked a couple of students whether their parents required them to wear a mask, to elicit the reason without asking it directly. I got answers like, “cover my zits,” “hide my teeth,” and “my eyes are cuter than the rest of my face.”

It’s understandable. When a person covers their face except for the eyes, it is easy to idealize what they look like and to be disappointed. I was surprised when some female teachers hired at the beginning of last year, took off the masks, because I had assumed that they were more attractive than they are.

So, we may have raised some kids with negative facial image to along with the negative body image. Yet another downside to mask wearing that is offset by no upside whatsoever that has ever been shown through evidence.

 

[Seymour Flops]

Kid written up for asking about other genders besides “boys” and “girls.”

So a math teacher, known for strictness and lack of humor, told her class to line up against the wall for some math activity. She said, “boys on this side, and girls on that side.” A student I work with for behavior issues said, “what about the other people?”

She wrote him up and sent him to the office. Was he being a wise guy? Sure. Can I prove that? Nope. It’s a legit question according to the media that control our children’s minds. The schools do nothing to correct the misinformation about more than two genders, so why suddenly write this kid up? Luckily, the principal had sense enough to follow my wise advice and give him a general warning about taking a sarcastic tone.

This isn’t really new. A few years ago, it was common for wise guy students to accuse teachers of being “racist.” It was a little weird, because well over 95% of the students at West are Latino, so a teacher racist against Latinos would be too busy being angry about being surrounded by Latinos to teach. The students who said that would say it to Latina teachers also. As with most liberal ideas, no logic was needed.

 

[SweetSue92]

I teach at a public school, in district with an interesting structure. There are four elementary schools feeding student to four junior highs. They are in areas that differ from each other in racial makeup, and income, which often drives the culture and attitudes. One is in a wealthy area populated by children of the engineers and managers at a nearby industry. One is in a working class area populated by children of the workers in that industry. One is in a low-income area populated by children of first generation immigrants who live on a combination of welfare and work. One is the original junior high built when the town the district is named after was a small town, relatively far from the big city.

Don't bother looking up "Four Winds ISD," that is the fictional name I give it so I can talk about things I see there. The names of the schools, North Junior High, Junior High, East Junior High and West Junior High, will be fiction also, of course. I hope you find them interesting and I hope they are starting points for some good discussions. If not, I will have at least gotten the stories off my chest.

Yeah. Big problems with this. Different schools esp in secondary usually if not always leads to "wrong side-right side" of the track situations. That's why in my area it's more common to funnel all kids in the district into schools with fewer grades. So for example a school for just 5-6. Another for 7-8-9. High school is 10-11-12.

This comes with its own set of challenges of course. But IMHO the upsides outweigh the downsides.

 

[Seymour Flops]

Yeah. Big problems with this. Different schools esp in secondary usually if not always leads to "wrong side-right side" of the track situations. That's why in my area it's more common to funnel all kids in the district into schools with fewer grades. So for example a school for just 5-6. Another for 7-8-9. High school is 10-11-12.

This comes with its own set of challenges of course. But IMHO the upsides outweigh the downsides.

Yes, our district funnels all kids into a 9th grade campus, and then to a 10-12 campus.

But, you are right. By that time, the roles of each school population has been engrained into the children. West Junior, where I teach is the “ghetto school,” referred to as such by even the adults at other schools. The kids know it. We had a former West Junior kid make Valedictorian at FWHS, and his comments was, “They thought I was nothing because I came from West, but I showed them.”

East Junior is in the small town of Four Winds. Even though it is not the richest school, it is the most influential. In our district leadership, there is a real “Four Winds Mafia,” in which the senior officials all graduated Four Winds High School, with most of them having attended East Junior High, known unofficially as “Four Winds Junior” its orginal name.

Also, South Junior High, where the wealthiest parents in the district live and send their kids, often “poaches” Latino kids who show high academic achievement at West Elementary, taking them from West Junior. They will look a Latino parent in the eye and say (sometimes through a translator) “your student has excelled, but all those ESL kids at West will hold him back.” Of course, those parents came to the U.S. for their kids to have better opportunities and they are quick to agree.

I have no problem with higher performing kids going to a school with more challenging academics. That is great for them. But then West Junior is perpetually below average of the district in state testing, with the accompanying blame, pressure, and ridicule that “high stakes testing” for children causes.

Sorry for the rant, I meant for this thread to be more light hearted. Fun story to follow soon.

 

[Seymour Flops]

Many of our students would look at this and say, "No . . . 3 more cans would be 15, duh!"

 

[Seymour Flops]

The Story of Oscar Gonzalez and his dogs.

Oscar is an 8th grader at West Junior High, who is in my behavior improvement program, knows as the BIP. He is labeled with a disability called “Emotional Disturbance,” which means he reacts atypically in stressful situations. Often with verbal and sometimes physical aggression. I often mediate between such students and teachers who believe that the best cure for a student reacting badly is to yell until the student complies.

Oscar looked out the window during second period and thought he saw his two dogs running in a nearby play area. He became very upset and ask the teacher to go to the nurse, feigning a stomach ache. At the nurse, he asked to call his mom about the dogs. She refused, and chided him for pretending to need the nurse just so he could call his mom. On his way back to class, he told my teacher’s aide what happened and she relayed it to me, and said he seemed very upset.

I thought it very unlikely that the dogs he saw were his. In this area, many people let their dogs run loose, but other keep them fenced in the yard. It’s one or the other, so either his dogs were secure, or they were running loose because they are allowed to run loose. Still, I pulled him out of class,and I could tell that he at least believed he had seen his dogs. I took him to the back yard of the school and let him use my cell to call his mom. (I keep parents of kids with behavior issues on speed dial).

Sure enough, mom had seen the dogs get out as she was leaving for work, but could not find them. Now that Oscar said where he had seen them, she said she would leave work and go round them up. He was very relieved and ready to go back to class and learn.

As we were walking in, by coincidence, a group of high school girls, all in short dresses that they were trying to keep down with the wind blowing, passed in front of us on the way to some activity at our school. I looked over at Oscar, planning to say, “what are you looking at?” But he didn’t even notice. He was walking with his head down, no doubt hoping mom would catch his dogs.

Boys have changed. In my day, you could have told me my dog was on fire, and I still would have noticed those girls. I guess its all the porn they have at their fingertips. Who cares about a short skirt when they can watch whatever they like on their phone anytime.

Oy . . .