“I’m too old to get excited about spring break”.
One of the teachers I hang with during passing time dropped this knowledge on me this week. I’m sure he’s far from the only one who’s kind of numb as we enter the last big break of the school year. Students are baked, teachers have long since been over this year. Just give me ten days when I can shut off my alarm and my teacher brain and try to recover, and re-charge for the stretch run.
A couple of my activities that historically have ramped up student engagement fell kinda flat these last couple of weeks. Both of them involve connecting some dots and applying the math we’ve learned to the world outside our walls: a compound interest investigation involving comparing the price of a new and a year-old car to test the “15% depreciation” figure used in many textbook/worksheet word problems (and the Dave Ramsey recommendation to let someone else take the steep loss in the value of a new car the first couple of years).
And the March Madness investigation I use to intro the probability unit. (Doc here). Remarkably, of the two, the NCAA brackets did the best job of drawing my kids into the math. Even the students (maybe especially the students) who had to ask me what “upset” means in terms of a tournament were able to nail down theoretical vs. experimental probability and use data to make some informed guesses on their brackets.
If nothing else it kept math happening in Room 130 during the countdown to spring break. Which isn’t nothing.
Shutting down teacher thoughts is a survival mechanism for many of us this year. When we get back, instead of looking forward to summer break, we’ll face a parade of unpleasant news. Like, bad news followed by worse news followed by career crisis. My district is crumbling financially and has been asked by the state to prepare a corrective action plan. In addition, our contract negotiations have been at impasse since November and will also likely require state intervention.
The district will present a list of teacher job cuts at its next meeting April 2. Then it is expected to announce multiple elementary school closures at its April 23 meeting.
The most recent personnel report featured four resignations from my building alone. I suspect next month’s will be similar. Folks are getting out before they get let go, or looking ahead, seeing that raises are unlikely in a financially distressed district, trying to pad their high-five (average of the five highest salaries that figures into the formula for our pension). Our once-robust insurance plan has been gutted and will be prohibitively expensive. Morale is at an all-time low and will get worse – the written notification of cuts will begin May 2, just in time for Teacher Appreciation Week.
Don’t check your mailbox, friends.
Is it any wonder folks burned rubber (metaphorically speaking) leaving the parking lot Friday?
For me, self-care looks like diving into hour after hour of televised hoops. Reveling in first-round upsets, rooting against rivals, and dealing with the cognitive dissonance that my favorite coach on the planet is likely to lead my alma mater’s top rival to the Final Four.
The dude was spitting bars after Purdue’s second round win today.
Painter’s definitely onto something here: “I just think everybody should take a test on their knowledge of what they’re doing. Like I think all coaches should take a test, so they understand refereeing. I think all referees should take a test, so they understand coaching. And I think all journalists should have to take a basketball quiz or test.”
Just show me you know what you’re talking about. OK?
But wait a week or so to do it.
Tweaking For No Reason 
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