Do We Really Need More Meetings?

I had to come in about half an hour early for a mentoring meeting. It wasn’t very helpful. Some of the other mentors are really pushing for extra meetings after school and happy hours together (someone mentioned that we should invite the superintendent--who was arrested for DUI last year). The last place I want to be on Friday afternoon is hanging out with people from work. I mentioned it and they switched to Thursday. Still, do we really need more meetings? Some of these people really need to get a life outside of school.
The copy machine has started jamming again. That, and we’re running out of paper. We talked about lab safety rules and following directions in class. Then we played “Mr. Moore Says” to practice following directions. It’s basically like “Simon Says” but who is Simon? Why does his opinion matter? In my class, it’s Mr. Moore's opinion that matters.
Last class, Arome insisted that I call her “Lymo” because lime is her favorite color. Today, she admitted that she just made that up. Charles got belligerent when I asked him to spit his gum out. I guess he’s mad at me since he failed my class last year in spite of everything I did for him. The Guidance Department is not supposed to put repeaters with the same teacher two years in a row. They should probably change that. Speaking of scheduling problems, for the third year in a row I have only one honors class. There are two honors Language Arts classes on my team and two honors math and a bunch of parents will be complaining to me that their kid isn’t in honors science. Then, my honors class will fill to overflowing, and then I’ll start losing my best students to other teams. The administration has agreed with me for the last two years that it is a problem and that they should fix it but . . . nothing has happened. All things considered, it’s been a good start to the school year.