Middle School Absences

It wasn’t until about the year 2000 that the district, said that students had to attend 5 days a week.

At this time, school was only open during summer and winter. There was a morning session lasting from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. in the summer and from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. in the winter. From there, students and headmasters would get a two-hour break for lunch and play. The afternoon session would then begin at 1 p.m. and finish at 5 p.m. (“BLS History”). Contrary to this school’s set schedule, Thursdays were a bit different. The Thursday morning session ended at 10 a.m. for a church service. Afterwards, there would be an opportunity for lecture over English heritage (“BLS History”).

A low income school in New Haven, Connecticut started the new year telling students they would be attending school until 4:15 P.M. four days a week. New Haven teachers in an unprecedented move allowed their teacher unions to take over the rewriting of their contracts. This provided the teacher with more freedom with curriculum and time management. Although the final outcome was beneficial the origins of the extended day was not welcomed.

The Monday that I chose to attend had a low membership for that day. There was only the leader and 1 other member that day. The Leader was a Caucasian male about 40 years of age. The member was a Caucasian male about 60 years of age.

Greg Backes (Music Teacher, J.L. Buford School) Mr. Backes is an experienced music teacher of _____ years. _____years of those he has been employed by District 80, with _____years as a member of Buford’s faculty. We are extremely fortunate to have someone of his talents influencing our students and instilling in them a deep love for quality music. Mr. Backes truly goes above and beyond the normal music teacher’s school duties. He is instrumental in bringing in specialized music programs into Buford, exposing our student population to all different kinds of quality music, and its place in our country’s rich history. Mr. Backes has overseen multiple volunteers concurrently to complete various projects in a timely manner. His past project management experience has given him the skills of organization and leadership to successfully see this project to

Barbara Johns, a junior at Morton High, was very unhappy with the condition of the school. She was the niece of Vernon Johns, a pastor and outspoken civil rights activist (June-Friesen). On April 23, 1951, the principle of Morton High, M. Boyd Jones, was lured off campus by a call saying students from Moton were hanging around the bus station instead of being at school. This was the perfect opportunity for Johns to take action and put her idea of going on strike into action. Johns called an assembly where she explained to the student body what was wrong with the condition of their school and the classmates support overwhelmed her. For the rest of the day, the students layered the school inside and out with signs saying things like, “We want a new school or none at all” or “Down with the tar-paper shacks” (Heinemann). The next day Johns as well as a couple other students went to the Farmville Courthouse where superintendent T.J. Mcllwaine told them nothing would happen if they did not return to class. The students however did not return to class until May 7.

On February 1st, I visited the Britton Macon Area School. The teacher I observed was Ms. Richardson. She teaches a self-contained classroom for middle and high school grades. I started the observation at 8:00 A.M. until 11:32 A.M.

The call of May16 began from a high school website known as “idunno.org,” a page that primarily updates the school board and calendar of Dunno High School, where students were informed that there will be no late start on Wednesday, May 16. Every Wednesday, there is a late start which pushes the schools starting bell from 7:50 a.m. to 8:58 a.m., allowing students to sleep well and have more time for themselves in the morning. After hearing the news, the students of Dunno High School created the facebook page “Students of Wednesday” to protest against the school’s dismissal for late start.

Time, place of meeting, and environment - The school board meeting is held at Jones Magnet Middle School, 1819 Nickerson Blvd. at 6:30 p.m. The meeting is held in the auditorium and it is open to the public. The members of the board sat next to one another on stage while the visitors sat t in the audience. There was a clear distinction between the members and visitors. The environment is very structured and the members of the Board were task orientated. There was a great sense of group cohesiveness among the members and I could see there was a great deal of respect.

Wilson made the decision for students to come in on October the 5th and have a normal day of school outside of the intensified security. While nothing occurred on the 5th, students and faculty were still worried about the threat and lack of information regarding the person making the threats.

“Wilmington said they justified their ridiculous actions by saying our teachers would understand us missing class, but every teacher is different. Some teachers will not accept any absences no matter the circumstances, this was definitely not an exception,” said Dickerson.

Band brings unforgettable memories. Band brings once in a lifetime opportunities, and students will cherish those memories for the rest of their lives

On Monday,October 14, 2013 at 7:00 P.M., I attended the Bradford Area School District school board meeting at Floyd C. Fretz Middle School in the large group instruction room. This meeting was important for the teachers, students, and the schools in the district. It provided information that correlated to the material in class and a perspective on what situations as a future teacher I may experience.

In 2007, the school had a change in leadership and had students have 2 periods per day. mourning class, and afternoon class. They would complete a semesters worth of work in 21 days then focus on 2 additional classes for another 21 days. So that at semester students would have completed 6 classes like the rest of the building. The only hiccup with this is attendance was so bad, if students missed more than 2 days it was equivalent to missing 3 weeks of school at the comprehensive setting. Students had to have homework logs documenting how many hours of homework they had completed. The next school year in 2008, the School went to a 3- period day, which worked much better. School always started later, at about 9am, which was the reason why Oakland fell under the ALE law, students did not meet the minimum requirements for attending a full day of school. There was only a population of approximately 8-9 teachers up until 2007 when new leadership came in and started to shift to the culture and structure for today.

• It was a pretty large group in the class, 13 children were there and the