Story of the Day 8/ 21/ 2012

I spent this morning at the Deaf School in a conference for a young man who has transferred from Arsenal Tech High School to the Indian School for the Deaf.
Arsenal Tech is this huge high school in the Indianapolis Public School system.

There were a number of good reasons for this young man to transfer.
He had missed out on a lot of educational opportunities because the interpreter was bad. Really bad.
She was the sort of bad that comes with an attitude.
She would decide she didn't feel like interpreting, and she would just sit there and not interpret.
He was isolated from his peers because of language- they didn't sign, he doesn't' hear and the interpreter problem wasn't helping.
But the real reason he wanted to transfer was that he was afraid.

At this high school, he was constantly aware of bullying, fighting, weapons and drugs and he wanted out.
He was even afraid to ride to school on the school bus.

I was telling this to a nice young woman , this evening, during a break in the drawing session.
I also told her that , at the previous conference ( at Arsenal Tech) , I was favorably impressed with one of the teachers, but not so favorably impressed with another.
The one that didn't impress me was supposed to be working with him on his writing goals. The writing goals were vague they didn't relate to the state standards and when asked how he was doing the response was" Well , he is behind. he is not on grade level."
And when pushed to answer what level he was on, she replied , twice , that she didn't know.
When I asked how she could be working with him if she had no idea what level he was on, she replied that the information was somewhere ...like on a computer and she could look it up. She seemed to entirely miss the point that it was a bad sign that she had been working with him for an entire academic year and was supposed to be prepared to present information at the conference we were at and,yet, had no idea what his level was.

The young lady I told this to wasn't surprised.

She told me that she was supposed to have gone to this same high school, but just before her freshman year, her parents decided to enroll her in Cathedral High School- a parochial school that has a good reputation.

The school year was going nicely and , at the end of the first semester she got a big surprise.
Apparently, some piece of paper wasn't filled out, and Arsenal Tech still thought she was a student at their school. So, she was sent a report card for the classes she should have been taking if she was there.

And she failed every single class.
Which is not surprising since she hadn't been in school or taken one test or handed in one homework assignment during the entire semester.

Whoops, sorry, that is not true.
You see, she failed almost every class.

She passed Spanish.
The teacher gave her a D.

This is probably because she was nice and quiet and didn't make any trouble.

At least, that is the only reason this young woman could figure out.