This School Year

This school year my body has been tired, many days it has taken all I have just to put one foot in front of the other. To start the year I had a student teacher and he had NO personality. For nine long weeks we trudged on, with me trying to encourage him and show ways he could improve. I dealt with a parapro (someone I'd always loved) who was going behind my back saying things and yelling at children when she was in the room. (She retired in December.) Dan closed a business and went without employment for 5 months. Our middle son went to college. While all this personal stuff raged on I had to teach 2 inclusion classes, with a total of 15 special ed students and 1 juvenile delinquent (who in January did a 6 week stint at the YDC). My homeroom class had 3 students who were EBD. I tend to be a patient person, but it has been difficult.

I have taught. I taught hard. I gave it my all, leaving very little for the one child still at home. Yet, when the state writing scores came back...13 of my 50 students didn't pass (of that 13, 8 were special ed, 1 had a mother dying, and another was pulled out for 3 weeks and then put back in). Overall the 5th grade only had 73% pass, and administration is very unhappy. The kind where they refuse to talk to you. Now state test puzzle me, students who have not written anything of quality all year long scored higher than I thought possible and those who have done okay, didn't even meet the standard.

So what do you do? You hear all the gossip, because everyone has heard a word from the boss but me. I think you get up dust yourself off and move forward. I'll make new, more detailed plans for next year and move on. Trying again to meet the expectations of those around me. However, we've been told that the next group has far more problems than previous groups both educationally and behavior.

So my question today is how much does the lack of discipline in a school (we have minimal) really effect/affect student performance?