Well, it was a nice idea, anyway

When the counselor at your school walks in with a box of donuts for you, it's not a good sign.  It means that something awful got screwed up on your schedule for next year.

In my case, the counselors forgot to add debate to the registration forms for the incoming 7th graders.  That means that the incoming 600 students, who were supposed to swell my program and provide the base for future advanced debate programs, had no opportunity to sign up.  There's no real way to fix it, either.

Nothing much to do except accept my box of donuts with as much grace as I can manage and put my grand plans for a debate program off another year.  Never mind the conferencing I've done this year with administrators about the direction they want this program to take, a simple slip of mind on the part of the counseling dept. has set the whole thing back until the 2014-15 school year.

I'm angry, but you can't yell at the dear sweet counselor ladies.  I'm terribly disappointed, but the first bell just rang and I've got 32 students walking in my door expecting to see me smile.

damn

Gripe

This morning I got the go ahead from my administration to start building a debate program.  So the first thing I did was look up the cost of membership for our school in the National Forensic League.  There's a junior league for middle school and the high school league for grades 9-12.  However, I teach at a junior high, with grades 7-9.  Should I sign up for a junior league membership or a high school league one?

So I called the NFL headquarters in Wisconsin to ask.  Do you know what they told me I needed to do?  Buy both.  The junior league membership is $35 a year, and the senior membership is $99 a year.  To buy both means I would need to convince my administration to fork over $134 a year, just to make the school an NFL member.  That would not include the fact that they're willing to let me create more classes (meaning I'll be able to teach fewer English classes), talk about tournament fees, etc.  

Grrrr.  $134 just to have my three grades of students get memberships. One $99 membership could get four grades at a high school.  

Sigh.

My Mother's Daughter

My mother is a fantastic teacher.  She is the kind of teacher I mentally refer to as "a program builder."  This means she does a whole lot more than "teach a class."  She takes those classes and turns them into burgeoning programs at the school.  Soon there are extra curricular opportunities and competitions and festivals and the general quality of the program is shooting upward.

I have no idea if I'll ever be able to build a program like that, but I'm noticing that my instincts keep steering me in that direction.  Last school year I started a small, rather rinky-dink debate program at my school.  By the end of the year, I was campaigning to get an intermediate-level debate course added, and nearly succeeded (high hopes for next year).  Today I spent any extra time I had browsing the National Forensic League website looking for ways to expand this one semester, one class elective into some sort of soul-expanding program.  I know it will mean extra work for myself, extra hassle, and more working with many of the school's most independent minded and rowdy students.  But I can't help it.  I see a way that it can be expanded, and I'm emailing my administrator asking for permission to get right at it.

Sigh.  I might be my mother's daughter.  I'd burst with pride if I wasn't so busy signing myself up for extra things.