junipersky

@Pyrephox

You just NAILED what ticked me off hard at our training yesterday when I couldn’t pin it down.

The cohort I work with is dramatically different from what the rest of the schools have. We don’t have any physical boundries, so right away all of our students have directly chosen to attend at my building. We have maybe three families out of an average class size of 27 that doesn’t regularly communicate or has socio-economic issues that prevents them communicate being as active as they want in their child’s life. Even then, they all provide transport to and from our building daily which means most times we have SOME point of contact with the adults in the child’s life. The other schools don’t have that. We have 95% attendance at PT confrences. They are lucky with 30%.*

Asking us and them to do the same things and expecting to measure outcomes is a complete disservice to them and drags us down also because it prevents us from reaching upwards for what our kids can do. They can’t come and ask “what are you doing different” because 9/10 times we aren’t doing anything- our parents are.

*I want to be clear there is NO BLAME from me for these parents. They are doing their best to simply survive. Their kids are doing the same. The schools are doing as much as they can to support them where they are.

@Ominous

So… like everything in education, it’s not really possible to repeat the “Mississippi miracle” because no one can agree on what led to the gains.

https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/12/01/how-much-of-mississippis-education-miracle-is-an-artifact-of-selection-bias/ <-- Article breaking down the statistics used and how different sides choose to read and interpret the data to draw different conclusions.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/04/mississippi-education-miracle/686731/ <-- More on the X factor that can’t just be copy-pasted

https://educationwars.substack.com/p/overselling-the-mississippi-miracle <-- It is just complicated! And we will see if Mississippi can keep it up.

I teach at a middle to high upper class public magnet school. No millionaires, but 70% of my student population doesn’t have issues paying for basic needs and many wants and can take a vacation yearly. The other 30% qualify for free and reduced lunches. Even for a majority of our parents in poverty they are highly engaged in their child’s life and that makes up a ton of the difference in wealth. Our students are academically and socially advanced in general. We have fewer behavior issues on the whole. Our parents generally want to work with us.

I say all of that to check my privilege. I fully understand this is not true of a majority of our district. We are excelling as a school because of all that privilege.

That said, I need to underline the part where generally our kids are above the medium for our district scores. Last year no one on our staff used any curriculum to fidelity. We picked the best and left the rest. My same level teacher and I abandoned our Math curriculum mid year and our okay data became exceptionally good. We both had non-readers break the literacy barrier. Kids who were always at the bottom in math either grew more than a year or finally met benchmark at the end of the year for the first time.

So tell me why we were handed a SCRIPTED (Literally, it says “say this”) curriculum and told we would be audited on our fidelity.

Our upper literacy teacher almost lost her mind. She read Romeo and Juliet last year with her kids. This year they recommend “The Brave Little Toaster” as required and “longer reads” as “suggestions for kids outside of class.”

I am offended for myself, and my students. They can achieve a shit ton more if I can keep delivering higher tier instruction that I know all meet my kids needs because *they are different. *

Took kiddo to the fair last night. She is too tall now for the little kid rides. I hoped we had one more year.

What do you dream about?

Edit: AKA, your nighttime hallucinations.

@RightMeow lol

I had a dream that @RightMeow and @tsar and I all joined a game.

It was like a mystery sandbox. We all created characters. @tsar was the male hero, @RightMeow was the desperately tragic heroine, and I was playing a cop who never rose above basic level cop. We ended up buddy-copping to solve a murder the rest od rhe city decided to pretend didn’t exist.

And I was sad it didn’t actually exist.

I loved the baked-in family connections and the amazing roster. I had a little tribe to start with, and while it took me a bit to feel 100% comfortable in Norwood and Kenna’s skins, I always felt like I gad the freedom to make them mine.

There was a Terry Pratchett Discworld game that I really loved but it didn’t last too long. I wish it was still there.

We got word that kiddo’s parents appeal was denied. I am happy but also… so freaking sad. And mad? Like, how the hell can her parents not move mountains to get this amazing little girl (and her equally amazing siblings) back? She is my whole world right now. I love her beyond words. I can not wait to have her open to adopt so she know she will have a stable home for absolutely forever. I don’t care we still have times where she hits and kicks me. That is trauma and why we have family and individual therapy.

I also found out I owe my sister-in-law. Husband comes from a dysfunctional family. His father was a casualty of the opioid epidemic, and they went through a ton because of it. He never believed he could be a father which led to his reluctance to start this process. She sat him down and said that he could have me and get on the boat of fostering, or I would find some other way without him. He got on board and now he and kiddo have the best bond. She adores him and they giggle and play.

So peeve, that I’m still mad at parents, but also joy because I get to be in this girl’s life.