back on campus

After last week's "vacation" (ie 40 hours of professional development,) it is back to the sub's life for me. On my triumphant return, I discovered:

• My school is now approximately 85% less competent.
  I arrived this morning to see that Mr. B, 1/9 of our Assistant Principal force and the man in charge of assigning subs, coordinating and ordering resources and technology, and working with new teachers, among other things, was not at his ordinary post in front of the gates, greeting the students and turning away those in blatant dress code violation. Instead, it was Campus South's principal, Mr. B's boss, looking grim. In the front offices, no one knew what sub jobs were open or what the plan was for the day. Once in a classroom, I noted that the voice making the morning announcements over the loudspeaker was not, as it should be, Mr. B's. While Mr. B has been absent from time to time, this seemed different, unplanned - and nothing was going right. It took another few hours before someone confirmed my worst fears: Mr. B quit last week, apparently in frustration at the lack of support he had in running the school more or less single-handedly. I can't really blame him -he had to lie in bed every night and wonder, What do the other 8 APs do? Anyway, I'm sure he got a job at a better school which will hopefully realize his worth. As for us...well, God help us now.
  
  
• My long-term position was dissolved...and undissolved.
  Apparently they got rid of all but two English classes, then had a balancing meeting and decided they could keep the class after all. A teacher has been hired, but she is at another school right now and needed to give them notice. I will be the sub for the next two weeks, until she gets here. The drama classes are gone (praise Jebus) and some new English classes are being brought in. Additionally, the head of the SLC, who has been laying the smack down on these kids the last few days, has come up with a list of assignments which need to be done in the next two weeks and which will be part of the students' permanent grades. So, that takes away the planning element, leaving me free to ward off student advances, confiscate cell phones, encourage/cajole/beg students to work...
  
  
• The drug problem is that serious.
  I haven't witnessed much of it myself, though friends and colleagues have busted kids for smoking pot and sniffing glue on campus, and in one very special episode, actually doing meth in class. Today, though, we had to drag our kids back into first period because we had paramedics in the main building, and no one had bothered to make the Please stay in your classrooms announcement until after students had already begun flooding out into the hallways. (This would not have been the case had Mr. B been there.) Once we got the all-clear, a distinctly not-Mr. B voice announced that we'd had four students ill and that the paramedics had needed the hallways clear to tend to them. Four? One is a seizure. 75 is food poisoning. But four can only be drugs.
  
  
• Vacation makes everything easier to deal with.
  Even if it is professional development.