What happens when you don't suspend a student. A case study.
About 15/16 months ago. A student is chronically disruptive, and is intentionally miserable to his teacher. The teacher is at her wits end, and meetings are held to figure it all out. Here's what happened
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This student was only in her class to begin with because she had a good reputation for working with difficult students. So in typical educational fashion, she is given many more difficult students until she is overwhelmed and starting to hate her job. She's burnt out.
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19/19
The student returns this year and is in my class. Because I have him first period, I rarely see him. But when I do he comes in late, doesn't do any work and his behavior is miserable. By October, mom pulls him from the school and we never see him again.
THE END
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The student refuses to do any work. He typically arrives at school at the end of first block, will skip 2nd and 3rd block, and then attends 4th block while waiting for the bus home. He's passing nothing, he has no intention on passing anything.
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None of his other teachers are writing him up or documenting him for hardly going to any of their classes. And they are probably glad he is skipping their classes. But now more burden is on her because "nobody else seems to have a problem with him"
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4/ because he is a freshman, he is at no risk of being moved for academic reasons until the end of next year. Most sophomores in his group will pass just enough classes by sophomore year to avoid being moved out of the school building so they can stick around another year or two
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He has no intention on behaving in the classroom either. While many students are content to play quietly on their phones all period, he doesn't use ear pods and plays music and tik toks for all to hear, he walks around the room and even out of the room as often as he wants
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So, she bails. Switches to a different school and grade level. DC is mad at her for leaving, and in more of a bad mood when we can't find anyone to fill the position. So the rest of us lose electives and have larger class sizes this year. I essentially get her course load
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The least competent of these teachers is given the more advanced classes because " those are the only classes she can handle" So now I have no advanced kids and the advanced kids gets a teacher who can't really teach, and doesn't know the subject matter at all
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She's called home, shes written him up. She has assigned her own detention once a week, though he could earn one every day. And he doesnt stay after for them anyway. It takes a few weeks for a teacher detention to turn into a school detention, and he doesn't serve those either
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So she slowed down with that since nothing happens anyway. This is the first thing admin bring up "we need more documentation. We just started the third quarter, so everything starts over, your last documentation was a month ago."
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The teacher is mad, starts openly talking about looking for another job. The AP in charge of all this tells her to focus on "finding her why" The Department chair and queen bee is mad that she's talking about leaving, and suggests maybe she should leave if she hates it here
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So they won't switch him to another class because then "teachers will just start complaining about students non stop to get their classes changed" He doesn't qualify for a new academic placement because he's a freshman. And the alternative high school is already full.
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Oh, and she had a good personality and was our content groups best lesson writer. She always did the final touch ups on lessons other people wrote and put in a lot of time into this. Not easily replaced, nor could we fill her position at all
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Suspension also isn't an option. He already had one suspension for his part in a brawl in the hallway earlier in the fall, and that did not change his behavior "he needs to be in school" plus, our suspension data is under a microscope. This would be seem as an "elective oss"
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Other department members start openly applying for other jobs. Two more leave during the next year. Two more still looking, including the original teachers "work husband" who has now reached levels of burn out seldom seen in nature.
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Defiance and disruption as the reason for a suspension is not looked upon well by district and state higher ups. It's seen as a failure by the teacher and building leadership. She is encouraged to just try harder to work with him.
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They also have a few teachers from outside our content area teach some of the sections. A few manage it well, a few don't know the content at all and don't do much besides rolling out our lessons and telling their class to "try their best"
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Shortly after, the AP announced she's moving to an AP position at another school. The DC openly talks about leaving but ultimately won't because she enjoys her queen bee status too much. But her attitude has changed, as has everyone's attitude towards her
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Kids who fall behind do get evaluated. I only saw him a few times but he turned in a decent writing sample so I dont think he was unintelligent. But a poor family and community life, he got sucked into the gang culture, and he was never held accountable for grades or behavior
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Part of the racist school to prison pipeline. And we don't have enough alternate placements for the kids who can't function in the traditional school. Building admins careers are tied to the suspension rates
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It looks like we won't be able to fill the vacant 9th grade science position and their students will be distributed to the other 3 of us left. That's cool, can we split that person's salary too?
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Student fails 6th grade science
Gets moved to 7th grade science anyway
Student fails 7th grade science
Gets moved to 8th grade science anyway.
Student fails 8th grade science
Gets moved into my class
Student has a 0%
"What can you do to help the student be successful? "
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Our principal just moved her desk to one of the big hallway intersections. How's that for leadership? She's been talking to kids all morning and checking passes.
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At the very least it's a plea for immediate consequences, suspensions, even removal to alternative programs if not outright expulsion. And it shows the consequences of not doing that
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I stopped buying into the "Don't give them a hard time for forgetting their pencil" thing when I saw how rarely they forgot their cell phone.
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Oh, they are totally banned from the classroom. There just arent any consequences for not following the ban. They aren't going to touch the phone or give a suspension for cell phone use. It becomes much easier to let the kid quietly be on his phone than to try and get it put away
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Was talking to another teacher at the end of the day in the hallway. Kevin passed by on his way to the parking lot. The other teacher asked "Hey Kevin, what did you think about that email today?"
Kevin: It's after 2:30, I dont know any of y'all
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I'm not sure this was meant to be a blame on the child. Child is just doing what they have been able to get away with. "Fault" is on policies that prevent disipline
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Admin: What can we do to help make your jobs easier?
Teachers: Can we finally start to hold students accountable for their behavior and academic progress again?
Admin: Absolutely fucking not, there's a free slice of pizza in the break room.
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Everything I've learned about education in the last 40 years summarized in one post.
If you expose unmotivated students to motivated students, the better students will get pulled down more than the less motivated students will be pulled up
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Teacher burnout in 2023. You give a lesson, maybe 5 students are engaged. The rest have their heads down, are staring at their phones, or just do not care about getting an education. Admin tells you the lesson isnt good enough, then gives you 20 other things to do. Repeat forever
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Admin: Kids need to be getting passing grades.
Teachers: They aren't doing anything.
50% min, unlimited late work at no penalty, redos, hand holding, projects that don't show anything. Kids are getting Ds
Kids are massively bombing state tests
Admin: How is this possible?
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Admin told the science department that if one more of us quit, the whole school would have to go virtual the rest of the year. Now we are all kinda looking at each other like .....
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Admin asked parents and local businesses for donations to make teacher gift baskets. Almost no participation. It would almost be better to not have a teacher appreciation week at all than to highlight low appreciation.
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As I was leaving today the super perky, new, former teacher of the month was sobbing. No matter how hard she tries, there's always a third of her class who just wont do anything and it's dragging the others down. We are expecting teachers to solve problems that go far beyond them
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Teaching the child of a teacher is either an awesome or a terrible experience, but rarely in between.
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The biggest hindrance to all students receiving a high quality education is the other students in the room and building. Not the teachers, admin or curriculum.
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20 years ago, having 20 absences was considered enough to automatically fail a class. Today, students with 2-3 times that number are expected to pass the class, but the class is still expected to be meaningful for the kids who do show up every day.
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The new teacher next door to me wasn't in her class this morning. The school called her.
"Where are you?"
"The parking lot"
"Are you going to make it to class?"
"I'm not sure"
20 minutes later she came in and turned in her badge and keys.
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Two kids bolted out of class in the middle of the period. I assigned both a detention and contacted the parents. The first parent was immediately apologetic and promised it would never happen again.
The second asked if I had any proof and why was I targeting her son
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No one ever wants to talk about how stupid expensive these pads of paper are and how the people who love them go through them like candy
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I dont think teaching was ever easy. It's always been long hours with hard work and endless struggles. The change has been in the rewards. 15 years ago I'd have almost everyone on board with one or two super challenging students at a time. Now they make up half the class.
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My kids were just playing "school" so of course I went in as the admin doing an observation. The lack of written objectives was troubling
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I dont know if it's worse to be a new teacher with no idea of what things were like before, or an older teacher who has only seen decline.
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PD shouldn't be at the end of a long day the first day back from break. PD shouldn't be at the start of a planning day when there are 20 other things to do. PD shouldn't put more demands on the teachers when half the staff is ready to quit to begin with.
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Had my first chance to test out the schools new phone policy. Girl refused to get off her phone. Did the warnings, did the parent contacts. Called the office, they did come and get her. She refused to give up the phone to them. They sent her back to class with the phone
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Parent: I had no idea my student has missed this much school.
Admin: (Easy answer) We will tell out teachers to redouble their efforts contacting home for their dozens of students who are chronically absent.
Alternative: How the @#$% do you not know your kids missed 40 days?!
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There's a chance the suspension would be a step towards changing his behavior. Or a step to multiple suspensions or even expulsion. The student did have a reason to want to be in the building. Also gives the other students and teacher a break and shows them where the line is
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For the first time this year I'm starting to have students say flat out "I'm just not going to do this assignment" And I kinda want to be like, that's cool, I get paid either way. I've never given up this quickly or easily, but when they say they won't do it, I believe them.
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There's nothing more important than a personal relationship with your students and tailoring your lessons and teaching to their specific needs.
Also, here is 150 students
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Got corrected on my preobservation because I used the "I can" statements favored by the previous administration instead of the "Student will be able to" statements this one likes. Meanwhile teachers keep leaving and most of those who haven't want to
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Went out with some teaching buddies. Not a one of us is excited or optimistic about the upcoming year. Attitude seems to be "show up, check the boxes, go home" No one is going to extra conferences, rewriting lessons, reading education books... should be exciting for sure
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District- You must follow our course calander to the day, everyone districtwide will take the same unit test on the same day. This is non negotiable.
Everyone tries to log in to the district testing platform at the same time.
Platform crashes
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Hot take- Student's who finish their work early shouldn't be allowed to get on their cell phones either. It only encourages them to rush through their work to feed the addiction. And it discourages them from doing something more social or productive
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Had a meeting on dealing with students who are habitually late to school and teachers first periods get disrupted repeatedly. It was all about how teachers could be better trained to handle the attendance and get them caught up as opposed to expecting students to get here on time
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Now we've got an emergency meeting tomorrow after school to discuss how we are going to make it to the end of the year. We lost at least one teacher today, another left on maternity leave, another is about to go. Admin had to cover several classes at a time.
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Twice today my class was interrupted by students yelling and cursing in the hallway. Nothing is done about it, and it didn't used to be like this.
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A group of students was in the hall in the middle of class. An assistant principal was following behind them. He called out "Where are you supposed to be?" One responded "Keep walking and mind your own business" AND HE DID. What hope do the rest of us have?
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Students should not be failing honors classes. If you are in an honors class and failing, you should be dropped down first to have a chance at passing the lower level class. If you can't keep up with or won't do the work you shouldn't be in honors the whole year.
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I just found out that due to teacher shortage and lack of student interest our science department simply isn't offering physics next year. Physics seems like one of those courses we should be offering.
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I ignored my emails all July and August up until now. Just checked yesterday for the first time to see the back to school plan. I've already missed some deadlines for some district things. We are not paid to keep up with our emails over the summer
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When I started teaching, they used to give retirement incentives to the older teachers to get them out the door. Now they are offering incentives to retired teachers to get them to come back.
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Leadership: But what if we pretended everything was fine and continued as normal?
Teachers:There's not enough of us to run the school, the kids aren't showing up, and those who are aren't learning
Leadership: But what if we pretended everything was fine and continued as normal?
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A Facebook memory popped up of me and some other teachers together after work. Half of the teachers in the picture are now out of the profession entirely. The picture is one year old.
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Weve got a mini revolt brewing of teacher's who are tired of having to do extra coverage every day. People are starting to show up just a few minutes late for it, saying "well I have to do this and this during my planning time as well" let's see how this goes.
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Ever since admin told me to stop enforcing attendance and tardiness my first period class has only a few kids in their seats when class starts. And their grades reflect it. People say punishment is unfair, but this isn't serving kids either.
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I got a nasty email from a student demanding to know why I'm giving them a bad grade and telling me I can't fail them for no reason and to let them turn in work that's past the deadline. I responded with "let's pick a different tone and try again" we'll see how that works
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Students spend the first 15 minutes of class complaining about their 3rd quarter grades, then an hour on their phones or talking, then the last 15 minutes trying to rush through the assignment and cheating on it. They also refused to do any assignment not explicitly graded.
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Went out with some teacher buddies last night. None of us feel at all recovered from last year yet. None of feel at all ready to start thinking about going back next year. This should be fun.
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Kid who never does a thing, barely attends class, won't respond to me at all in the classroom, just gave me an awkward little half smile and wave when he passed by in the hall
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District: You need to teach exactly this.
District: You need to teach this lesson at this exact time.
District: This needs to be your exact grading policy.
District: You need to differentiate
Teachers: How do we do that?
District: You are the professionals, you figure it out
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Students behavior and academics are atrocious. But nothing can be done until I've done a half years worth of documenting. Then that thing is a meeting that costs me my prep time and the outcome is that the teachers are going to have to do a lot more with no extra work for the S
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The good: Our AP picked up one of the open science classes to teach the rest of the year.
The bad: Was cutting though her room the other day. Kids on their cell phones, no objective on the board.
The ugly: I was dinged by her for both these things on my last observation.
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One of our biggest flaws as a school system is we assume that parents are capable and willing partners.
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Student gets her schedule changed due to her teacher being a stickler about cell phones. Gets put in my class because I'm a stickler too. Throws a fit the first day. Throws a fit and walks out the second day.
But then gets brought back and I'm asked to let her be on the phone
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If the district says "we hear you" when it comes to student disipline or teacher workload, but doesn't change anything, then they either don't really hear you, or they just don't care.
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Covering a music class this period. It's mostly students who are in this weekends school musical. They are all excitedly talking about which of their teachers are going which night. Go to your students performances people, they love it when you do.
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I'm not convinced he is special ed. When you have a system in place when then are very few consequences for grades and behavior, kids will take advantage of it. Especially if their parents and community of friends aren't helping
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My kid was just at her school dance and reported that another boy had touched her in a (minorly) inappropriate way. AP informed me that they have had a lot of problems with this kid. I absolutely hate the fact that one kids 20 chances has to come at the expense of everyone else
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Had a student threaten me yesterday and the biggest thing I'm worried about coming to school today is whether or not I will be blamed for it.
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I've become one of our most challenging students favorite teacher. To the point where he will defend me. Aggressively.
"MR. SAGE SAID PUT THE PHONE AWAY YOU'D BETTER PUT THE FUCKING PHONE AWAY"
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Educators unite! If your back to school PD has you shouting out stupid slogans, or doing little motions in response to the presenter, refuse.
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"Tests are outdated and unfair, you should give a project instead"
Gives a project that requires a grade level knowledge of the material and takes more than 5 minutes worth of effort.
"NOOOOOOOOOOO!"
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12 out of 28 kids cut my last period class today. I kinda want to call all their parents, do the detentions, and try to put a stop to it. But it was also so quiet and nice with good discussion and work from everyone else.
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Should this be a thing?
A teacher can remove a student from their class for good if they refuse to do their work or follow classroom rules. What happens next is not the teachers concern.
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There is a lot going on. I did used to really enjoy teaching. And based on my wifes career I feel like this is a temporary stop. Even as that looks less likely. Too young to retire, to old to start again. Switching schools is a lot more difficult than it sounds
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New student enrolled in my class. Doesnt speak a word of English, hasn't been in any school this year. Everyone else is struggling through a final project based on everything we have done over the past 9 months. How is this not just babysitting?
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Our most experienced AP left to go be an AP at another school. The best lesson writer on the 9th grade science team just left for elementary school. And I just found our our best guidance counselor is leaving. Is this what a school collapse looks like? What happens next?
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We are a little bit concerned about your classroom management this year, you had a major fight in your room.
If it was a major fight, how come they only got suspended for two days?
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Student is pulled from my class because she's "not getting along with me" On the one hand, one less student and one less distraction in class. On the other hand, they didn't even attempt to encourage her to come to class on time, stay off her phone and to do her work.
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I'm really starting to dread Fridays. Not enough teachers in the school, not enough subs. Too many students in the hallway and not enough consequences for doing so.
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I think 4 day weeks are actually harder than 5 days. We had Monday off this week and so many of us are just worn out and exhausted today. Still in favor of the 4 day student week and giving us the extra day to plan without students.
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