Some Pig

Fiddling While Rome Burns

"No kid wants to be in school," my student said, in tones ringing with conviction.  "No kid likes learning."  This sentiment came from one of my more capable students, a boy who is satisfied with the low B's and occasional C's he can earn by doing his work in fits and spurts during study halls and between classes.  "Yeah," a number of his friends chimed in, "school is boring!"

Those words took all the wind out of my sails for the better part of a day, so much so that I knew I had to address them.  I can't promise that this is what I said verbatim, but it conveys the gist.  I also can't promise that this will be coherent, because like the best rants, my best straighten-up-and-fly-right manifestos are a stream of consciousness.  Here goes:

I want to talk about something that was said in my class the other day.  I don't know the exact quote, but I believe it was something to the effect that no one likes school and no one likes learning.  First of all, any time you start talking in absolutes of 'no one' and 'everyone,' you're wrong.  You may think that no one likes school because the only people who respond when you say something like that is your friends, who are all happy to say, yeah, you're right, school is dumb.  But there are kids right here in this room who do like learning and who do want to come to school.  I know that because I was one of those kids, and when a kid like you said a thing like that, it shut me down and made me not want to be there.  This is the place where it should be SAFE to like learning and to want to grow and develop intellectually.  We should be celebrating learning and the people who like to learn, not shutting them down. 

The other thing I want to address is the whole school is boring issue.  You are here to develop the ability to think and to reason, so that you can do things like look to the past for patterns and trends, so that when you're running the country you can look at situations like Afghanistan and not get sucked into making the same mistakes that previous generations have made.  You seem to think that school has to be 'fun' and 'entertaining'.  School isn't meant to be fun.  You're not here to have fun.  It is not my job to entertain you.  School is meant to be challenging, and stimulating, and thought-provoking, and worthwhile, it's not just supposed to be fun.  Let me tell you, you live in a world of unparalleled material comfort.  We enjoy the highest standard of living in the world, at least as far as material possessions go.  Every day, you take for granted a standard of living that previous generations couldn't even dream about, that even today there are millions of people your age living around the world who would love to have a chance to be as bored as you are in school because they're working, all day, every day.  You've gotten to live this way because you've grown up in a world where America was the predominant power in the world.  You know what got us there?  A big part of it was because of the education that you seem to think is so pointless.  For generations, America had the advantage of being one of the most highly educated countries in the world.  Take basic literacy: When most people around the world couldn't read and write, we had nearly universal literacy.  When most other people in the world didn't have access to schools, we went to school through fifth grade.  Then it became an eighth grade education, and then secondary school.  We had the highest proportional representation of people who enrolled in college, who graduated, who had Ph.Ds.  We had far and away the best educated population in the world.  But you know what's happening now?  We're slipping in relation to other countries.  They're catching up to us and they don't need the U.S. anymore.  China graduates more engineers every year than the U.S., and they don't need to come here for jobs.  When Microsoft wanted to open a new research and development facility, they didn't put it in California, they put it in China.  You are going to be the first generation that sees America fall to being a second-rate power, like Spain, which used to have an empire and then lost it.  Or England, which used to have an empire and then lost it.  Meanwhile some Asian culture that doesn't care if education is 'fun' is becoming the next world power while you're whining about being bored.  We are fiddling while Rome burns.

The other thing that we're trying to do here is develop you into decent human beings.  One of the things I'm trying to do in this class is to show you how history has worked, so you can see what's wrong about how we treated Native Americans, how we treated slaves, how we treated WOMEN, who are half the population, so that if you are ever faced with a moral or ethical dilemma you will make the right choice.  I want you to be good people so that when you do have a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a spouse or a partner or a spousal equivalent, you'll be a good partner and parent and a contributing member of society.  You should be challenging yourselves to do the best you can, not sitting here whining that you're not having fun.  You say education is boring?  You know what I think is boring?  Skateboarding and paintball are the most pointless occupations on the face of the earth!  What's so great about standing on a piece of wood with wheels or running around in the woods?  But you know what?  I don't go stand in the middle of the skate park and tell you how stupid I think your interests are, don't sit in my classroom and tell me how dumb learning is.  Because there are still immigrants who come here from all over the world and work their fingers to the bone to have the chances you take for granted.  Now get to work.

***

After I finished, one little guy said, "Now I'm depressed."  This kid happens to be one of the most diligent, hardworking, conscientious kids on the whole team.  Meanwhile, the kid who made the original claim that set me off?  Yeah, he rolled his eyes about a zillion times during my diatribe, along with heaving heavy sighs and putting his head down on his desk.  "That's the problem!" I said to the diligent kid, shooting Mr. Fun and Games a Significant Look, had he bothered to notice.  "The kids who didn't need the lecture are the ones who get the message, while the ones who need it don't get it."

EDITED TO ADD:

It's not just me who feels this way, either.

Never Complain, Never Explain

Yeah, I get the irony in this title - as in, if I never did either of those things, I wouldn't have a blog, right?

Today one of my colleagues approached me.  He'd found out about the existence of my blog third- or fourth-hand and he wanted to make sure that I knew that other people in the district know it's out there.  The way he said it made me think that maybe some folks are, if not unhappy, maybe a little uncomfortable with what I'm doing.  Or maybe I'm just paranoid.  Or maybe I'm paranoid, but as the expression goes, just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get me.  I'm not so naive as to think that this couldn't be taken negatively if it's seen by the wrong people, or more likely, heard of second-hand by the wrong people who don't bother to check it out for themselves, but leap to their own conclusions based on what they've heard from other people.  

At first, I was really freaked out - who's he talking about?  what have they seen?  who else knows? - but the longer I thought about it, the more I decided, frig it.  I'm not going to sit here feeling like I've been caught doing something 'wrong' when I haven't done anything that it isn't perfectly well within my rights to do (an awkward construction, but you get the idea).  I know the First Amendment as well as any other citizen and probably better, and I know Oliver Wendell Holmes' famous injunction that "Your right to swing your fist ends where my mouth begins."  Yes, I have considered taking my blog private.  As many of you know, I did so, briefly and for my own reasons, earlier this fall.  When I was offline to the general population, I found that a great deal of what I find rewarding about blogging disappeared, too.  I'm an historian and a teacher by vocation, but I'm a writer by avocation.  I get a charge out of putting my writing in the public domain for others to find and read, more so than I do by sharing it only with a chosen few.  I can post a Facebook note for that.  I love finding just the right turn of phrase or shade of meaning to describe what I've experienced, and I love hearing that those words have resounded with someone I've never met before, someone who wouldn't necessarily feel obligated to take the time to read my work just because they know me.  I don't have the time or energy to pursue freelance writing jobs outside my paid work and my 'second shift' at home, so this blog gives me an outlet for that kind of creativity.  Would I give up this blog if it imperiled my career?  I can't lie - I'd have to.  We can't afford to have me sidelined because I like putting the snarky thoughts in my head down on e-paper.  But as I already mentioned, I'm not going to put myself on the sidelines for doing something lots of other people, including lots of other public school teachers, do every day.

So, for the record, and just in case any of those mysterious "they"s do happen to read this, I want to make myself perfectly clear on a number of points:

1) I blog about who I am, and part of who I am concerns what I do for a living.  That happens to be teaching in a public school. 

2) I have never knowingly revealed where I teach, other than my grade level and subject area.  I don't even directly refer to the state where I live, although it's easy enough to figure that out if you're paying attention.  I have mentioned colleagues by name, but only when they're close friends who know about and read my blog, and only when the situation is totally innocuous (usually because it's a joke at my expense).

3) Any students mentioned in my blog are given a pseudonym, and most of the time they are composite characters based on a number of similar incidences or similar students.  I regularly change identifying details, including gender and age, unless it's relevant to the story.  If it is relevant, it's innocuous (such as a student being taller than I am).  I don't even friend former students until they're 21 for that matter because I believe so strongly that students and teachers need to have some professional distance.

4) Yeah, I cuss in my blog, because this is where I put the stuff that's in my head, and yeah, I cuss in my head.  A LOT.  Get the f@#% over it.  Even though I cuss in my blog, I usually wuss out and use symbols or euphemisms for the actual word, because I'm a chickensh!t. 

5) When I do talk about actual students or school situations, usually one of two situations applies: a) they were students far enough in the past that they are not readily identifiable; or, b) the story involved has an element of universality to it.  Adolescent boys have been wiggly and hard to keep occupied since Adam and Eve had to go see the teacher to discuss why Cain couldn't stop punching Abel in the halls.  Every year, there's at least one female student who plays the I-have-a-crisis card non-stop.  And you find me the school district that doesn't foist its share of administrivia and ridiculous bureaucracy on its faculty at one point or another and I will send them my resume pronto.

6) I follow a number of other teachers' blogs, and I don't write about anything they don't write about.  Some of them are far more forthcoming than I am with names, places, and other specifics.

7) I have formulated these internal, personal guidelines after thinking a LOT about the moral and ethical implications of publishing a blog.  There is nothing here I can't live with, and nothing I won't stand behind.  I regularly read through my own archives to make sure I haven't posted anything in the heat of the moment that I wish I'd kept to myself, and I've only ever removed one post. 

So if this mysterious shadowy "they" actually does exist, I'd like to make "them" into a "you".  I invite you to make yourself known, and, whether you work with me or not, if you think I've overstepped my bounds, or if you're concerned about what I write.  I'd rather talk about whatever might trouble you face to face than spend the rest of my blogging career looking over my shoulder and wondering if you even exist.

All The World's a Stage (And For $2500, You Can Be On It, Too)

I ran into a teacher friend in the halls, a very accomplished singer and musician who is also one of the most levelheaded, fair-minded people I know.  "How's the musical going?" I inquired of "Kay"*.  I got a roll of the eye and a heave of a sigh for response.  "I got an email from a parent about our casting," she said. 

One of the many things that makes Kay such a gem is the fact that she is willing, nay, eager, to help stage the middle school musical.  Every. Year.  Do you have any idea what it's like to get twenty middle schoolers organized and focused for forty minutes every day?  Try to imagine it.  Now try to imagine FOUR TIMES THAT NUMBER of students for TWO HOURS AT A STRETCH, and you have musical practice.  Furthermore, the musical has a very low threshold of exclusivity.  Do you want to be in the musical?  Okay, you're in the musical!  Do you want to sing, despite a near-total dearth of musicality?  That's fine, you can be in the chorus!  Are you too shy to show your face on stage, but you're longing for the roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd?  Come be a stage hand!  If the musical doesn't have enough parts for everyone, they'll make up a part for you, right down to the third lady's maid's sister's understudy. 

However, this being Upper Socioeconomic Middle School, located in the land of competitive parenting, there is always going to be an element that COMPLETELY LOSES ALL PERSPECTIVE around events like this.  Because while anyone can be in the musical, there are parts to be won (or lost) and bragging (or complaining) rights at stake.  so while parts for the third lady's maid's sister's understudy abound, there are always only a few true lead roles to go around, and that's where the heartache begins.

Kay told me that one particular student did not get a lead role this year.  This student considers herself to be quite the budding thespian (a perspective that has been actively encouraged, if not originally instilled, by her mother). She had won a lead role last year and thought herself a shoo-in for the lead.  When she did not get the lead, she approached Kay and asked why she didn't get it.  Kay repeated to her what she told all the kids, that she tries to fit the best student to the best part.  Then "Sarah" asked her if there were any lead roles left over.  The only role left was that of a larger, unattractive older woman, which Kay told Sarah was still open if she wanted to consider it.

Well, after that all hell broke loose, transmitted via e-communication.  Sarah's mother sent Kay a screed telling her (Kay) how TRAUMATIZED Sarah was by this and asking how DARE Kay tell her that she wasn't as good as some of the other students who tried out and how could she be so CRUEL and HEARTLESS as to suggest her daughter was UNATTRACTIVE by offering her that role and blah blah blah self esteem yada yada yada you shouldn't be around children blah. The mother then haughtily informed Kay that her little Sarah happened to be working with a talent agency that happened to think that this was a very talented young lady who would go on to have a brilliant career as an actress.  So there.

Here's what she failed to leave out:  This "talent agency" that is praising Sarah's acting to the skies?  Is a private "acting and modeling academy" to which this family has paid THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS over the past two years for "lessons".  And what has this institution managed to accomplish on Sarah's behalf?  Well, she's been an extra in a movie or two.  Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I understand, being an extra entails getting paid a pittance to stand around for hours basically being yourself and reacting to what's going around you, or not reacting, whatever the director decides.  So after months and months of academy fees, and weekly travel back and forth to the nearest larger metropolitan area, and paying for head shots and whatever, the kid's skills were honed to the point where she was eminently qualified to... stand around???

This is where I lose my sh!t.

Dear readers, you know I love my India and my Ceecee past the point of rationality.  They are as the stars in the sky and the earth under my feet.  I think they are clever and talented and beautiful and fascinating.  TO ME.  But if I ever, ever start blogging about how they are America's Next Top (fill-in-the-blank here) and I know this because the expensive private instructor I hired told me so, will you please please please reach through your computer screen and smack some sense into me???  Really, are there that many suckers born every minute that these parents don't GET IT?  OF COURSE the acting academy thinks Sarah is the next Dakota Fanning, because that's how they get the money out of you!  But don't think for a moment that it's limited to music and acting, oh no no no.  My friend the baseball coach has to deal with it too, when parents sidle up to him in tryouts and oh-so-casually mention that "Brandon's AAU coach says he's going to be their top pitcher this year."  Yeah?  So?  The only way AAU makes its money is by finding parents who are willing to pony up bucks for their kid to play on a team!  Sure, your kid may be the best pitcher on his AAU team, but that's no guarantee of anything!  That's why I changed dance schools for my kids, because the school we were attending pushes the competition team crap hard.  They make a big deal about "tryouts" to make it sound exclusive and elite, but in reality, they're just divided among a couple teams: Girls who can dance, girls who can sorta dance, and girls who suck but whose moms are willing to pay for the mandatory four different dance classes per session!   Really, is it that hard to figure out??

Let me offer you some perspective on this:  Everyone is better at some things than others.  Lots of kids have talent.  Some kids have a lot of talent.  But only one in a zillion has a truly remarkable talent.  What's more, that talent is usually accompanied by a big work ethic and extraordinary focus at a very young age (sometimes that work ethic and focus is the parents' and not the kid's, but that's another post).  If you're spending thousands of dollars on soccer camp and hotels and travel and all that crap and your kid gets cut from the freshman team, that should be a clear signal to put away the Division I season pass order forms and tell your kid to start hitting the books.  And don't bring up the old "Michael Jordan got cut from his freshman basketball team" story to me, because that's an outlier - as proven by the fact that it's the only counterargument you have.  Now, if your kid loves doing x, and you want to pay for it, great!  It's good for kids to have a positive activity to focus on.  But don't think that just because you spend a small fortune you can't afford on your kid that it automatically makes him or her more talented than anyone else out there.

I'll tell you another thing that drives me batsh!t crazy about this whole phenomenon:  It creates a very uneven playing field for the kids who might want to try something, but whose families can't afford to pay for the private leagues or who don't have their act together enough to get their kids into it.  The research is clear:  Lower-class kids spend their free time playing outside with each other in unstructured activities, and middle-class kids take lessons and join leagues.  By the time school sports start up in middle school, when it's more likely to be free, the less-advantaged kids are already four or five years behind the kids who have been in rec league for all of elementary school.  Add in AAU and town travel teams and Elite USA and all that other crap, and getting your kid into an activity becomes an arms race based on who has more money and time to spend trucking kids around.

Don't get me wrong, if India and Celeste happen to express an interest or a talent in something, I will do whatever I need to do (within reason and cost) to foster it. My approach right now is to try a range of things.  They take dance lessons once a week.  India sings in her youth voices choir at church.  They've taken swimming lessons and gymnastics lessons and soccer lessons in the past, but those are usually limited to a session or two.  Even though I think they are the greatest thing since sliced bread, I can see that they're no more than typically capable at any of those things.  Will that change?  I don't know.  I hope they find a passion in something - music, art, philately, model UN, studying the films of Ingmar Bergman - that enriches their lives beyond the daily round of school and home and chores and homework.  But I also hope I never mistake shelling out the green stuff on my part for actual talent on my kids' part.

* Names and identities changed to protect - well, everyone involved. The student portrayed is a composite and all conversations are summaries and not quotes, so don't get all James Frey on me, a'ight???

All I Wanna Do Is Have Some Fun

It's been a sucky week, what with the aforementioned testing and the subsequent schedule changes, and then just when that finally came to an end we had the Worst-Planned Field Trip Ever bring everything to a screeching halt again which resulted in mass panic and discombobulation on the part of the kids (not to mention the person running the aforementioned WPFTE, and should I mention that this person runs this exact same field trip four times a year???  And has done so for many, many years??  As in, DECADES?  As in, even if you are as slow and deliberate as a three-toed sloth, I would think that you would have had time to get it right by now!  But I digress.). So after six days in a row of screwed-up-ness, it's no surprise that the kids were nuttier than squirrel crap today, especially with the weekend just hours away, which was of course EXACTLY not the day to start a new activity they've never done before, but I can't afford to lose any more time since all the other 8th grade Social Studies teachers are already in the middle of the Revolutionary War and I just started the French and Indian War today, so damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead.  Which turned out to be not such a bad thing except for my last period class of the day, which happens to be the one most heavily loaded with students who are not overly gifted in the brains or social maturity departments BUT who FAR exceed the local, state, and national standards for Being Talkative Pains in the Bum.  So after pointing out to one of these cherubs that there is NO WAY IN HELL the French and Indian War could POSSIBLY have led directly to World War II since they were separated by, oh, ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-FIVE YEARS, and may I point out that this was not the DUMBEST question I answered all day, well, a girl needs a little decompression time.  And you MIGHT then think to yourself, "Hey!  At least it's the weekend!" and you would be right in thinking that the weekend is the perfect opportunity to pause and regroup, refreshed by a hiatus from the cares and woes of the workaday world spent with one's nearest and dearest, BUT...

You knew there would be a BUT, didn't you?

... BUT, the in-laws are coming.  Which means that instead of spending the weekend catching up on all the craziness of the previous week and getting my ducks in a row for the craziness to come, I am going to spend the next 48 hours wishing the whole damned weekend was over and done already.  And then, since I know the ILs love us and come visit because they want to be part of our girls' lives, I will feel guilty and ashamed of myself for being such a heartless, ungracious, bratty little beast.  Then I will resent the fact that I feel that way, which will be followed by resenting the fact that, for reasons that are way too long and complicated to go into here, they are very, very difficult to have around and to keep entertained.  And since Warren and I are both stressed out and resentful, naturally the girls pick up on our tension, which, coupled with the excitement of having Grandparents! Around! All!! Weekend!!!, means that at some point during the weekend, one of the girls will have the kind of Difficult Moment that doesn't show her in the best possible light, which invariably ends with my father-in-law trying to step in and play the role of Stern but Doting Grandparent, by which I mean scolding her while trying to make it sound like he's not scolding her.  Which pisses me off.  And makes me resentful.  And starts the cycle all over again.

If I take to my bed with a bottle of gin, do you think anyone would notice?

They Have A Good Beat And You Can Dance To 'Em

You know what this blog hasn't had in a good long while?  A nice rant!  So pull up your chair, break out a cupcake or three, and settle in, cuz I'm ready to rip with not one, not two, but THREE rants in one!

Rant #1

So my long-term readers and friends are aware that I do enjoy a nice reality TV program now and again.  I like nothing more than spending my Thursday nights with the supposedly "real" housewives of Atlanta or watching Stacy and Clinton turn around a fashion disaster.  One of my faves is Dancing With the Stars.  It's the near-perfect reality TV premise.  It has everything!  Glittery costumes!  Sexy dancers!  Obscure semidemihemicelebrities of the kind who used to show up on "Hollywood Squares"!  Tension!  Drama! Action!  Plus it's one of the few reality shows - okay, the only reality show - I can actually picture myself participating in, except for the minor impediment of my non-semidemihemicelebrity status.  But really, how much of a celebrity does one have to be to get on that show?  After all, when I go out to run errands of an evening, any number of young pubescent types recognize who I am - isn't that celebrity status of a sort? ANYWAY, that's not what's rantworthy about DWTS.  What's rantworthy is what happens after the D-listers, former A-listers, retired football players and marginally well-known Olympic athletes finish dancing.  Once they're done, the formidable Len Goodman offers his opinion of their efforts.  And more often than not, the audience boos him loudly.  Why?  Because Len Goodman has the audacity to - gasp! - judge the dancers' efforts critically.  Which means that sometimes he says things that - horrors! - aren't nice!  Can you imagine???  Here's this internationally-known expert on ballroom dance, a man who's been involved in the dance world for longer than most people in the audience have been ALIVE, and he actually TAKES THE DANCERS'  EFFORTS SERIOUSLY AND CRITIQUES THEM AS SUCH.  And you know what happens?  If you listen closely, you'll notice that as Len is calling the dancers out, most of the time they're agreeing with him.  He'll say something like, "Your footwork is sloppy, you're off the beat and you faked your way through that turn," and the celebrity in question is nodding in acquiescence and saying, "yup, yup, you're right, I did," and so on.  Meanwhile the audience is booing because, hey!  They like whoever it is and they think Len's being an old meanie-pants.

Letter From A Broad, Celebrity Endorsement Edition

Dear Ed Hardy/Christian Audigier/whoever,

For starters, could you please decide what name these garments are meant to evoke, because I am totally confused.  One would think that this Ed Hardy fellow is the person responsible for this, um, fashion statement, but then right under the name "Ed Hardy" is the very prominent subheading BY CHRISTIAN AUDIGIER.  What is that supposed to mean?  Is Ed Hardy Christian Audigier's alter ego?   Is he an evil twin?  Have Ed Hardy and Christian Audigier ever been seen in the same place at the same time?  Why the hell is this clothing line named after the apparently fictitious Ed Hardy if you're just going to splatter BY CHRISTIAN AUDIGIER all over it?  Why not just call it CHRISTIAN AUDIGIER and spare yourself the hassle?  Also, isn't it a little outre to display the designer's name so prominently under the label name?  After all, when Karl Lagerfeld designs a Chanel suit (is he still designing Chanel?  I seem to be five or six years behind on my Vogue reading), he doesn't put BY KARL LAGERFELD under the famous double-C logo. Furthermore,  could I please clue you in on the poor choice you made for "celebreality" spokesperson?  I know there's a recession, but geez - Jon Gosselin?  Really?  What, Michael Vick was too pricey?  There wasn't a Backstreet Boy or two willing to give you a cut-rate endorsement?  Finally, could you please share with me whatever kind of mind control you're currently exercising over the general populace to make them wear your ugly-ass clothing?  I would like to share it with the crazypants folks who are convinced that public-option health care is akin to throwing out the Constitution in favor of gulags and Five-Year Plans.  I'm not saying you have to be clinically insane to love Ed's-slash-Christian's unique aesthetic (i.e., biker tattoos meet seventies van art tinged with just a splash of eighties fluorescence), but I'm sure it helps.

Sincerely,

Puzzled

Dear Jon Gosselin,

Wow, what douchebag you turned out to be!

(As you can see, I don't believe in pulling my punches.)

While I'm not a J&K+8 fan, I had seen enough of your ex to have a whole lotta sympathy for you, and from the sounds of it, a lot of other people felt the same way.  And you've managed to burn through those stores of goodwill in about three-point-two tabloid stories, dude.  When you were the whipped husband shambling along in the wake of the SS Kate, I wondered what you'd be like if you weren't being chastised, ordered around, condescended to, or belittled continuously.

Obviously the answer is, "a douchebag".

Look, I understand you're making up for your lost youth.  You were surrounded six-deep in diapers and TV cameras at an age when I was hanging out with my friends, running up credit card debt, going out on worknights, and dating highly unsuitable people (Or more accurately, pining after highly unsuitable people and wondering why they didn't want to date me.  It's best all around that I got married later in life.).  But the fact remains that you are THIRTY-two, and not TWENTY-two, so a good deal of the sh!t you can get away with, or at least excuse away on the basis of callow youth, you can't do when you pass the three-zero Rubicon.  I mean, just look at the sight of you:

Aside from the fact that the picture on the upper left makes you look like you're rocking the petal-pink lipstick (not your best color, BTW), you've got the cute-suburban-dad thing going on.  The picture on the right, on the other hand, makes you look like a superannuated frat boy after spring break.  Dude, if your face gets any puffier, you're going to have to punch it down like bread dough.  And we need to have a long, serious talk about your Ed Hardy BY CHRISTIAN AUDIGIER addiction.  There are several things I never want to see on or near ANYONE'S hiney, and embroidered lion's heads definitely make the list.  Seriously, the only place we should EVER see those jeans is on a bonfire.  Or on the Glamour magazine "Don't" page, and you should have a black bar over your face.  One or the other.

We also need to talk about your taste in women, a sense of taste which seems to be firmly lodged right behind those lion's heads.  I know now that you're on the road to being unmarried you are free to pursue your lovin' any way you want it, but do you have to pick barely-legals who look like they're carrying an alphabet soup bowl full of STDs, even if they can't spell STD?  Holy penicillin, Batman, if any of those walking Petri dishes of skeeze you've been parading around came anywhere near MY kids, I'd be asking the pediatrician for an aerosol antibiotic.  No, scratch that.  If any of those skankbuckets came near my kids, I'd be lawyering up and throwing the book at you.  And I'd just love to see the judge's reaction when you come strolling into the courtroom in your $275 sweatshirts and your bottle-blonde hoochie mamas.  I'd be getting sole custody faster than you can say "Ed Hardy BY CHRISTIAN AUDIGIER" five times fast.

Now go put on some nice Dockers and pay some attention to your kids.

SP

P.S. Beware the specter of a rapid fall from fashion's graces wearing that trendy sh!t too.  Remember Ashton Kutcher and the trucker cap phenomenon?  I rest my case.

E-Mails I Will Never Send

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Absentee,

I am writing because I noticed your daughter Aimee was not in my class yet again today.  I looked up her cumulative absences, and do you realize she has been absent from my class twenty-three times so far this year?  To my knowledge, Aimee doesn't have any chronic health conditions that would keep her out, and hasn't contracted swine flu, diphtheria, mononucleosis, or any other illness that would necessitate being out of school for A MONTH.  While Aimee is extremely bright and catches up quickly, she does miss a critical part of the learning experience when she's out at least one day a week on average.  Does that strike you as being just a bit excessive, perhaps?  Plus I have to question the validity of some of the choices you've made.  When your kid has already racked up absences in the double digits, do you really think it's justifiable to take her out of school early for vacation - and then come back to school late?   Then there was the time you kept her home because her sibling was coming home from college that day and you wanted Aimee there to greet him - because obviously having to wait until the end of the school day to see someone she just saw a couple of months ago would count as durance vile and is considered cruel and unusual punishment under the Bill of Rights - a fact I am telling you because Aimee was OUT for that lecture.  By the way, you may be interested in knowing that Aimee's peers are aware of her lack of presence in school.  No one wants to work with her on group assignments because they know she's not going to be around for most of it.  And is it just coincidence, or does your daughter tend to disappear right in the middle of assignments so that she can finish it up on her own and not have to interact with anyone?  Either way, from now on I am not accepting illness excuse notes from you unless they involve dengue fever and are countersigned by the CDC.

Mrs. S. Pig

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Draggypants,

I just want to alert you to the fact that your son clearly has worn out all his own clothes and is now wearing his little brother's.  That's the only explanation I can find for the fact that his jeans are simultaneously skin-tight AND sagging below his @ss.  Seriously, the crotch of his jeans today was at knee level.  It's a wonder the kid doesn't take two steps forward and fall flat on his face, bound tightly 'round the ankles by his own denim trousers.  What's even more amazing is that, when he lifted his shirt to hoist the waistband of his pants infinitesimally closer to his arse, I noticed that HE HAS A BELT ON.  Why??  The better to trip himself up when the aforementioned gravity-induced depantsing occurs?  It's not as if he's taking that belt and using it to CINCH HIS PANTS TIGHT so they STOP falling down.  Either your son is terminally confused about what a belt is and how it is meant to function, or  he does know but his pants are so ill-fitting that efforts to make them suitable for public viewing are futile.  Either way, please make him wear something that doesn't leave everything hanging in the breeze, so to speak.

Gratefully,

S. Pig

Dear Ms. Stinky,

My dad tells this story from his Navy days about how, when he was serving on a destroyer, sailors with poor personal hygiene who failed to take repeated hints to improve matters would be summarily grabbed, stripped naked, thrown in the shower and scrubbed down with the wire scrub brushes usually used to scour the deck of the ship. 

I tell you this by way of being a cautionary tale.  If your son is ever tempted to join the Navy, tell him to choose a branch of the armed services where members are not kept in quite such close quarters, or he is going to find himself bereft of a couple layers of dermis at the least.  Why?  Because your kid stinks like a barnyard.  Really.  We mean it.  Today I went to help him with a problem and he had SERIOUS grime ingrained in the skin around his fingernails.  If I didn't know better, I'd assume he was planting potatoes in his spare time from the skunk-wrestling league.  I like your kid, but I can't get close enough to his desk to help him with his work because the stench knocks me out from 20 paces.  We've given the group talk about Mr. Shower and his friends Soap, Deodorant, and Shampoo several times and nothing has changed.  So please, for the love of my olfactory nerve, tell the kid to bathe!

Ms. Pig

Dear Mrs. Moonphase,

I need to share a concern I have with you about Menstra.  At last count, she has had her period seventy-seven times this year.  This clearly falls outside the bounds of normal female maturation and is now cause for medical intervention.  Might I suggest a suitable OB/GYN for your daughter to obtain a complete workup?

Signed,

Menstra's social studies teacher

Dear Ms. Slacker and Mr. Stepdad,

You need to know that Little Slacker approached me today and asked me to add two points to his grade so he would have a C when you check his grades.  When I gently reminded him that we haven't done any graded assignments this week that would raise his average, he informed me that he wanted me just to add the points to his grade regardless so that he could have the magic C average.  In fact, the D he has is a fair and accurate reflection of his work ethic, level of achievement, and contribution to the classroom environment.  It will be a cold day in hell before I "give" him OR anyone else points on his grade just because he doesn't want to be grounded.  He is more than welcome to see me about completing any one of the myriad unfinished or unsatisfactorily completed assignments given to him this quarter.  After all, he will have nothing but time on his hands when he is grounded.

Sincerely,

Mrs. P.

Teacher's Pets

After the baker's dozen of years that I've been in the edjimicashun biz, I've learned a thing or two about my professional strengths and ... well, let's call them "opportunities to improve".  I am the first to admit that there's a lot I could do better, but I know what I do well.  One of my skills is an ability to make connections at some level with most students.  I can talk shop with the vokies, make sophomoric jokes with the jocks, talk existentialism with the philosophers, giggle with the girlie-girls, provide a (marginally) sympathetic audience for the drama queens, and I am even conversational, if not fully fluent, in redneck (Dude!  Goin' sleddin' this weekend?  Up ta the Notch?  Wikked!). 

However, there are a few subcultures of adolescentensis Americanus that I just don't "get". 

I don't get anime fans. 

I don't get skateboarders.

I don't get gamers.

Letter From A Broad, XWhyMe Chromosome Edition

Dear boys,

We need to have a talk. 

No, not that talk; the responsibility for that lies squarely in the laps of your fathers, brothers, some kid you talked to on the bus one day, your health teacher and Penthouse Forum - in short, anyone else besides me.  No, we need to have a talk about some of the more unpleasant social manifestations of your physical state, to wit, your transmogrification into complete and utter nincompoops.  Like, seriously. I'm very well versed in the realities of teenaged boys.  I know that young teenage boys tend toward the smelly, goofy, and horny, and in some godforsaken cases, all three simultaneously.  That is only to be expected.  What is not acceptable is the level of sheer unmitigated ANNOYINGNESS (is that a word? I say it is!) you have unleashed on an unwitting public as of late.  What happens over April vacation?  Does the advent of spring uncover hidden reserves of testosterone that surge through your bloodstream like a tsunami through the Indian Ocean?  Does the sight of shorts and t-shirts on your female counterparts cause you to lose whatever hard-won social skills you earned over the winter, when they were more fully clothed?  Are you so distracted by the dog-whistle call of pheromones that you can't perform basic human functions, like walking, talking, and chewing gum simultaneously? 

Since we appear to need a refresher course in Acting Like a Human Being 101, let me do the honors.  There are certain behaviors that are NOT ACCEPTABLE in polite society.  For example, it is NOT ACCEPTABLE to stand in the middle of whatever pathway large numbers of people need to take to get from point A to point B.  Need I point out EVERY SINGLE BLESSED DAY OF THE WEEK that the lacrosse sticks and gym bags you carry slung on your back make you twice as hard to traverse around?  And must I ask you EVERY SINGLE DAY to do any or all of the following:  Show up to class on time; go to your locker now and don't ask to go during class; take off your hat in the building; get off the counter, it's not your assigned seat; don't push your classmates into the wall while you're walking down the hall; and FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY STOP FARTING AND BLAMING IT ON YOUR FRIENDS.  I have to WORK for the rest of the day in the room that you just befouled with your anile stench, so have some consideration, please!

While I'm asking for the moon and stars, I'm going to add one more to the list:  Could we please, please, please start respecting one another's personal space?  That includes, but is not limited to, bookbags, books, binders, backpacks, jackets, shoes, and iPods as well as one's physical person.  Holy oxymorons, Batman, given the proliferation of homophobic comments I overhear, I'd think the LAST thing you guys would want to do is get within a ten-foot radius of one another lest someone think you're one of them.  And how many times have I talked to you about THAT, too?  Would you call someone a racial slur?  No?  Then why is it perfectly fine to use sexual preference as a pejorative?  And a pejorative is - oh never mind, JUST STOP DOING IT.  Why does it matter anyway?  And don't you think that maybe, just maybe, some of your FRIENDS might have some of those inclinations???  It's not outside the realm of the possible, you know - I saw that kid in the back row do jazz hands that one time; he's not fooling me any!  But back to the personal space issue - here's a tip:  YOU ARE TOO OLD TO PLAY TAG.  ESPECIALLY IN THE HALLS.  What IS it with you these days?  If I had a nickel for every time I've told you guys not to poke, prod, kick, trip, nudge, elbow, tickle, slap, push, or in any way TOUCH each other in the past month, I'd be able to retire the federal deficit! 

Okay, there are five weeks left in your middle school career.  How about we agree that you will make every reasonable effort within your power to act like a somewhat more evolved life form, and I will let the little stuff slide?  I'm not asking for homo sapiens here. I'll take homo habilis, or if I'm feeling ambitious and it's a nice day, we can reach for homo neanderthalensis!  Otherwise it's going to come down to you or me, kids, and I'm telling you right now, I've been at this game as long as you've been alive... so don't bet the house that it'll be you.

Love,

Your long-suffering Social Studies teacher

Deja Vu All Over Again

I thought things were going to be different, but clearly, they're not.

One of the eternal frustrations of my job, one which threatens to make me bitter and cynical and burnt out, is the constant reinvention of the wheel forced upon us by various administrators, central office honchos, and legislators, none of whom are responsible for actually implementing their decisions and none of whom actually have to deliver content instruction, day in and day out, to real live living breathing students.  After a baker's dozen of years in this profession, I've learned to take every new initiative, reform, and mandate with a whole fucking mountain of salt, because you know what?  After we teachers do all the grunt work of rewriting and revising and revamping and reconfiguring and rewhatevering everything we do to meet the demands of the NEW! and IMPROVED! program we're now currently using as our guidebook, something comes along - a change of personnel, a new law, something - and then guess what?  We're not doing that anymore, oh no, that's not at all what we need, we need to change direction entirely and go do THIS now, and by the way, all that work you did?  All that time you took away from preparing classes and correcting papers and meeting with students and researching your lessons and basically DOING YOUR JOB???  Yeah, all that was basically a big,fat waste of time because everything you did is now going to be THROWN OUT as old news and now we're going to start all over again!!! 

Here's a prime example:  When I moved back to the State Formerly Known As Home lo these eight years ago, the school where I taught was up to its (figurative) eyeballs in rewriting its curriculum to align with new state standards in order to comply with new legislation that mandated standards-based learning.  [For those of you not blessed with a working vocabulary in educationese, what "standards-based learning" means is that students are assessed against an absolute standard, not against a norm.  So, for example, if the standard says that all eighth-grade students will be able to write an essay with a thesis statement, three paragraphs, and a conclusion, a student who is unable to do so has to work on that skill until s/he is able to produce it.]  Where this becomes tricky is when high school graduation is at stake.  The State FKAH wanted to make high school diplomas standards-based, meaning, if a student did not meet a state-level standard, that student would not get credit for that subject area. This may sound fairly straightforward and uncontroversial, but think about what happens when a kid misses ONE standard but can complete all the others.  Or if the kid has a special ed disability.  Or moves in from another state that doesn't have standards-based diplomas.  

All of the above issues and more were raised to the grand wallahs at the State House, but they insisted - insisted! - that standards-based learning was coming, there were deadlines and benchmarks that had to be met, schools not in compliance were going to be penalized, blah blah blah yada yada yada.  For my first two years at this school, we spent every professional development day, every faculty meeting, every department meeting, every spare moment scrambling around trying to get everything in place that the state required so that we wouldn't be out of compliance.  Well, I say "we," which means "everyone except my friend Sue" - she was too smart to fall for the trap.  The day of reckoning, when we would be held accountable to the state, loomed.  And then - guess what?  At the eleventh hour, fifty-ninth minute and 57th second, the state Leg, in its infinite wisdom, decided they were going to "suspend" the movement toward standards-based grading "indefinitely."  For which read, "we realized this law was too FUBAR to implement, and the first time we denied a kid a diploma based on standards we were going to get our asses sued off, so, oops!  Never mind!  We call do-overs!  Um, go back to doing whatever it was that you... were doing... um, before."  In the words of Sue, "I told you so!"

So I, like many stronger and wiser folks before me, decided to split my efforts in two.  The bulk of my effort went into TEACHING - you know, trying to get kids to understand something that they didn't understand before in a way that makes their lives richer and more meaningful.  Or is that just too Hallmark-channel-ridiculous for words?  Then, a small sliver of my time and energy was dedicated to paying lip service to the latest and greatest snake oil being peddled from on high.  A teeny-weeny section of my brain was reserved for stupid jokes, gossip about co-workers, the lyrics to the theme song of The Jeffersons and the answers to trivia game questions, all of which would turn out to be fodder for future blog posts, but that is a waaaay different story.  To make a long story short (oops! too late!), I went on this way happily for many years, glad to be in the classroom and willing to let the rest of the nonsense roll off my back.  But then, in my new job, we were told that we were going to have a new decision-making model.  And it would be ground up!  And teacher-centered!  And focused on being honest about what was going on in the classroom! And you know what I did?

I fell for it.  I believed them!  Even as I type this, I can't believe I was that damn dumb!  I actually thought to myself, gee, this might actually work.  I actually let myself get invested in our curriculum work.  And you know what?  We were doing good stuff!  My fellow social studies teachers and I were setting common goals, planning assessments together, coming up with a coherent, cohesive curriculum that I BELIEVED IN and FELT I COULD TEACH.  We spent hours and HOURS on this stuff and I was actually willing and able to do MORE of this extra work because for once I felt like we were actually accomplishing something USEFUL AND CONCRETE. 

I'm sure you know where this is going.

Today I was told that all the work we have done over the past three-quarters of a calendar year is, um, well, useless.  Because our NEW curriculum coordinator doesn't agree with what the OLD curriculum coordinator did, we are basically THROWING OUT ALL THE WORK WE DID ALL YEAR and starting over.  Why?  Well, who knows, maybe she needs something to do to justify her salary that is probably TWICE WHAT I MAKE.  Oh, and by the way?  We have three, forty-five minute meetings left this school year for curriculum writing, and we have to rewrite our ENTIRE curriculum according to the NEW template.  By the end of JUNE.  Oh, and this decision?  Came from the top down.  So bye-bye, bottom-up planning; sayonara, teacher-led decision-making. That was a nice six months we had together!  Next?

You wanna know what really fries my cheese? (You must, if you've hung around this long.)  What gets me is that for ONCE, I was actually BEING TRUTHFUL ABOUT WHAT I DO.  For ONCE, I was being HONEST about what goes on in my classroom and not just going through the motions to make the bureaucracy happy.  For ONCE, I was PROUD of what we were accomplishing as a grade-level subject area.  For ONCE, I felt that I didn't have to close my door and play make-believe in order to do what I feel is ethically right by the kids.  Because you know who my customer is?  It's the KIDS.  You know what my job is?  My job is to deliver CONTENT to my STUDENTS in a way that is challenging and engaging and thought-provoking and skill-enhancing, and to do so in a way that makes them BETTER and MORE WELL-ADJUSTED citizens of the world.  And when STUPID SHIT LIKE THIS gets in the way of me DOING MY JOB I get ANGRY.  

So parents, do you want some free advice?  (It's worth every penny, I promise.)  If you want to know if your local school is any good, ignore the principal and the assistant principal and the central office hacks and the PTO moms and the reports in the local paper and go talk to the teachers directly.  Don't listen to the official arglebargle about curriculum and standards and lifelong learning and all that crap.  Why?  Because if my experience is any indication, and I've been in four districts in my career, what the teachers are DOING IN THE CLASSROOM and what the official party line is are often two very different things.  So go talk to the teachers.  If they seem smart and on the ball and engaged and connected to kids, they probably are and you can trust them with your kid.  If they seem to be playing the jargon game or don't seem to know which end is up, they probably don't.  The rest of it?  Is just window dressing.  And, because I like my job and I like my district and I want to keep teaching here preferably until I retire or die, this post will be up for a limited time - but if I don't get this off my chest, that final moment's going to come sooner rather than later.