Some Pig

Teachers Need Vacation After Dealing With Stuff Like This All Year

Dear Darron's* Mom,

I have received your emails indicating that Darron "doesn't understand" his current grade posted on the school website, and he is "confused" about why his grade is so low.  I also caught the not-so-subtle subtext to your message that Darron is unwilling to approach me himself, so I am not doing my job by allowing him to fall so far behind instead of chasing him down and making sure I hand him the work.

As I was reviewing Darron's current grade, I noticed an interesting phenomenon.  Surely it is absolutely 100% coincidental that Darron just happens to be absent almost every time I give a quiz in class.  It is also merely an unfortunate concantenation of circumstance that every time we have any kind of change or irregularity in our schedule - a half day teacher workshop, say, or an assembly - Darron just happens to be absent on those days as well.  And this synchronicity is made even more anomalous given that Darron's absences are excused, which means that he must just happen to get sick, have a dentist appointment, or otherwise need to leave school on the exact same days that we have some kind of altered schedule.  Which is why I was shocked, shocked, to find that he was not in school today, the day we had an all-school assembly.  After all, there's no possible way that you, his mother, could be colluding with him to cut school by excusing his absences. 

So I'll strike a deal with you.  You stop enabling your son and blaming me for his crappy work ethic, and I won't point out the coincidental timing of his excused absences. 

Sincerely,

Some Pig

*Yeah, Darron's not his real name. Because I like having a job.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Education

I am sitting in an IEP review meeting (for you non-educators, that means we are reviewing the education plan for a student with a special education designation).  The student in question has an IQ that's a little above room temperature, but not by much.  Her reading ability tests at "low average," which means I don't know what, but in practice I can tell you that she barely understands the material I present in my low-level Econ class and her comprehension and recall scores are pretty low.  Her math testing shows issues that make her reading problems look minor by comparison, and she has a report card replete with C's and D's in most of her academic classes, all of which are either the lowest-level general ed classes we offer, or the "supported" classes, which means there are five kids in the class and the curriculum is covered very, vee-eee-e-ry slowly.

On the "transition planning" page, I see a note to the effect that, "Tanner* wants to attend State Flagship University and study education." So, as politely and as obliquely as I can say without actually saying that Tanner doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell, I raise the subject that Tanner may want to research "other possibilities" after high school, because with a transcript full of C's and D's in level three and four classes (where four is the lowest possible), the state U system?  Ain't gonna happen.

Mom asks me, "What are the colleges looking for?"

I respond, "They are looking for A's and B's in level two classes and above."

At which point the Grand High Vizier of Special Ed gives me the stinkeye and says haughtily, "Level three classes are college acceptable."

And I smile and say, "Oh, okay," and act like I actually believe that bullshit.  However, inside my head (which is where all the action takes place), this is what I'm thinking:

If you think for one fraction of a second that I or any other person even tangentially connected to the educational profession believes one word of that, mister, you are either seriously delusional or flat-out lying.

Of all the many, many things that make me crazy about my chosen profession, here's the thing that drives me batshit, up-the-wall, ripping-my-hair-out crazy:  WE LIE TO KIDS ALL THE TIME ABOUT COLLEGE.  Can I say that again?

WE LIE TO KIDS ALL THE TIME ABOUT COLLEGE.

And by "we," I mean not just teachers, but teachers and administrators and politicians and the media and parents and everyone -EVERYONE - who has ever espoused the stupid (and irrefutably wrong-headed) twin fallacies of "everyone can learn at the highest level" and "everyone should go to college."  And so, to make sure that everyone thinks he or she can, indeed, go to college, we no longer label classes as being for the college-bound and the non-college-bound. All the classes we teach are college appropriate! Which is, as I can tell you, a CROCK.  If I showed you the work I give my level three class, you would LAUGH (or alternately, be completely horrified).  You know what I give them?  I give them WORKSHEETS.  We watch movies and they answer "essay questions" in poor paragraph form, usually in grammatically incorrect sentences.  We do a lot of "partner work," which is code for "most of you don't understand everything I'm talking about, so if you work with other people the chances are much greater that all of you will understand at least some of what I'm doing." I grade a lot of assignments based on participation or completion - do five for an A, four for a B, and so on.  And why do I give these kids that work?  Because it's the hardest work some of them CAN do, and it's the hardest work others of them ARE WILLING to do.  Because if I gave them honest-to-goodness college prep work taught at the college prep level, most of them wouldn't understand it, wouldn't pass the class, wouldn't get credit and would require summer school or another section of the class next year. Because half these kids couldn't pass a class that required grade-level reading and writing if you held a gun to their head.  But!  They're all going to college!  Isn't that GREAT?!?!

Why?  Why?  Why do we lie to kids who clearly have no conception of how difficult college is, or of how far short their skills fall from the necessary standard, or who have no interest, intention, or desire to continue schooling past the twelfth grade?  Why do we tell people of below-average ability to expect to succeed at schooling of above-average difficulty?  Why do we tell kids that everyone can go to college instead of helping them assess their abilities realistically and guide them to options that will allow them to leave school with employable skills that will help them, oh, I don't know, SURVIVE as adults in the real world?  Why do we act like college is the best, indeed, the ONLY choice for EVERYONE and allow them to delude themselves that all they have to do is choose which school they like best and hey, presto! Instant college acceptance! I'm sorry if this offends anyone, but the Oprah perspective - believe in yourself and you can accomplish miracles - is a lovely thought, and it makes for great TV movies, but in real life, we run up against these things called "limits."  I, for one, will never, ever get to play in the WNBA, unless they create a special league for women who are stubby and chubby and middle-aged and unathletic and who don't particularly care to play basketball. (Oh wait.  They created that league.  It's called "a book club.") Yet for some reason, we as a society are far more willing to accept the idea that not everyone is able to make a hook shot than we are that not everyone is able to read Sylvia Plath's Daddy in a Freudian deconstructionist context.  Why??

Here's a story that encapsulates the whole everyone-should-go-to-college philosophy for me:  In my previous job, I had a student, Libby*.  Libby was the sweetest, nicest little girl you would hope to find on two feet.  She was kind, gentle, caring, polite, all those good things.  Libby was also dumber than a box of tacks.  She was in my low-level junior US History class, the one that used a seventh grade reading level text, and she STILL couldn't comprehend what the book said.  Her schoolwork was a saddening mishmash of incoherent, half-literate, unintelligible efforts, over which she worked laboriously before turning them in.  She couldn't pass a test if she ate it first.  And short of actually doing her work for her, there was nothing - nothing - anyone could do to help her get any better.  Why?  Because her IQ was borderline mentally retarded, that's why!  I know I tried, and after spending the better part of forty-five minutes with her trying to get her to comprehend a simple read-and-recall question, I realized that the twenty-two other kids in the class weren't going to learn a damned thing if I kept that up.  Somehow she and I muddled through, and she duly earned the D that would get her out of the class and onto senior year.

At the end of senior year, Libby resurfaced in my consciousness again.  Actually, she had never gone very far, since she had been appointed to the job of "office aide," in which a senior or two works part-time at the switchboard doing simple office tasks and making announcements.  The job was perfect for Libby:  Someone oversaw everything she did, the stuff she messed up doing she could do over until she got it right, and she was a big help.  If it weren't for the fact that she couldn't read a simple announcement over the intercom in less than five minutes and with less than five mispronouncements, all would have been golden.  Fast-forward to graduation week, and the Academic Awards Night.  This is where we gave out the $100 to $500 local scholarships and the departmental prizes.  At the end of the night, by way of being a grand finale, the head of Student Services calls Libby to the front and announces that she has been awarded a full scholarship, including assistance with books and transportation, to the nearby community college.  And the auditorium erupts with applause.

Except for me.  I was furious.  I was furious because I knew, thanks to my friend who actually works at that college, that there was no way - NO. WAY. Period, the end. - that Libby would ever set foot in one of those classrooms, not for one single day.  Why?  Because in order to enroll at the community college, you have to take a placement exam, including a reading exam.  And students who are not reading at the minimum of a ninth grade level are not allowed to enroll.  Those who aren't reading at a twelfth grade level are allowed to enroll, but still have to take some remedial coursework.  As my friend says, "Community college is college, not grade thirteen."  In other words, for all those of you who assume that community college will fill the gap for those kids who graduate high school and don't go on to a four-year school, don't count on it. 

Back to Libby, the poor kid.  Here she was, with her diploma and her fifth grade (maybe) reading level, thinking she was going to go to college.  WTF are we doing here, people, when someone at that ability level thinks she's going to make it in college?  Arguably she shouldn't have made it out of high school, but that's a whole other post,  When I asked one of the counselors what the hell they were thinking, in a roundabout and indirect way, the response I got back was, "Well, she's going to have to go to Adult Ed for a semester to bring her reading level up."  Yeah.  And going to Adult Ed fitness class is going to bring my WNBA recruitment levels up!  Worse yet, in my view, that scholarship was going to go to waste one way or another.  Either it wasn't going to get used (most likely), or, even if by some miracle Libby did finagle her way into enrolling, she wasn't going to be able to hack the coursework and she'd flunk out.  Meanwhile, we had plenty - PLENTY - of other dirt poor, deserving kids who could make it through community college and who would have been able to USE that scholarship as it sat there, doing nothing for anybody.  I wanted to spit. 

A year later, I broached the subject again with the same counselor.  Libby had washed out of night school (surprise!) and was working somewhere in the area.  Her counselor and I wound up having a circular argument, in which she said, "It was the only chance she had," while I kept answering, "It wasn't really a chance because she was never going to make it."  After two or three rounds of this, we stopped, mostly because I realized that I could win the argument and lose a friend, or just let it lie. 

Back to the meeting with Tanner - who, by the way, is gazing around the room like a kitten watching a firefly while the rest of us adults discuss her future.  Seriously, she is turned around in her chair looking up at the ceiling when we try to ask her a question.  "Whu?" she says, when asked what she wants to do after high school.  Huh. Anyway, Tanner is definitely streets and streets ahead of poor Libby in terms of IQ and skills, but so's your pet dog (and I don't see anyone offering Fido a scholarship to Harvard).  That's not going to get her very far.  This kid is one year away from graduation, and we're sitting here arguing about what colleges she's going to apply to?  That's criminal, in my opinion.  We need to be looking for job internships, apprenticeships, on-the-job training programs, something that will allow her to gain skills in an employable field without having to go to college.  I realize that a college degree is becoming a necessity in order to stay in the ever-shrinking middle class.  I am well aware that we don't have the job base we once had here in the U.S. of A. that allowed hourly workers to make a decent wage and support a family.  But those facts don't change another fact, which is that just saying everyone should be ready for college after high school doesn't make it so.  And can't make it so.  I don't care WHAT program, curriculum, philosophy, course structure, or schedule you put in place, the fact is, half the kids you teach are going to be on the lower side of average.  That's why they call it AVERAGE, people!  And, parents, I don't care what your school calls it, if your kid is in the lowest level of whatever system your high school has in place, unless that school is named "Andover" or "Newton North," he or she is NOT getting prepared for college. 

There's a lot here that has to wait for a later day, like all the very real faults of our educational system. We've got big problems in our public educational system, problems far beyond this one. Certainly there are a lot of capable kids in the low-track classes, kids who are marginalized or who choose to underachieve, and there are plenty of success stories out there of the kid who was branded a failure in school but bloomed in college.  This post doesn't mean they don't exist.  But we can't find those kids and try to help them succeed, truly succeed, until we stop fooling ourselves that everyone is going to succeed.  (We also need to broaden our definition of success and our perceptions of what constitutes meaningful and valuable work, but again, that's an argument for another day.)

Help

Hey.

I'm desperately seeking some inspiration.

We have five?  six?  weeks left of the school year left, and it's way, waaaaay too early for me to start going through the motions.  I should be teaching like my hair's on fire, and I try, but...

... I have a head cold (as mentioned in the previous post) that just won't get better.

... I'm tired.  Like, down-to-my-bones, can't-pick-up-my-pen, can't-think-of-anything-to-do tired.  It's not something that can be fixed by one good night's sleep or some vitamins or a night out without the kids.  I'm so tired I ache when I get up in the morning.  I'm sure that's not helping the head cold situation, either.

... I have my toughest, most challenging class LAST period of the day, when I need to be most on my game, and I spend all day pre-emptively dreading them, which makes it hard to get interested in the first two periods of the day.

... my students, though darling and lovable in their own ways, are not the most academically engaged children you'd ever hope to meet. Getting them interested is possible, but it takes a lot of mental and emotional energy to draw them out and get them involved in a lesson, energy that's in short supply (see above).

... I'm not teaching here next year.  I'll be at the middle school, teaching US History (my first choice) to eighth graders (an age group I love).  So it's hard to get all ginned up about writing good lesson plans and gathering materials and what-all when I know it's not something I'll use again.

... my kids (by which I mean my own genetic offspring) need me a lot right now, and, as important as my job is to me, the girls have to come first.

With all this, it's hard not to get into an Alfie, "what's it all about" mindset, and that scares me.  It scares me because that's exactly the attitude I've seen in every teacher whom I secretly felt should get the hell out of the classroom and let someone in who will actually teach.  It scares me because it makes it hard to walk into the building each day without mentally counting down the days and wishing they'd move along faster, and is that really any way to go through life?  It scares me because I worry that one of these days, I won't be able to bounce back and reclaim what I love about my job.  Usually when I'm feeling uninspired, the kids carry me through the content, or the content gets me through the kids, but when both are registering as a "meh," what do you do?

Send some thoughts, y'all.  I need 'em right now.

I'm With Stupid

Okay, I know I promised the last installment of my stupidity trilogy three or four seven or ten posts ago, but one nice thing about writing for myself is that if I get distracted by something else, my audience of multitudes dozens you and some pervert who Googled "marital relations with pigs" yesterday will just have to cool your jets 'til I get around to it.  I guess if that last sentence offended you, you're the one on Google, huh?  Get off my website, you livestock-violating asshat, you!

Ahem.

Okay, I was telling you about my low-level junior Economics class.  What does a low-level class look like?  I can't promise to be an impartial observer, but here are some of the general observations:  First of all, these kids aren't all dumb or learning disabled.  Some are, but some are just unmotivated, or permanently stoned, or they're juvenile delinquents who have to be in school by court decree, and it's far easier to stick them in a low-level class than it is to accommodate them in upper level classes. 

Also, these kids are quintessentially American in their habits. Their diet is horrendous.  They eat a lot of sweet or salty snacks and drink a lot of sugary, caffeinated drinks.  They leave many, many empty Dunkin' Donuts Coolatta cups and chip bags behind at the end of the day.  They chew a lot of gum, and from the smell of their clothing, they smoke a lot of cigarettes.  Also, their dress fits the norm, but is just different enough to be noticeable if you look. Sure, everyone between the ages of 11 and 25 wears jeans and sweats; what stands out is how these kids wear them.  The phrase that comes to mind is "too much".  The girls wear clothes that are way too tight or so loose as to be shapeless, excessive makeup or none at all. The boys tend to adopt some kind of informal uniform (such as NASCAR shirts, hip-hop clothing, or flannel shirts and work boots) that they wear every day or nearly every day.  Compared to my other classes, I don't see a lot of color when I walk into the room - it's a sea of dark and drab colors, blues and grays and browns.  And a lot of my low-level students of both genders wear the same piece of outerwear (a coat, a vest, a sweatshirt), every day, no matter how hot and stuffy the room gets. 

Overall, the word that comes to mind when I walk into my low-level class is "defensive".  Hunched over in their seats, hiding in their oversized sweatshirts and puffy jackets, these kids look like they're just waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Some days - when they're not annoying the crap out of me by texting, copying each other's work, or talking when I'm talking - I find myself stopping in midsentence and wondering, "What the hell has the world done to you guys?"  They're defensive in their interactions with each other, too.  I hear a lot of cries of "shut up," "none of your business," and "I wasn't talking to you" throughout the class period.  Almost all low-level classes I've taught have included a pair or small group of students who get along like gasoline and the lighted match - they can't be near each other without exploding into a conflagration.  And, because there are usually only one or two sections of each low-level class in any given subject, these kids spend all ... day ... long ... with ... each ... other.  Because it makes sense, you know, to take the kids with the weakest social skills and have them travel around in a pack for six hours nonstop so they can get really, really irritated with each other by the end of the day (which is when I see them, of course). 

So here's the crux of the matter - how do you teach a class like that?  It's basically like running a three-ring circus with one hand tied behind your back.  Cajoling, threatening, bribing, outright begging - all options are on the table with a group like this.  I do a lot of bargaining ("do this now and you get five minutes' free time at the end of class") and a lot of immediate consequences ("if you don't shut up right now and get to work, I'm going to collect this and count it as a quiz grade").  I show any popular movie I can get my hands on that has some kind of tangential connection to the curriculum (with questions!  lots and lots of questions!) and I give a LOT of class participation grades, where all they have to do is shut up, pay attention, say something on-topic occasionally and they'll earn at least a C for the day.  I try to have at least three more activities planned than I know we have time to do, so if one idea tanks, I can roll with the next one.  And I put up with a lot of ruckus.  I know if I ask them to read anything longer than two pages, the room's going to be noisy and chaotic because they hate reading.  I know if I give them an assignment that takes longer than fifteen minutes to complete, they'll stick it in their bookbags and claim, "I'll do it later," a later that never seems to arrive on their personal agendas.  I know if I don't review all the material on the quiz immediately before giving the quiz, they're going to bomb it big-time.  I kick out the kid who makes all the 4-20 comments on any pretext I can.  I make his friend, who's really too bright for the class and just wants an easy ride, go sit in my colleague's classroom so he won't distract the 4-20 kid and set off half the rest of the class.  I ask them not to yell, not to get in each other's business, not to put their feet on the furniture about fifty gazillion times a day, and then I ask them again because they just don't stop.  I have generous make-up and absentee policies because in the end, most of them don't make up the work anyway and it covers my butt.  I make a lot of phone calls and send a lot of emails to the various special education specialists and guidance counselors around the building who are involved.  I drag unmotivated seniors through their third attempt to earn their credit and remind idiot freshmen that they don't want to be seniors retaking a freshman class for the third time.  Some days I feel like I'm making at least some headway and some days I count the milliseconds til June.

Oh, and last and certainly least, I try to sneak some content in there somewhere along the way.

A Window Into My World

Here's a fleeting glimpse into the nuttier side of the Wide World of Education for you outsiders:

I have a stack of papers in front of me that need to be returned to my per 7 class, including two quizzes.  However, I can't return them because one girl hasn't taken the quizzes yet, and I know as sure as God made little green apples she will get her friend to let her copy off the returned papers; that is, if I can pin her down long enough to make up the work.  This girl is a chronic absentee.  I set times and places for makeup sessions; she doesn't show.  I have open class days when students can make up past assignments; she's out for the day.  I see her in the halls and remind her she has work due in class; somehow, between then and period 7 she mysteriously disappears from our halls.  I checked her attendance stats and as of last week, she had missed TWENTY SEVEN complete days of school (not counting the early dismissals and just plain skips).  Let's see, that's roughly thirty out of 180 days, or one-sixth of the school calendar.

Know what we call someone who misses one-sixth of her job?  UNEMPLOYED.

Know what we call someone who stays out of the house one out of every six nights?  DIVORCED.

Know what we call someone who doesn't come to school one out of every six days?  A victim of the educational system!  If the kid won't show up to school, why am *I* the one the government's worrying about 'holding accountable'?

Yeah.  I'm not going to base my sense of professional self-worth on this kiddo's performance any time soon.

This is Why History Should Be Their Favorite Subject

I am currently doing a unit on political campaigns and the media with my Government classes.  In my search for outside readings, I came across this article aimed at advertising and media professionals.  It's a great article, but unfortunately, I had to cut out the best part of it:

In Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, the author relates what is a telling (though probably apocryphal) story. During a presidential contest, Lyndon Johnson apparently told his manager to start a massive rumor campaign about his opponent's habit of enjoying carnal knowledge of sows. The campaign manager protested saying nobody would believe that the guy's a "pigfucker."

"I know," Johnson replied. "But let's make the sonofabitch deny it."

This is why kids hate history.  We have to suck all the fun out of it - the messy, crass, profane, titillating, base, greedy, amoral, human fun out of it - in order to make it "acceptable" for these kids' delicate (hah!) sensibilities.  How much more engaging would a discussion of the politics of the 1960's be if we could tell the kids what LBJ - or for that matter, Nixon, JFK, Long, any of them - what they were really like, warts, f-bombs and all?  Or if we could discuss why the drug culture was so enticing to so many baby boomers, and what legacy that movement left behind, without having to mouth obligatory "drugs are bad" messages over and over?  I remember my sister translated something called "The Millionaire's Dinner Party" in college Latin, basically recounting the stages of a Roman orgy.  "We sure never got to translate anything like THAT in high school," she commented to me - then again, our high school Latin teacher WAS a former nun.  But I digress.

So tell me - what history lessons have you learned outside the classroom that would have been deemed "unacceptable" for school?  And, do you wish you could have studied that in school?

Stupidity, Cont'd

I swear, if they could bottle stupidity like that, it would become a dangerous, dangerous weapon. Can you imagine all that concentrated stupid being used to wipe out the intellect of an entire country? They could probably call it American Idol or Dancing with the Stars. But I digress.
-- Anonymous Coworker

In order to continue, we need some back story.  Well, actually, YOU might not need it - in fact, you might have stopped reading by now once you realized I'm still on a tear from the previous post, but *I* feel the need to give you some context.

Here in the World's Only Remaining Superpower, unlike other industrialized countries, we allow students to stay in school and apply for spots at postsecondary schools regardless of their ability, perceived or real. How do we provide education for people who cover the whole range of intellectual ability?  The bulk of our public schools still track students at the high school level, presumably according to ability.  However, any teacher with any marginal intelligence of his/her own can see within five-point-two seconds that the the general ed tracks (excluding that very bottom class that's reserved for the poor souls who function well below chronological age level) wind up pretty closely paralleling our socioeconomic structure.  Everywhere I've taught, the honors track is always chockablock with the kids of doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs.  The middle track (college prep, academic, 200 level or what have you) tends to the lower middle class and upper working class.  And the bottom track becomes the de facto dumping ground.  Oh, sure, it's not cast in stone - there are honors kids whose families have not a pot to piss in nor a window to throw it out of, and there are kids in the bottom classes whose families are very well off, but the overall trend holds true. 

So what are you in for when you get a bottom track (general ed, standard, 300, etc.) class?  A typical class of low-level juniors includes a bunch of kids who are truly academically below average, mixed in with stoners, lazy jerks who don't want to do any work, the occasional middle-class kid with a learning disability and a lawyer, kids who are basically left to support themselves, vocational students who hate/don't think they can do anything that looks like school, chronic absentees who come only on days that fit the Fibonacci sequence, and the occasional sociopath.  Often, by any "hard" intellectual measure, these kids are stupid:  They can't read at grade level; they can't explain the reasoning behind the answers they give; their work lacks internal cohesion and logic; they have difficulty taking a larger task, breaking it into smaller components, and working through those components in order; they have a hard time thinking of creative or original ideas that don't refer to something they've already seen or heard; their awareness of what's going on in the world around them is vestigial at best.

The question is, why?

Let's go back to Lissa.  Why is she so eager to avoid letting anything we're doing in Economics class actually sink into her brain?  Is she stupid because she avoids learning, or does she avoid learning because she's stupid?  And is she lacking-in-ability stupid, lacking-in-effort stupid, or some combination of both?  I'm not so egocentric as to deny that it could very well be that I am just a bad teacher, and if I were actually any good at this I'd have a roomful of budding John Kenneth Galbraiths on my hands.  I'm sure my Ed professors, God bless their pointy little heads, all could point out a million and one ways in which I'm denying my students full expression of their copious abilities simply because I'm not doing my job very well.  But in my defense, I will say that I do care about whether or not they get this stuff.  I care because economics is about the consequences of the choices we make, and as people who are not the sharpest knives in the drawer, these kids are often the victims of our competitive culture.  I don't give a damn if they understand the difference between GDP and per capita GDP, but I do want them to understand how the market works and what kind of economic system we have and why they have to have some kind of advanced skill or ability when they leave this place so they don't spend the rest of their lives fearing that they'll fall so far down the social ladder they can't ever get back up.  I try to make the concepts concrete and specific and relevant and immediate, since these kids tend to have the attention span of gnats and tune out as soon as ideas get too abstract or distant.  But then I look up and Lissa's twirling her hair around her finger, two kids are texting their friends in other classes, the juvenile delinquent pothead is making the "4:20" sign at the kid across the room from him and the pregnant girl in the corner is busily doodling potential names for the baby on her notebook, and I can't help but think,

"What are you guys - STUPID??"

Wait for the stunning conclusion!

Stupid Isn't Just a Personality Trait. It's a Way of Life.

First, in regards to the reaction to one of my recent posts - the one about the olives?  Oh my.  I don't know whether to feel a heartwarming sense that we're all in this parenting thing together, or if I should just turn my kids over to Youth and Family Services now and be done with it... If I'm willing to narcotize my kiddos even marginally and my reading public not only forgives my behavior but actually condones it???  Well. Words fail me.

I've been thinking a lot about stupidity recently, and not just because I'm sitting here watching unedited student videos.  My Government students just completed "Man on the Street" interviews, a la Jay Leno's "Jaywalking" segments on the Tonight Show, asking their brethren (and sistren) some basic facts about their government, and the results are alternately horrifying, terrifying, and just plain discouraging.  In a humorous kind of way, granted, but still... One of the videos features a student I have this semester who is so willfully ignorant, she is making me truly insane.  "Lissa" is in my low-level Economics class, where she spends the better part of fifty minutes each day (and 100 minutes on Wednesdays) doing some combination of the following:

1. Staring into space.
2. Surreptitiously checking her cell phone for text messages.
3. Staring out the window.
4. Copying enough work from her friends in class to look like she's actually completed something.
5. Twirling her hair around her finger.

How thick is she?  On the video, my students ask her to identify what a W-2 form is, AND SHE CAN'T DO IT.  After answering every single question with "I don't know," ("Name one Supreme Court Justice," being another example), she then looks off into space, twirls her hair, and says, "These questions are so..." and lets the thought trail off, because she can't be bothered to search her brain for a challenging vocabulary word like "difficult" or "hard." 

Behold the future, ladies and gentlemen.

One thing those of you outside the edjimicashun world don't understand is that stupidity is complicated.  Why are Lissa and others of her ilk so numb?  Well, most of us would say it's because she's unintelligent and leave it at that.  But there's more to this.  Lissa actually has to expend extra effort to remain as dumb as she is.  During the hundred-minute marathon of masochism that we call "block day" (and oh, is it painful having your most difficult class for a double period at the end of the day), I give the little scholars a five minute break midway through the period so I'm not fielding endless requests for potty passes.  Lissa quits doing whatever minimal work she's doing five minutes before break begins, just to make sure she doesn't miss a single second.  Then, as soon as break is announced, she hustles out of the room like her pants are on fire.  When break is over, I frequently have to go round her up to get her to come back for the remaining 45 minutes of class.  Curious, I decided to hang around in the hall one day during break to see what she was up to.  Talking to her friends?  No.  Making illegal cell-phone calls?  No.  Actually using the bathroom or getting a drink of water?  No and no. 

She was leaning against the wall and staring off into space.

Let me repeat that.  The girl was bolting out of my class at the speed of sound and nearly galloping down the hall so that she could spend as much time as humanly possible NOT thinking. 

Ooooooooo-kay.  Now what?

Clearly this is going to be a long post, so for the sake of everyone's attention span and interest level, this is ...

to be continued.

Three Rants in One Week? That's Got To Be Some Sort of Record.

Scratch a Teacher, Find a Closet Reactionary

I read this story about mothers of newborns in Alabama being arrested for having drugs in their system.  I realize that as a card-carrying lover of the US Constitution, I am supposed to be concerned and alarmed about the potential violation of their civil liberties.  As a card-carrying proponent of the right to choice, I'm also supposed to be leery of the drive to give fetuses (fetii?) the same rights as infants, which is the first step toward subjugating the mothers' rights to those of their unborn children.  Yeah, yeah, I know we have a tendency to blame the mothers in these situations when the fathers are long gone, or nonfunctional, or doing the exact same and worse.  We're human.  Mistakes are made. But you know what?  As someone who has to deal with these kids in a professional capacity fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years down the road, I say, GOOD.  I've worked in the classroom a long time now - over a decade - and the one truth that transcends any individual classroom, school, district, or state is that what happens in the home far overwhelms the influence of what happens in the classroom.  As far as I'm concerned, you are free to take drugs, drink yourself silly, and live as irresponsibly as you like UNTIL you bring another person into this world.  Then, I'm sorry, but your ticket to ride has just been cancelled (and yes, the babydaddies should be held to the same standard, but right now they aren't, and that's  a reality that will change only with a lot of time and effort).  I'm a huge fan of doing the greatest good for the greatest number, and if it takes some arrests to dissuade other pregnant women from doing things that permanently render their children far behind the eight-ball neurologically, socially, and academically, well, I'll live with that.

Then I read this story and I felt like a weazened old Grinch.

He must think I AM as dumb as I look...

Check out the long con my so-called "better half" tried to pull this morning:

We alternate early-morning child tending duties on the weekend.  My philosophy is, we each get one morning to sleep in late, ignore the kiddies, monopolize the NY Times and generally pretend we're not married and encumbered by responsibilities and babies.  And if one chooses to pursue activities that require getting up early on one's designated sleep-in day, well, that's tough cookies, Buster.  The usual pattern is that I sleep in on Saturdays and Warren gets Sundays.  However, Warren also likes to go to yoga class on Saturday morning.

"I have an idea," he said at 5:45 this morning, in his best I'm-just-thinking-of-you voice.  "You can sleep in until 8, and then I'll go to yoga."  When I expressed doubt (as in, "HELL, NO,") he was surprised.  "But you get to sleep in!  Until eight o'clock!" he countered. 

Let's just look at this proposition a little more closely:  Say he takes Saturday as his early day AND goes to yoga.  That means the latest I can sleep in is 8 a.m., and, hello?  That barely counts as sleeping in!  I'm just getting started on my third or fourth round of REM sleep at that point!  You're talking to someone who was capable of sleeping til 9, 10, 11 a.m. easily before the ankle biters came along, and you think 8 a.m. counts as late????  I think NOT.  Add to that the fact that should I agree to this travesty and have to stumble out of bed at that ree-donculously early hour, I am then IMMEDIATELY confronted with being on duty for the remainder of the morning whilst Himself toddles merrily along to his own personally enriching and fulfilling pursuits.  Warren then does some grocery shopping after yoga, thus handily extending his family-free time by another hour.  AND, since I have technically already had my morning to myself, Warren THEN gets ANOTHER morning to himself to sleep in late, ignore the kiddies, and so forth and so on.

To summarize:

The Caroline Plan - There are two weekend mornings in play. I get one full morning.  Warren gets one full morning. 

The Warren Plan - There are two weekend mornings in play.  I get about one-third of a morning.  Warren gets two-thirds of one morning and all of another morning.

You know what?  I wouldn't get so worked up about this, except that Warren tries to pull this shit all the time.  Are you reading this, dear?  Here's the bottom line:  YOGA COMES OUT OF YOUR PERSONAL TIME. YOUR.  PERSONAL.  TIME.  IF YOU CHOOSE YOGA OVER SLEEP, THAT'S YOUR ISSUE, DEAR.  NOW GET YOUR MITTS OFF MY MORNINGS.

Because Some of 'Em CHOOSE to Get Left Behind, That's Why

This is why teachers get hot around the collar when non-educators start talking about holding teachers "accountable":

Today my per 7 class (low-level juniors) had presentations due.  They did brief reports on a career field of their choice.  I won't bore you with the details, except to say that I gave the kids THREE class periods in the library to complete their work, which was more than ample time to get the whole shootin' match done if you actually gave a damn and applied yourself.  Even if you arsed around, nearly all these kids have study hall and/or computer access at home and could get it done then.

Out of my class of twenty students, eight - 40% - were absent (hmm, and on the day a major project is due, too - coincidence?!?!).  That includes the kid I saw walking through the cafeteria fifteen minutes before class began.

One student just flat-out hadn't done anything on his project and I sent him to the resource room to catch up on other work.

FOUR students came in with incomplete projects, three of whom were able to finish before the end of the period.

Let's see, that's THIRTEEN out of TWENTY kids who weren't ready for a project that counts for A THIRD OF THEIR GRADE.  One student had legitimate computer issues that I had witnessed, so I have to grade hers later.  Some of the kids who weren't ready at the beginning of class were able to pull it out by the end.  I ended up with EIGHT graded projects.  Eight out of TWENTY.  Come Monday, I'll give them the speech about how the people who weren't there on Friday have to make the effort to see me if they want their project graded, they need to take the initiative, it's not my job to chase them down, blah blah blah, and you know what will happen?  Probably THREE of those missing projects will find their way to me eventually.  The rest of them will give me the "Whu-? We had a project?" look, and proceed not to do it.  If these kids were employees, I'd fire most of 'em.  But you know what?  I can't.  All I can do is flunk them, which doesn't really affect them too much because they can take the class again in summer school, or next year, or on line, or whatever, y'know.  So the next time the state legislature, in all its infinite wisdom, or the feds in all theirs, start talking about how "all students should be college-ready by 2020" or not leaving any child behind, you'll excuse me if I snort audibly. 

Bah, humbug!