There is always an explanation…

I was adverse to the whole concept of updating this beast from my phone before, but seeing as how the processor on this thing actually rivals my laptop and it’s more portable, I’m kind of warming to the idea.

I find myself enjoying eggs and Cajun hashbrowns, a strawberry and cream cheese croissant, and coffee this morning on a sunny patio in Uptown. I was sitting by myself in a shady spot quite enjoying the Mozart pumping through the speakers and people watching until…they showed up.

If there is one thing that I believe contributes to children being assholes, I think it is stuffy, monied adults that spawn them and then instill selfish values. These two women, since sitting down, have managed to cause me a large amount of irritation just due to the inane conversation they are having. It’s literally a back and forth as they attempt to size up the life and standard of living of each other. The first thing that tipped me off that it was going on was how one was discussing her son’s neurological disorder when the other fired back about her own child’s food allergies. It’s kind of amazing to watch the conversation develop. Trendy diseases have become a sort of betting chip in the lives of suburban house moms. Based on how the conversation stands right now, I’d say the mom whose son has celiac disease and whose husband wore his golf outfit on the tennis courts at the country club is beating the mom whose son has asbergers and had to hire a new gardener.

Favorite quotes so far:

“Thank God for video games. Otherwise he’d always be in my hair.”

“Miguel was great. He always cleaned up after himself and was so polite. He was like a hard working, talented dog.”

“I hate to keep coming back to it, but even though he has asbergers, at least he doesn’t have to fear food.”

Now they’re discussing what AP classes they’re going to make their sons enroll in for the second semester of school this year and what colleges they’re pushing them to apply to.

Dear god.

Ladies, all parents everywhere: life is not a contest. Your children’s respective ailments are not bragging points, and honestly…stop breeding in general.

And if you must breed…either be good people or give your kids up for adoption to a parent who can raise a decent human being.

The first day of school…

Last night before I went to bed I found myself in a very sort of strange place. I laid there, at 2:00 in the morning, my stomach in knots and my head filled with the whispers of insecurity that I’d become accustomed to over the course of two years as a professional educator. All teachers experience the first-day jitters. It’s kind of our way of self-checking whether or not we’re ready for the rigors of the year ahead.

The past two years I had said jitters. I wondered if I had made enough copies of the syllabus, whether is adequately rehearsed my first-day lectures well enough to the point that the students would understand and, perhaps most importantly, whether I’d set the tone for the maximum amount of learning to take place.

As I laid awake in my bed last night, I had to add a sort of new response to these jitters for one important reason:

I didn’t have a class to teach anymore.

It was a sudden, harsh reality that kind of bum-rushed me and overwhelmed me. There would be no tense moment waiting for the starting bell to ring, no lecture to review, and no horde of new children whose faces and names I could learn and get to know.

In that moment, the jitters went away and were replaced by genuine sadness. An empty, gaping hole in my heart that I wasn’t aware of until that moment. My last teaching gig was miserable at times, yes. I was angry a lot and hated more than a few of the people I worked with, but it was never about the people I was working with. It was always about the work itself.

I recently moved into a new apartment. In moving, you’re sort of forced to sort through and pack up all aspects of your life into boxes. In that sorting, I found all the little tokens  given to me by my students during my last days: the custom shirt from the class of 2013 who all signed it, the caricatures of me doing everything from teaching to landing a TARDIS on the head of Rebecca Black, and the letters written from the heart by students who at one time I’m sure cursed the day I was born. In a blog titled “Your Kids are Assholes,” it’s hard to express what I really feel.

Sadness. A vast and infinite sadness. It’s not that I’m not working at something I love…

It’s the thought that I’m not making a difference.

I feel bereft of purpose. I feel like another blip in the stats for what folks.are calling “The Lost Generation.” However…being who I am…and what I believe, I am going to continue fighting. I will teach again.

In the meantime…there’s always subbing. That should generate some fun, eh?

Cheers…

…and on the other side of the coin…

Okay, that last post may have been a little on the side of pandering to my own ego, but I have something legitimate with this one, promise.

I found out sometime last month that I was going to be losing my job here at the school just as thousands of other teachers around the country were (and still are in some cases) discovering they shared a similar fate. For me it was a number of things that lead to my not coming back for next year, but primarily it was a shortfall in the budget that put the final nail in the coffin of my career at this particular school.

“There isn’t any money,” has become the rallying cry for people who seem to want to upend public education. Currently…they’re semi-correct. There isn’t any money to fund public education for several reasons, the foremost being that there’s no tax revenue being generated because Congress is controlled by those who’d levy burdens onto the middle and lower class rather than levy taxes against the super rich who need to pay their fair share. We’ve all always paid taxes in this country. Remember “No Taxation without Representation!”? That whole chestnut that set off the Revolutionary War? Well…we have the representation, so where the hell is the taxation. It kind of amazes me the amount of entitlement that people have when it comes to paying taxes. An employee of the school district (non-union, highly conservative) tried to explain to me that she shouldn’t have to have her tax dollars go toward the schools if she didn’t have any use for them, ie-no kid in school, no tax dollars to go to it. Therefore, their dollars shouldn’t have to fund it.

Okay…so I’m not old. Why should I pay social security? See the holes in that argument? If so, then please use it to destroy stupid people when they throw that out there.

There are, however, things earmarked in school budgets that I don’t necessarily agree with. I’m being subjected to one right now, actually…

I’m sitting in a classroom for our school’s “after-school program” with about 13 ne’er do wells (one of them is the child of the woman who has issues with her taxes going to services she doesn’t utilize), and as an educator I’m having some serious issues. These are students who have either failed or are in trouble or “at-risk,” with some adverse home situation. For many of these students, credit recovery is the name of the game. Spend a certain number of hours in after-school, then that failing English grade from two years ago disappears and you get a credit and get to pass high school! It could be a good program save for the fact that again…it’s filled with ne’er do wells. I’m looking at the room in front of me. One student is reading, four are perusing the yearbook, determining which boy they’d want as a boyfriend, two are sleeping, one is watching Netflix or playing Bejeweled or some shit, and another one is succeeding only in making a terrifying mess of chip crumbs around him. Out of all thirteen of them, only one is legitimately working on schoolwork right now.

There are two rooms of this going on currently. In the other room, students are receiving credit for watching a romantic comedy. Every day during the second half of after-school they get to do this. Each room has a teacher being paid the contract hourly wage, which is $30.00 per hour. I’m sitting in it for two hours, which equals $60.00. The person who usually does it, sits for two hours per day, five days per week, totaling up to $300.00 per week, $600.00/week for the two of them. Not necessarily a HUGE budget windfall, but still. My primary concern here isn’t the budget itself, but rather the budget funding something that holds little-to-no academic merit or benefit.

I can’t justify it because it seems to fall into that category of things being dumbed down for students. I’m appalled that it even exists in the format it does currently. Should the general public (especially the school’s rather conservative tax base) get wind of what goes on in that program, then some people need to be held accountable for their lousy program.