Must be February

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching

paperworkOh, Christ, I’m tired.

The following happened today:

  • School counselor dropped off a new student, halfway through class, while I was teaching, on absolutely no notice.  The new student is blind.  What is this I don’t even.  How the hell am I supposed to accommodate a blind student on no fucking notice?  What?  Are you kidding me?
  • NO, really, are you kidding me?  You didn’t really just drop off a student with a major disability into my classroom with no notice, right?  Because, maybe you don’t know this, but I don’t have a large-format photocopier in my classroom.  Which means that the kid can’t do a single thing I’m doing today, not to mention that I mostly teach from the board and he can’t see the board ever, and no there aren’t any notes I can give him because you didn’t tell me he was going to be in my class.  
  • Fuck.
  • At least three different union issues dropped into my lap today, after an extraordinarily quiet school year.  Three in one day.
  • A parent who has– and I just checked– literally never emailed me about her son apparently spent half an hour in the office during seventh hour griping about how she’s been “trying and trying and trying” to get ahold of me for help with her son’s math grades. This is manifestly untrue.  If her kid would turn in his fucking work he’d be fine.  She knows this.  That’s the answer to “how do I get his grades up,” he needs to turn his goddamn work in.
  • Italics.
  • Just took a closer look at the kid’s grades from last quarter and holy shit I dare her to try and make this my fault.  Bitch I will destroy you.
  • Right after finally remembering to email someone to tell them that I can’t attend a meeting with them tomorrow afternoon because I already have another meeting scheduled outside of my building, I got an email from my first meeting canceling that meeting, so I got to email the first person back and cancel my cancellation.  I have literally thought to myself “dammit, remember to email so-and-so and let her know you can’t be at her meeting” a dozen times today and as soon as I do it my reason for not going falls apart.
  • I am still sick.  That’s not a “thing that happened,” but I don’t care.
  • Had to meet with the DC kids today to tell them that the price of their trip has gone up because sixteen of the forty-two kids who signed up for the trip didn’t actually bother to pay for the thing.  One of the sixteen is the child of the parent who was griping about me in the office; she has also complained to me that we didn’t do any fund-raisers to pay for the trip, ignoring the fact that a) her kid didn’t so much as mow a damn lawn over the summer to raise any money, that b) I applied for over forty thousand dollars in grants for the trip, which I didn’t get, and c) there is scholarship money available to her through the tour company which– wait for it– she did not apply for.  Also d) I’m not the motherfucker who signed my kid up for an eight hundred dollar field trip with no fucking clue how I was going to pay for it.  Pretty sure that was you.
  • I am expecting much drama tomorrow from the DC meeting.  I can even predict which parents it will come from.
  • Untold idiocy after school with a parent trying to get one of her kids brought to the office instead of riding the bus.  I can’t even describe it.  This should be a simple thing for everyone involved and instead it was a massive screamy idiotic clusterfuck.

Third quarter always sucks.  It is an iron-clad stone-cold unavoidable undeniable rule of the universe.  But holy shit is it coming on with a vengeance this year.

Fuck.

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12 thoughts on “Must be February”

  1. I’m sure you’ve seen this comic, but…

    My lit professor Freshman year of college told horrific stories of blatant plagiarism by students, and when he tried to do something about it (school policy was auto-fail), the parents would pitch a fit to the dean. And the dean never took the teachers’ sides on anything. It was during that semester that I vowed to never become one of THOSE parents. I’m sorry you have to deal with stupid people. 😦

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  5. Eeek this sounds like the day from hell! You did well just to get through it! Deep breath, and everything will look a little better tomorrow. Not least because you will no longer have the surprise factor with your new student!

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  9. O! there is so much I want to say here…and it would be a long, long rant.
    and it will be if I don’t end up deleting the whole thing when I am done, (I do that, often, okay most always)……..So how about, from a parent: “Thank you for being a teacher.”

    Funny how tonight on my 1.25 hour commute home from work, I listened to NPR and became so frustrated (again) at the story of the North Carolina teachers and their pay cut. As a parent that raised two sons on my own, (now 20 and 23) teachers and their expectations in the class were to be followed and respected, (even if they disagreed with and disliked the teachers).
    WHY, why do parents blame teachers for their own bad parenting??
    Much to my boys annoyance, they told me I had a reputation, as a parent, at their schools (: “If one of her boys gives you one drop of a problem, call his mom, it’s over and done”. It was true.
    My sons knew the drill.
    These were the rules my kids had to live by, I posted it on the most popular place in the house, the refrigerator. It wasn’t a surprise to them (it never came down), and It was not easy for them with the “entitlement diseased/gang banger” culture they were going to school in, we are talking a BMW on the 16th birthday, as well as 2 full time Police officers for drugs and gang-violence in the quad, and weekly lock-downs from kids with guns.
    1. The teacher has a job to do, If you distract, make a joke (we had a very funny, creative home), you are distracting the teacher and the job they are really, only trying to do (once upon a time) out of passion, because something is just not right on the pay scale in this country. It’s an important job. It’s part of the future.
    2. If you distract, you are robbing the other kids right of an education.
    3. If you are not understanding the work, that’s MY job as a parent, I talk to the teacher, I get extra materials, I help you at home. (Only in history, I made flash cards into a soap opera, dug up the personal dirt on them, it was fun).
    4. If you still “get cute” even at 16, you WILL write a letter of apology to the teacher, I do not care if even I think the teacher is burnt out and sarcastic, they do not get paid to take any lip off of a kid. (One letter was all it took, NEVER happened again).
    5. NO excuses. period. Homework has a due date. It’s NOT a mystery, just like my ability to call and have a “freindly disconnect” on a cell phone in two seconds flat. (they HATED that).
    6. Rise above it. Every moment is a choice. IT IS HARD, now how are YOU going to handle it WITH IN your BEST YOURSELF, FOR YOURSELF, so you do not fall into that same old pathetic gutter with ALL of the people who make excuses for being LESS?

    ……..and I had to live up to this list every day as well, at my work, (still do) and understand that if I react out of anything but my best in one single moment, no matter what that other person says or thinks, I am only letting myself down first. And you know, it works!..(and sometimes I eat a helping of humble pie…).

    Thank you for being a teacher. Passion probably brought you to the job…….now what are YOU going to do to keep it alive WITHIN YOURSELF, while being surrounded by entitlement disease and irresponsibility and the parents that HAVE to blame SOMEONE for their own FAILURE?

    ………follow the spark, not every kid is an angel………but maybe, there IS one, that needs you. That’s all you are there for. No matter the parent a kid has, if they are looking for IT, (the example/teacher that can let drama role off their back with a sense of humor and focus with the MISSION for those that want it)….and no matter how much of a costume of personality or wardrobe the kid is hiding under, ………they will SEE you, and YOU will made an impression, mattered…….accomplished the mission you went to school for.
    Unless…….you thought this was going to be easy, and you could be a God with a red pencil…..busted! I KID, I KID……

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