How to lose your shitty job

On March 4, 2014March 4, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Stories, Teaching8 Comments

It is fourth hour, just past lunch. I have had a remarkably easy morning; my first class of the day, miraculously, has had so few questions about their assignment that I have been able to– wait for it– sit at my desk, and not only sit at my desk, but sit at my desk long enough to sort through some of the ridiculously huge piles of junk everywhere. Did you know I had a desk calendar? Not only can you see it, but it even knows it’s March now! This is a miracle.

And, of course, I paid for it.

So, right, fourth hour. There is, suddenly, an immense amount of yelling coming from next door. Keep in mind that my door is shut and the wall in between our classrooms are made of cinder block. I hear swearing. Really loud swearing. From inside my classroom, with the door shut.

Oh, fuck.

I bail on what I’m doing and head into the hallway. The sub is already out in the hallway, screaming into the face of one of our seventh graders. Not one of mine, but his sister happens to be in my classroom at that very moment. He’s swearing at the kid. Red-faced, practically on top of him. The kid is swearing back. And in tears.

Sigh. Suddenly I really don’t want to tell this story anymore. Long story short: I had to physically separate the two of them and I spent at least a few real moments trying to figure out if I was going to have to knock the sub down to get him away from the kid. By that point basically every adult male within a hundred yards, including an armed police officer, was heading toward our part of the building at high speed, and the sub was in the building for about another fifteen minutes before being removed from the premises. It was… ugly.

Weirdly, it’s the second time in my career I’ve been in the vicinity when a sub went insane on a kid. The first time, many moons ago at my first school, started off exactly the same way except this time there wasn’t an administrator in the building to hand it off to. I told the sub that I couldn’t literally tell him to go home but I was taking over his classes for the rest of the day (at the time, due to the complexities of my position, it was actually possible) and he was to go sit in the teachers’ lounge until the actual administrator got back. I remember thinking I was probably going to end up in some trouble for it and not caring.

Yeah. It was a long day.

In which I’ve had better days

On March 4, 2014March 4, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Stories, Teaching3 Comments

I came dangerously close to having to punch a substitute teacher in my building today. It was a very, very, very long afternoon.

I will likely provide the story later; let it merely be said for the moment that I just finished the second ten-and-a-half-hour day in a row and there will likely be a third tomorrow. I am hungry and tired and I’m waiting to see if I get to a point where I can be a trifle more objective. Gimme a couple of hours.

Between now and then, read this awesome article about unpowered human flight on Titan. Once we overcome the temperature and the atmosphere, at least.

Daily Prompt: Walking on the Moon

On February 23, 2014February 23, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Stories13 Comments

I may start doing these more often; forcing myself to write to a prompt every now and again seems like a good thing. Here’s today’s:

What giant step did you take where you hoped your leg wouldn’t break? Was it worth it, were you successful in walking on the moon, or did your leg break?

The summer after graduating from college, I went to Israel for a month. It was a program sponsored by the university; we were on a dig at Tel Beth Shemesh. (This was 1998, so it fascinates me that the girl next to the pile of pots on that page, the third picture down, was on my dig. That’s an old picture. I remember everybody going nuts when we found that refuse pile.)

Here’s how the dig worked: we worked five days a week, and weekends were programmed trips around the country with a tour guide. One afternoon– Tuesdays, I think?– we were on our own on the afternoons, and most of us took the time to go into Jerusalem and shop or sightsee or whatever. The problem was, by the time the digging was over and we’d had time to go home and clean up and grab some food and catch the bus, it was impossible to get to the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount before it closed for the day, seeing as how it’s an active religious site and not actually a 24/7 tourist site.

The thought of being able to tour the Dome of the Rock was a sizable portion of the reason I’d wanted to go on the trip in the first place. I was thousands and thousands of miles from home with no real reason to believe I’d ever be in Israel again. Missing out was not acceptable. So on the night before our last Tuesday half day, I dropped in on one of the dig directors in his office and let him know I was taking a sick day the next day. And I got up early in the morning, got on the bus, and went into Jerusalem. By myself. I was 21 and spoke no Hebrew (I could read it, which wasn’t terribly useful) and had never been overseas before. Also: 1998, so no cell phone or means to get ahold of anyone. But there was no way in hell I was leaving Israel without a tour of that building, and if that meant I had to do it by myself that was what was going to happen.

You have very likely never been to the Old City. It’s a maze. And, worse, it’s a maze that shuts down around prayer times and a few other times as well, meaning that all the shops close and you can lose your bearings very easily when all of your landmarks suddenly go away. You remembered the jewelry shop on the corner was where you turned right? Good luck when the face of the jewelry store suddenly turns into a piece of plywood. I hired a guide. Agreed on a reasonable price. He took me on a little tour, where I did my best to make sure to memorize my route because I was alone and half-convinced I was about to be robbed, and then brought me to the Temple Mount.

Where he attempted to double his price. There was shouting. He switched to Arabic. I switched to Spanish. This was clearly a performance on his part, figuring the American was going to back down quickly rather than attract the notice of the local authorities– and we were certainly starting to attract notice. I, on the other hand, was firmly in “getting arrested on the Temple Mount makes the story better” mode, and wasn’t about to back down to the dude, figuring that the blue passport around my neck and my connection to Hebrew University through the dig was going to sort everything out sooner or later. (Yay, privilege!) He backed down and left. And I took my shoes off, got in line and got my tour of one of the most beautiful, spiritual places on the planet. I met my friends a couple of hours later without any real incident, managing to get to the spot where we’d agreed to join up without getting lost or anything else stupid happening.

Secondary funny Israel story: On the first trip into Jerusalem, we went to the Holy Sepulchre. The history of the Sepulchre is fascinating and well worth a read if you’re unfamiliar with it, but suffice it to say that there’s a shrine in there that is believed to be the actual location of Jesus’ tomb. You have to crawl, or at least squat, to get in there:

This is, in case it’s not clear, a really small room, with space for no more than a few people, and those shoved tightly together. And that little entryway is several feet long, so it’s possible to stand up too early as you’re walking in. And hit your head. On a stone arch.

If you do that, shouting “OW! JESUS!” at the top of your lungs is frowned upon.

(It wasn’t me. Thank God. But I was right behind her and oh lord keeping a straight face in a situation like that is incredibly difficult. Also, I can safely report that it is in fact impossible to literally die of embarrassment or Betsy surely would have done so on the spot.)

Under the jump, other answers to this prompt:

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