I’m wealthy and I don’t like it

On October 12, 2023 By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching1 Comment

Okay, let’s put this right out there for everybody: I’m about to gripe about getting handed a whole pile of money, and we’re all just going to have to figure out how to live with that, okay? This is probably a pretty good stroke of fortune, but I’m still less than completely happy about it. Just prepare yourself, I guess.

Last week we had to fire a permanent substitute for several of our Social Studies classes. We never found a full-time teacher for that class, but this guy was showing up to work every day so he may as well have been the “real” teacher. I am not privy to the reasons for the firing, although I have reason to believe that they were of the “you aren’t very good at this” variety and possibly also the “you are not getting along with the other adults, who are better at their jobs than you” variety, but not anything more nefarious than that. At any rate, since I’m certified to teach middle school social studies, I spent some time thinking about whether I wanted to volunteer to pick up one of this guy’s sections and ended up deciding against it. The group he had during my prep period seemed like a pretty decent group of kids, but it would mean a whole lot of extra prep time for just one extra section of kids, and, well, it would eat my one prep period. That would mean teaching from 8:15 to 3:20 every day with nothing but a half hour break for lunch. I didn’t exactly turn it down, because it wasn’t offered to me, but I did decide I wasn’t going to put my name forward for it.

So naturally today one of our math teachers resigned, and while I could still turn down an overload, it feels a lot sketchier to refuse to teach an extra section of the course I’m already teaching, and I’ve covered her class before and it’s a reasonably easy group of kids. But it means, again, no preps ever, and less time for a bathroom break– and you’d best believe my bowels have gotten used to being evacuated promptly at 10:08 every morning when I send second hour away– and I can’t run out for lunch any longer.

My biggest complaint, though, is the notion that I have to bring my lunch every day for the rest of the year. The thought is crushing. I mean, I can order Jimmy John’s once in a while, and I can probably afford to Doordash every now and again, but that shit adds up quick and I don’t want to spend money on food all the Goddamn time, especially since if the delivery person is even a little late I’m racing through my lunch even faster than usual, which is deeply fucking annoying.

On the other hand, depending on exactly how they run the numbers I’m going to make somewhere between eight and eleven thousand dollars extra for covering the class. I get my hourly rate, so basically 3/4 of an extra 1/6 of my salary over the course of the year, although that sixth may be a little smaller than that because I’m not sure if Advisory counts as instructional time or they just divide my day into six classes or what.

One way or another, it’s a whole Goddamn lot of money. I have this plan going right now where other than the house I’m going to be completely out of debt by the end of this school year. Completely out. An extra nine grand– the most likely figure is roughly $8900 if you want specificity– over the course of the rest of the school year would move that timetable up pretty considerably. How much can I really gripe about doing a little bit more of something I was already doing when it has that level of compensation attached to it? But the fucking lunch thing has me all twisted up about it for some reason.

My brain makes no damn sense at all sometimes.

Aaaaagh

On October 4, 2023 By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching1 Comment

I spent all day thinking it was Thursday, meaning that I thought tomorrow was Friday, and it’s not. Even sitting here right now, with this week’s pile of comic books sitting (unread) next to me, I’m having a difficult time comprehending the idea that I have two more days of work this week. It hasn’t been a bad week, all told; yesterday was emotionally rough but school has gone well this week and my classes have murdered their last couple of tests, which is awesome. I looked at the next unit test for my Algebra class, written by the high school teachers, and it was so fucking easy I damn near gave it to them after a day of working on functions. They’ll be ready for it on Monday. I won’t give it to them for a couple of weeks– time to dial the rigor up a bit, so that when they get the test and everybody gets 100% they’ll recognize how easy it is and laugh at it with me.

One thing about this group of kids, both my Algebra class and my kids in general this year: my Algebra class is hands-down the smartest and hardest-working group of kids I’ve ever worked with. It’s not close. And the funny thing is most of them are athletes, so the general vibe of the room is a bunch of really smart jocks as opposed to the cabal of nerds you might expect to see dominating an Algebra class. Even the rest of my classes, though? I’ve gotten used to anywhere from a quarter to half of my students failing during any given quarter, and there is nothing I can do about that short of simply handing over points and just inflating the shit out of their grades. There’s not much I can do if you never come to school and when you are in school you refuse to do any work. Just because you have to decide to fail my class doesn’t mean that a certain percentage of kids don’t gleefully make that decision every quarter.

This year? If you only count the kids who show up, I have less than ten total who are failing out of about 120. Maybe only seven or eight. That’s amazing. Don’t get me wrong, I’d like to see more commitment out of them nonetheless, but compared to the baseline I’ve had for the last several years– even last year in this same school– it’s going amazing. All that and only one real discipline problem out of all of my classes? Shit, it must be time for the other shoe to drop.

This one’s not my fault

On October 2, 2023 By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

Did I mention I was a union rep again? Well, I am, and I had a meeting after school, so I didn’t get home until after 6, and then I had to eat something because diabeetus, and then we had to go pick my car up and hey did you know that the Kia Soul apparently has some sort of funky battery that doesn’t jump the same as other batteries and also costs a hell of a lot more, and if you’re thinking “Hey, Luther, that sounds fishy, you should look into that!” then you’re absolutely right I’m going to do that, and then I had to grade some tests and write some assignments and some emails, and now it’s 9 goddamn 13 and I’m going to bed so I can do it all tomorrow and Christ am I tired.

What, again?

On September 24, 2023 By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

It’s kind of appropriate that I know good and well I’ve made this joke in the last few weeks already, but I can’t believe that I spent all last week teaching these kids math and somehow I have to teach them math again tomorrow. One would think they would know it by now, or at least enough of it, but no. I do genuinely envy people with regular jobs; this weird thing where I have to decide what I’m doing at work tomorrow just aggravates the shit out of me sometimes. That was one of the cool things about selling furniture, y’know? I got home and I was home, and I didn’t have to spend two hours preparing for my eight hours of work the next day. I could just go to work and work would happen. Not so for teaching, which is why teaching is dumb.

But whatever; you’d think after 20 years I’d be done griping about this shit but apparently not. This has been a solid Week of Nothing to Say; I have gotten home from work, plugged Baldur’s Gate III into a vein, then unhooked it long enough to eat and prepare for the next day, and rinse and repeat. Nothing’s really happened in the world that I’ve felt the need to talk about and my reading lately hasn’t been compelling enough that I’ve wanted to talk about either, which means I’m either doing music posts or, well, this.

Anyway. My Algebra class I’m good for but I gotta go figure out something for the 8th grade Math class. Sigh.

Wait, I have to do what now?

On September 13, 2023 By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching1 Comment

I don’t get it.

Y’all, I spent all day teaching math. I know, it’s my job; this shouldn’t be surprising, but really: I spent all day today teaching math. To 8th graders. And a handful of 7th graders, but mostly to 8th graders.

And you’re telling me, that after spending the whole day doing that, I have to go back tomorrow and teach Math again? To the same damn kids? Don’t they know math yet? How the hell could they possibly need more math after all the mathing they did today? This is a scam, I tell you. A scam!

Anyway, righteous indignation aside, I’ve managed to get myself planned for tomorrow, and partially for the day after that, in a sort of “give them something they’ll have fun with so I can mostly ignore them” kind of way, since I have a ton of administrative deadlines for various things this week and frankly am going to need some time to work at my desk. Y’know, like a regular person, who doesn’t have seven hours of presentations as part of their job every damn day.

The good news? I’ve said repeatedly that I’m having a great year, and we just got results for our first test of the year back, and … damn. My kids cooked the other 8th grade classes, y’all, not only in overall average but in growth too, and it’s tough to hit both. I haven’t looked at NWEA results yet, because COVID knocked that off my radar and ultimately their results on the first test don’t matter all that much anyway– it just sets a baseline for the winter and spring administrations, and frankly (and cynically) it makes me look better if they don’t do great on the first test anyway, right?

God, it’s nice to come home from work and not have hours of complaining to do.

Something coherent

On August 29, 2023 By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

I was in bed before 9:00 last night, and probably dead to the world before 10:00, and as a result spent the day feeling much more human. I even got home still feeling human, which is a definite improvement over the last several days. We’ll see how long it lasts; I have plans to play Armored Core VI after finishing this blog post and hopefully once I start I’ll be able to tear myself away after a reasonable amount of time.

A brief (very brief) tale about today, one of those sorts of stories where the lead-in takes way longer than the actual story. I have talked, in this space and many others, about how Kids These Days don’t give a damn any longer about shit we, meaning The Olds, used to think of as private. I had a kid straight-up introduce themselves to me last year with “Hi, I’m <name,> I’m an asexual lesbian.” Like, that was the first sentence. Shit, I’m straight and there was no way that I would have actually admitted I liked girls to a teacher when I was in middle school. The Internet is fond of school bathroom discourse, and one of the frequent arguments of people who think we should let kids go use the bathroom at any time and for any reason(*) is that Girls have Periods and how dare you prevent her from doing whatever her teenage menstrual cycle might be demanding at any given moment just because she’s so embarrassed to admit it’s happening.

It is to laugh, because teenage girls do not give one single shit any longer about telling anyone and anyone who might have even the slightest claim to such information that they are on their periods. And while I’ve been teaching middle school long enough to have amassed a fair-sized stash of stories involving menstrual nonsense in some way or another, today was the first time a student looked me in the eye and volunteered, entirely unsolicited, that she needed to go to the bathroom so that she could change her underwear. The answer was going to be yes. It wasn’t even going to be “can you wait a few minutes?” Straight-up yes. And I got to find that out about her anyway.

As a reminder, this kid has known me for twelve days.

Teenagers are a lot of things, but they are absolutely not shy any longer.

(*) We will not be engaging in this discourse in this space at this time; suffice it to say that these people are Wrong.

More early-in-the-school-year whining

On August 28, 2023August 28, 2023 By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

I managed to hurt myself in my sleep last night, which at my age should be no surprise; I spent the whole day feeling like I stuck a walnut-sized rock directly under my neck and just slept on it all night. I’ve been sluggish and my neck has been bugging me all day and I’m just not in the mood at the moment, especially since I just now remembered that I still have to put pretest data into the math team’s form for such things– which was the “I feel like I’m forgetting something” problem from yesterday. So I’m going to get that done and then I’m going to bed and I don’t care what time it is.

I’ll try and write something coherent tomorrow.