Tag: assholes

Let’s see if you can make me II

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching1 Comment

We have, like a lot of districts, an e-learning day scheduled for November 3rd, which is Election Day. Schools still get used as polling places frequently and a lot of districts have decided it’s safer and easier on everyone if they just get the kids out of the building for the day. We found out yesterday that we were going to be expected to be in PD all day. I’ve gone back and forth on whether I should post this flyer or not, and landed on “fuck it”:

You’re already starting off in a deep, deep hole if you want me to take you seriously and the first thing I encounter about you is a fucking AI flyer. I’m stunned that it’s not in that AI font that is absolutely fucking everywhere all the sudden over the last couple of months.

I had a few minutes this afternoon and, knowing full well I was about to piss myself off, I looked into the company behind this, again, six hour training. A six hour training at which they have already told us they will be taking attendance twice. We have been instructed to bring “a writing utensil and a hard surface to write on,” because we’ll be stuck in fucking auditorium chairs all Goddamned day. What this means is that we’re going to spend at least a third of the six hours “reflecting” and “sharing” with an “elbow partner.”

So you can imagine just how excited I was about this even before finding out that the person behind the company has all of four and a half fucking years of classroom experience, and all of that was at a high-ranked district in Georgia, and all of that was as a special ed teacher, meaning that she’s very likely never been in charge of a full classroom, and all of that was before Covid and before 1:1 tech instruction, where we handed all these demonic little fuckers perpetual distraction devices.(*)

Their website also offers a free brochure (“free” meaning “give us your email address”, here you go) with five “tips to give teachers what they need to thrive in the classroom.” There are more typos in the brochure than there are useful tips. The first page calls it an “ebook.” It is nine pages long, counting the cover.

No.

This person has nothing to say to me that I need or want to hear. The last time they pulled this shit on us it was a three-hour presentation where the guy began by promising to “respect our time” (not once in the history of humanity has anyone said those three words and meant them) and whose most insightful contribution to behavior management through his three hours was assigned seats, which he presented as if he’d invented the idea himself. This time it is six hours, followed by a “mandatory” presentation by the superintendent that falls entirely outside of our contract hours and which I have already bitched to the union about.

And again: they’re telling us they’re taking attendance twice, so they know good and fucking well that they’ve spent a lot of money to bring this asshole here to waste our time.

I’m not doing it. I’m calling in sick that day, and if for some reason I’m prevented from calling in sick I’m going to show up with a bag full of rotten fruit and I’m going to heckle until I get fired. Just because you can con bureaucrats into shoveling money into your gaping maw does not mean that you have anything relevant to say to me, and we’ll see how your little behavior management techniques work on a grown-ass man who is pre-tired of your bullshit.

(*) I’ve found her LinkedIn, too. She has four and a half years of teaching experience, four years in three different behavior analyst jobs, and then founded her consulting company. She is a fetus, and she knows nothing.

I wish you would

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, TeachingLeave a comment

I wish I thought I could get away with posting work emails in full, because hoo-boy, did I have a doozy of a banger of an email thread waiting for me when I woke up this morning– waiting for me in the morning, because it was sent at 12:30 last night. A parent emailed thirteen different people because her darling sweetheart wasn’t eligible to play middle school football any longer, on account of his failing three of his seven classes, including mine. Has he been failing three classes for weeks? Of course he has. Do teachers have a way to see if parents have been checking their kids’ grades? Of course we do. Have they? Of course they haven’t.

This decision was “potentially affecting his future.” He is five foot two and 110 pounds, dripping wet. He will not even make the high school team, much less anything beyond that.

Now, as it turns out, I had him retake a test last week, which he didn’t finish. Had I been at work yesterday, I’d have had him finish it then; I was planning on him finishing it this morning, which he did, and which brought his grade up to passing. I want this perfectly clear: I was going to do this anyway, even if the email had never been sent. That didn’t stop the thread from continuing to escalate throughout the day, as she apparently thought that everyone involved up and down the command structure was just going to drop everything to make sure that little Billy got his ten minutes of playing time tonight. At least two of his teachers do not have prep periods and one has been out for the last two days; needless to say, nobody is making replying to hysterical FAFO emails their highest priorities. Also, literally none of us have a single drop of influence over whether he plays football or not, and I suspect none of us care.

Then Dad, who no one has ever heard from all year, got involved, and Dad decided to cc in the superintendent, who I can absolutely assure you neither has the time nor the inclination to give a single damn about whether a kid with three failing grades played football tonight. Mom’s email was, in its own way, reasonable; Dad’s very much was not, and trust me, sir, only showing up to gripe about playing time in football is not endearing you to any of us. Two of my kids ended up in the hospital after the last 8th grade football game, one concussed so bad that he hasn’t been back to school yet after a week. As far as I’m concerned the entire fucking sport should be banned.

The worst thing? Dad’s a teacher in our district. Which means that he knows, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that he’s full of shit, and that no one is trembling at the thought of the superintendent stepping in. By the end of the entire mess Mom was hyperventilating about the kid’s IEP, which, needless to say, does not mention sports eligibility on any of its nineteen pages and also does not contain any particular restrictions on the grades we have to give work that is not turned in. Does he have extra time to get his work done and turn it in? Yes! But he still has to turn it in before that matters, and … well.

The last email was a “demand” that she receive a “clear and written explanation” about whether her son could or could not play in tonight’s football game and why. If she received any such thing, I was not included in the response; I look forward to seeing her in the office already as I walk in in the morning. Because I’m not even failing him anymore and I am genuinely looking forward to this conversation. Of the three of us, me and his sports-obsessed idiot parents, who do you think has actually read the lad’s IEP?

Tomorrow’s gonna be awesome.

In which I’m preparing for smoke

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

Going to have a conversation with my principal tomorrow that is going to involve the words “I need you to tell XXXX to keep my name out of her Goddamned mouth when she’s in front of kids,” and at the moment I’m not super interested in providing any additional context. I’m going to go stab a bunch of yokai now because I am prohibited by law and custom from stabbing co-workers.

I’m fighting somebody

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Reading5 Comments

These four Tana French books are a completed trilogy and a standalone novel, and you will never guess which one is the standalone novel, and I want to have a quick sit-down with whatever filthy jackanapes were involved in making cover decisions over at Viking.

Let’s see if you can make me

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Teaching1 Comment

I spent my first few hours of the new school year working in my room today; as per previous practice, we don’t actually start getting paid until next week, but if I wait until the days I’m supposed to be there, there’s not going to be anywhere near enough time to get everything done that I need to get done. Adding insult to injury, Open House starts at 1:00 in the Goddamn afternoon on our second day of the three we have before school starts, meaning that the real deadline for when our rooms need to be presentable isn’t even the day the kids come back, it’s a full day and a half before that.

I made two promises to myself at the end of last year, which were that I wasn’t going back into the building before school started, and I wasn’t going to spend a ton of money during the couple of weeks heading into school, and I’ve thoroughly broken both of those promises. (Want to help me out with supplies? My Amazon wish list is here.)

We got emailed a document a few weeks ago about the district’s new expectations regarding classroom decor and classroom furniture. I’m probably not supposed to post the entire thing, but I’m really, really tempted to do so. Needless to say, it bans several things I already have in my classroom, and I’ve already purchased, as in during previous years, specifically for use in my classroom. Shit that I not only have nowhere to put at home, but is too big to fit in my car to take home even if I had somewhere to put it. I’m not joking when I tell you they apparently want me to just throw away hundreds of dollars of shit I’ve bought for my room to make it more comfortable for my students. Hell, I decided I wanted to grab an end table we weren’t using at home (it’s been living in the garage for a couple of months) to put my iPad charging station on, and technically, I can’t even bring that in.

The policy basically boils down to “You are only allowed to use the furniture we give you, and we have no intention whatsoever of furnishing your room appropriately, so suck it.” The teacher chair from the district that I replaced with my $600 SecretLab chair was broken when I got it. Is somebody going to reimburse me for all this shit I already bought, that was perfectly fine in previous years?

Yeah, I know.

I don’t think most people realize just how bare a classroom looks when it literally only has the things in it that the school district paid for. They’ve even gone so far as to ban various kinds of flexible student seating (I don’t have them any more, because the kids popped them, but I’ve had fidget seats in the room before) that are commonly used in IEPs. They’re supposedly going to have the maintenance crew go through the buildings and mark the level we’re supposed to keep our lighting at on the switch plates. The maintenance people come through every single night and set my lights to the maximum before turning them off, a level of harsh overhead lighting that I absolutely cannot tolerate. We aren’t supposed to use staples or thumbtacks to attach things to the walls any more. Our walls are specifically constructed to take staples! They did that on purpose!

(My room didn’t even get fucking vacuumed over the summer, by the way. Everything is exactly where I left it at the end of the school year. I had no reason to put anything away.)

Anyway, my AP walked into my room today to say hello, and I’d moved my couch to a spot where it is clearly visible from the door, the same couch I’m not supposed to have in my room any longer, and she didn’t say a damn word about it. I’m not sure how much of a stink I’m willing to make about this, but I’m absolutely not complying with anything until my boss specifically tells me to, and I’m trying to decide if I’m petty enough for malicious compliance to kick in if that happens.

(The document also bans, believe it or not, cast iron bathtubs from being in classrooms. Specifically. There has to be a story behind this. I want to know what it is.)

In which I am unreasonably angry

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Reading2 Comments

That’s not a sticker.

I made multiple attempts to acquire this book through physical retail channels– I’m not sure why, but I really wanted to buy it in person– before noticing it was like 60% off or something like that on Amazon and giving up and ordering it, and it shows up with that … thing on the spine. I’m genuinely considering returning it and just reading it on my Kindle, because that’s going to bother me every single time I look at the book for the rest of time.

Maybe I’ll go to Half Price Books tomorrow and see if they have an earlier edition.

On the nature of reality

On By Luther M. SilerIn Politics4 Comments

I hate that I have to write this. I hate every fucking second of it.

I don’t have the tools, emotionally or intellectually, to deal with a world where things like video and photography are not, in any way, helpful in determining what is real or not. Combine that with a political apparatus that is primed to lie at every given opportunity regardless of whether lying makes any sense and I exist in a world where a former Speaker of the House just released a photo and a statement to prove he was still alive and I still have legitimately no idea whether he is still alive or not.

Well, okay, that’s not quite true. I have opinions, I suppose. I have no rational basis for those opinions, unfortunately. No actual evidence. Just … fucking vibes, I guess, and I don’t really want to live in a world like that.

So, just in case you’ve been under a rock or you’re reading this in 2032, Mitch McConnell went into the hospital in early June and completely vanished from the public eye. It is July 14, as I’m writing this, and he just resurfaced yesterday (Christ, was that only yesterday??) with a statement and a picture where he is rather conspicuously sitting with a copy of the sports section of yesterday’s Washington Post.

The statement has literally no value at all in determining reality. Statements from politicians are routinely written by staff members and are just as likely to contain lies as anything else they say. It’s genuinely meaningless. It also doesn’t really match up with what we’d already learned, or at least thought we had– weren’t there recordings of the 911 dispatch? Reports that they’d administered CPR to someone on site? Any real explanation of why they waited a month to give the public any information at all about McConnell’s condition other than “he’s fine”? Even if he’s completely telling the truth, and wrote the whole statement, pneumonia in someone that elderly is not trivial. That’s not “doing fine,” and hospital-induced pneumonia tends to be a lot harder to eradicate than other kinds.

(Remember Herman Cain? He was doing fine too, until he was dead.)

No, even if the statement is real, it’s wildly insufficient, and part of the problem is that now I want to know more about where the 911 information came from, because if that was made up, we still have a large problem.

And then there’s the picture.

Now, to be clear, I think a lot of complaints about the picture, most of which have been uttered with the entire chest of the utterer, are bullshit. To wit:

“Why is he in street clothes? Why isn’t he hooked up to an IV?” He literally said in the statement he was in rehab. You get to wear regular clothes in rehab.

“Where’s the fingernail on the middle finger of his right hand?” Probably attached to the third knuckle of his finger, which is curled underneath his hand.

“His wife’s in China!” You sure about that? Show me where you have access to her schedule. I have no idea whether any part of the story about her “fleeing” to China three days after he went into the hospital is true or not, for the record, and I wouldn’t know how to look up any part of it if I wanted to look into it.

“The Washington Post doesn’t even have a sports section any more!” Yes the fuck they do. I genuinely saw someone alleging that, along with several claims that it was from some other date, or a different newspaper.

“The pillow is floating in the air behind him!” You can literally see part of the chair behind the pillow, idiot. Top left corner, level with his mouth.

The one complaint I’ve seen that makes sense to me is that he looks healthier in that picture than he has in months, and honestly I can’t argue with that one. There have also been some people pointing out that his hair looks less white than it has lately, which I also can’t dispute. But one way or another a still photo is not enough to dispel a month of complete absence from the public eye that only ended when another Republican senator died. I’ve seen this guy go to la-la land on camera enough times that as far as I know somebody’s waving a stuffed unicorn around behind the camera and they got a smile out of him. It’s simply not enough evidence, which disgusts me.

And of course, with all that comes tons and tons of different versions of the photo that we know have been faked with varying degrees of obviousness and varying levels of intent. Some of them are clearly people clowning; other people appear to be faking the picture better, like a few that I’ve seen that have added some hallucinating AI text into the newspaper. There’s a whole rant here about how people will yell “IT’S AI” at literally anything nowadays; it’s rapidly becoming a phrase that very well might not mean anything more than “I don’t like that.” There is lots of talk that the photo matches one that his staff released in 2023, just with the newspaper changed, but I’ve not seen any sourcing to that claim, nor could I really believe it if I did.

What’s the solution? In the short term, I want a Goddamned press conference, or at least an interview recorded on video. He doesn’t have to put on a suit and parade out behind a podium. Drop a laptop in front of him and have a few reporters ask him some questions over Zoom, I don’t care. And of course that would be something that could be faked too, so pick a couple of reporters with decent reputations. I don’t need hard-hitting questions. Thirty seconds of the fucker telling us what happened in such a way that makes me think he’s alive and he’s mentally capable of doing his job. A whole lot of people won’t believe it anyway, but I think it’d be good enough for me, and right now this photo isn’t enough.

And we need to put an age cap on Congress, too. Not term limits. An age cap. You shouldn’t be allowed to pass laws that fuck up a future you won’t be alive to see. But that’s a whole different post.

Can’t post again, reading again

On By Luther M. SilerIn Politics, ReadingLeave a comment

Four days after taking the night off because I was 100 pages from the end of Book One, I’m taking the night off because I am 100 pages from the end of Book Two. I think I’m going to take a little break in between two and three, but not long, and if Jay Kristoff ends this one with the same level of cliffhanger that he did the second Nevernight book, I won’t have any choice in the matter. So we’ll see.

I have, like most of you, spent most of the day playing Schrödinger’s Senators, and finally found an upside to waking up at the ass-crack of dawn every day: several of my friends and family members woke up to a text from me reading “Good morning! Lindsey Graham is dead!”. As of this moment, Mitch McConnell’s office has released a statement that he is, in fact, alive, along with a still picture conspicuously featuring the sports section of a newspaper from today. I am unsatisfied; I’m willing to believe that he is alive (the notion that they literally had his corpse in a cold room waiting for, well, something never really sat well with me) but if I were a Kentuckian I would be raising pure bloody hell demanding 1) an explanation for why the fuck he’s been radio-silent for a month and 2) if not an actual press conference, at least a Zoom group interview or something. I’m not willing to go so far as to say the photo is faked, but a still photo of a (surprisingly healthy-looking) person and a written statement is not a proof of capability. I want to know if there’s still a person in there, damn it.