Tag: middle school

Tomorrow

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

I get to spend my entire day tomorrow giving my students standardized tests, and I mean that literally– every single one of my classes, all day, except for my 30-minute lunch, which is going to be delayed a bit from its usual time because of Reasons. I will have to read several pages of instructions six times and ask over a hundred and thirty students “Do you have a cell phone?” and hope none of them are lying to me, because I get to catch all the bullshit from everybody if we have to invalidate a test.

You’ve all heard the rants before; I’m tired and I don’t wanna. I’m going to predict my sixth-hour kids have the worst test scores I’ve ever seen, though, because giving a standardized test at the end of the day is fucking professional malpractice.

And then Thursday the process will repeat, with the ELA teachers giving their half of the test, and I’ll be in my classroom instead, trying to figure out how to keep the bastards busy and quiet for class periods that are ten or so minutes longer than usual. I’m thinking color by numbers. I’m already pre-annoyed by Thursday behavior issues that haven’t even happened yet– that ten minutes don’t sound like much but they’re going to be. My current ability to tolerate bullshit, as well as the ability of the other adults in the building, is calibrated for 53-minute blocks. There will be a lot of damn referrals during the last ten minutes of class over the next couple of days.

Also, I just ate about two thousand calories of deep dish pizza, and it was a bad idea.

The end.

Here’s how today went

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching2 Comments

I told my principal and my assistant principal today that I was going to be instantly writing up any student who I heard say the word “fuck” tomorrow, and that they should expect fifty or sixty referrals by the end of the day.

Both of them told me to go for it.

*cracks knuckles*

Today’s moment of screaming inside my brain

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching2 Comments

Many years ago– I have told this story before, but in a previous version of this blog, I think– I had a deeply weird conversation with a second-generation Vietnamese student in one of my classes where I had to convince him that he was Asian. This was long enough ago that you still had to fill out a bunch of bubbles with a pencil in order to take a standardized test, and he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to fill out in the Race category. His first guess was that he was white, since he had been born here. And if the kid was younger I’d make an argument that I could see it; he was not born in Asia, which may in and of itself have short-circuited his brain out of choosing “Asian,” particularly if his parents only ever referred to their family as Vietnamese, which of course would not have been an option on the list.

He was an eighth grader at the time.

At any rate, no, son, fill out Asian, please, and then go home and have a conversation with your parents about whether there is anything else about your identity that they have not mentioned in the last fourteen years.

Today, out of nowhere, I had a student (Puerto Rican, I think) walk up to me during passing period and ask me if I was white. The look I gave her must have answered her question, because before I actually said anything she clarified with the following:

“No, I mean like real white. All white. White-white.”

Just in case you’ve forgotten, this is what I look like:

So … yes. Completely white. All the white. Flat White. Damn near pink, really.

I did not press the child for an explanation.

Just busy, I promise

On By Luther M. SilerIn Parenting, video gamesLeave a comment

Parent-teacher conferences at my kid’s school today, which ate up most of my evening, and then I had two tests and an assignment to write for tomorrow, and I’m contemplating how long I’m going to wait until I take this big bastard out of its box:

… so, I have spent money unwisely, but fuck it, I get to give the original PS5 to my son and get some good dad points, and fuck it, the world’s ending so I may as well buy useless shit, right?

More tomorrow.

I can’t wait for Google to get ahold of this one

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One of my most unfortunate popular posts is this one, where I found a certain article of feminine attire in an excitingly vivid color in a place where articles of feminine attire should never be found. It did not occur to me that putting a more, uh, punchy description of the clothing item in question directly in the title of the post was going to lead to a lot of idiots who would search for that particular clothing item and then literally click on every single post that showed up on Google.

People actually do that, by the way. That’s the only way to explain some of my search results.

Anyway, my day got completely derailed by a massive child porn investigation, how was yours?

In which I am irate, vagueposting

On By Luther M. SilerIn ParentingLeave a comment

I am, for only the second time since he has started going there, irritated with my son’s school. And, like, really irritated this time, not mildly irritated like the time he got in trouble over some bullshit that felt like the teacher’s fault in preschool. Sending-strongly-worded-emails irritated. How dare you make me disappoint my kid irritated.

And I don’t really want to get into details, especially since it’s 8:26 already and I’m showing signs of doomscrolling on top of everything else and I would really like to get away from my computer and go sit in a room with my kid with a book in my hand. I’m not gonna bitch about my kid’s school online, even in the mostly-anonymous format the blog affords me. But I really don’t need any external stressors right now because I know how my brain works and I’m likely to lash out at some poor fool who doesn’t deserve it because of unrelated stress, and I’m also irritated with my school for entirely unrelated reasons, and just … fuck.

Christ and fuck ENOUGH

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching6 Comments

So remember last week, where two days in a row I had “man, today was a long week” posts?

I wrote up eight kids today– at least one in each class except for first and fifth hour, including four in sixth hour, and let’s be real, the only reason I didn’t write anyone up in fifth is because my chief shithead had gotten suspended earlier in the day– and in between fourth and fifth hour I broke up a literal fucking stampede of probably a hundred adolescent assholes by shouting “Get your asses back to class” so loudly that I think I damaged a vocal cord.

I wonder if that counts as a workplace injury?

It was not a good day, and if tomorrow is remotely as shitty as today was, there is a very real chance that I’m not showing up for work on Friday. I have four more days of teaching between now and Fall Break. Unfortunately, I also have twelve hours of parent/teacher conferences between now and then, during which, in accordance with prophecy, I will see none of the unconcerned, uninvolved, negligent-ass, ignorant-ass, broke-ass useless parents of my shitheads, and only parents of kids who I have good things to say about.

I literally told one of my APs today that we could drastically improve the building if we just expelled about twenty of them on the spot. Their parents think we’re babysitters. You know what babysitters can do? Quit.

Fuck teaching. I’m going to go write some fucking postcards.

EDIT: What the fucking fuck, WordPress?

I mean, okay, I put “assholes” in the tags, but still, are you fucking kidding??

Line forms to the left

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

… today was the kind of day where I’m in my room, just after school lets out, when another teacher comes in who needs to vent, and it quickly becomes clear that she doesn’t just need to vent, she needs to be talked off a ledge to some extent, and then while she’s venting, a second teacher comes in to vent, and then a few minutes later a third teacher comes in to vent, and they’re all venting at each other, and okay I kinda had a rough day too, and I don’t mind being everybody’s sounding board, but would y’all mind if I just … went home, and left y’all my room as your private venting space?

No? That would be rude? Well, shit, I guess I’m staying late tonight then.

Dammit.

On the plus side, there was, like, a bomb threat or something called in against all of our middle schools? So maybe everybody will stay home tomorrow.