The blog of Luther M. Siler, teacher, author and local curmudgeon
I can literally hear my students whining “When am I gonna use this?” right now.
Also, Duolingo, I think it’s fair to suggest that an American English speaker will never say “Ghassan a is very hungry,” and while I admit that that would be a genuine PEBKAC* error, it would be super cool if you could just fix it and move on.
*we may need a more phone-appropriate version of this acronym.
The assessment I had to give this week over the Pythagorean Theorem was not written by me, nor was it written by anyone in my building, and furthermore it was split into four parts for reasons that make sense in a way but I will not be getting into here. My partner teacher and I looked at the fourth test and decided that it was much too difficult and so we decided not to count it as a test grade, but to give it anyway, since, y’know, the Lord High Muckety-Mucks want us to.
I decided to Do Science. Anyone who spends any time around teachers nowadays is fully aware of the common teacher complaint that we’ve never seen such a level of don’t-give-a-shit from our kids than we are lately, and that further the level of inability to notice things, in general, is a big problem.
You, being an adult, have likely already noticed that I wrote the fucking answers for the second assessment– yes, it was only four questions– on the board.
106 8th graders in my class completed that assignment today. 26.4% of them failed the Problem Solving portion of it, a number so close to 27% that I am considering writing John Rogers and asking him to make an addendum to his Crazification Factor. If I add in the number of students who clearly did not notice that the answers were on the board in plan and large letters– and I promise you that board is not in an obscure location in my classroom– but did not out-and-out fail, it rises to 45.3%, which is completely Goddamned insane.
One of these days, someone will figure out a way to separate kids who don’t understand something from those who simply don’t give a shit, and on that day, American education will change radically. Until then, however, I’m going to keep bitching about the notion that my job performance is evaluated by how other people act.
It was 72 degrees today, and it is not yet March, and we’re all definitely going to die because of that, but because I live in Indiana, in the next twelve hours we are expecting high winds, tornadoes, rain, snow, a fifty-degree temperature drop, and hail.
we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes
Forgive me for splattering my horrifying visage across your computer screen or whatever digital thingamabob you’re using to view this, but what I’m wearing is actually kind of important to this story. It was eighty-five degrees in my classroom when I got to work, again. I bought that pullover over the weekend, on clearance, for fourteen bucks. It is wonderfully soft and while it is warm it’s not quite as warm as it looks (that’s a good thing) and I like the pattern and the color. I spent the whole weekend planning to wear it today and looking forward to it.
As I was walking into the building this morning, I thought to myself that it was probably going to be hellishly hot in my classroom and I wasn’t going to get to wear my nice new pullover because it was going to be too hot. And I was exactly right. I didn’t last into second hour, especially since I insisted on drinking my Goddamned coffee, temperature in the room be damned.
We got an email that the Thingamawhosis had broken, and that there was already a guy in the building repairing it, and that classroom temperatures would start coming down soon. By lunchtime it was still 80 degrees, and I sent a cautiously worded follow-up email, which generated a second message to the whole staff that the Thingamawhosis had been fixed but then it promptly broke again. So, just sweat, I guess.
It’s supposed to be in the mid-sixties tomorrow, which is one of those painful things where it’s sort of been winter for a little while and warm weather is going to feel nice but it is also terrifying because it’s fucking February and it’s not supposed to be in the mid-sixties, and the nice weather is a sign of the fucking world ending. One way or another, I’m wearing shorts, because fuck it, that’s why. I strongly suspect that wearing shorts to work will result in the Thingamawhosis not only already being fixed when I arrive, but magically working at higher capacity than normal for the entire day, resulting in the exact same kids who told me it was hot when they walked into my classroom every single class period, as if I didn’t already fucking know, coming in and complaining about being cold.
At least cold 8th graders smell a lot better than hot ones.
This week has already featured Blowjob Drama, which is not in my top five favorite kinds of drama, and tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day is one of the very worst days to be a middle school teacher, as roughly half of the ongoing relationships in the building are going to abruptly end tomorrow, and most of them are going to end in desperately stupid ways for desperately stupid reasons. Meanwhile, I still have to teach math. Which they have even less incentive to pay attention to than usual.
Hooray!
I’m starting to think that I have an unreasonable number of Things I’m Supposed to Do Every Day. I didn’t post last night because I got home from work, had dinner, and collapsed; I was in bed by 8:00 and dead to the world by nine, and at around 8:40 it occurred to me that I hadn’t blogged yet and I almost got out of bed to write a quick post. The thing is, I don’t know how many different things is a reasonable number of things that I do every day, or at least do so often that I notice if I don’t do them on any particular day. Shall we list them? Why not!
The weird thing is looking at that right now, I feel like it’s not that much? But I also feel like I spend way too much of every day thinking about whether I’ve finished xxx yet or not, and that might be a sign that it’s time to cut some stuff. How can I do all this and still spend six hours fucking around on TikTok every night? I gotta keep my priorities straight, people!
Have you ever abandoned a long-term hobby? Not, like, because you weren’t physically capable of it any longer for some reason or some external reason, but just realized you weren’t interested in something that you’d been doing for decades and stopped doing it?
Not asking for any reason. Really.
(And absolutely not talking about the blog.)
No pictures yet, because I still have a jangle and a tangle of cords and mess all over everything, and I think at least one piece of wall art still needs to be moved, but I think it’s fair to say that 80% of the work I alluded to in the “Before” post a couple of days ago is done. What’s left isn’t difficult so much as annoying, and I also need to get an adapter that I hadn’t counted on to make something new work.
Yes, I’m being cagey. No, I don’t care. I have to have my fun somehow, Goddammit, and pretending you guys are chewing your nails wondering what I could possibly be doing in my office is what I do for fun.
In the meantime, I am sweaty and tired, and my office is a mess, and I have far too much to do tomorrow. Whee!
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