I *Love* My Job!

Man, they really pissed me off today.

I have two classes. I see each for three hours a day. One class is full of sweet girls who only get a little sassy every once and a while. The boys are a little bad, but entirely tolerable when compared to...

6D. The letter and number from hell. This class is one of the worst things I've ever experienced. It's not just because half of the class is immature, insane, exhausting boys, but because the other half is the coolest group of female students I've ever had. These girls are amazing! They're like a bunch of little adults - so intuitive and just generally with it. And I have to spend all my time dealing with the problems with the boys. The girls are wonderful, and I never get to spend much time with them.

These boys are a bunch of creeps. They fight. They lie. They curse. At me. They sexually harass the girls. And today, they started harassing me! I keep two of the worst right next to the overhead from which I lecture, so I can keep an eye on them at all times. Today I allowed them to work with rulers. These two little pricks kept touching my backside and my thighs with the rulers and their pencils.

I'm at my breaking point. It's a damn good thing that this week is Thanksgiving break, or else it might end up the Massacre of 2004 in my classroom.

Ah, freedom. I'm off to California for the rest of the week, to enjoy the lovely Pacific and lots of time away from nasty teenagers.

I said at the beginning of the year that I loved this age group and would never go back to the needy little ones. I take back all comments of that nature, and would love nothing more than a room full of eight-year-olds to adore me and actually fear me, rather than these hooligans who delight in my misery.

Oh, and another thing for the "Yay! This district is so SMART!" file:

Today we were given a packet, quite obviously printed from an e-mail, along with a paper stating we were to have these packets finished and turned in by the end of the day. With these packets came absolutely no instructions. The packets contained a profile sheet, where the students are supposed to fill in information about their performance on the first round of district Benchmark tests. This was a time consuming and difficult task, mainly because we have one copy of the necessary test information, and 30 people who have to fill out the form. It took me 20 minutes just to explain to one group how to fill out the forms [since, of course, I was figuring it out as I went along!] and then the rest of the day for everyone else to get their packets done.

Meanwhile, my lesson plans for the day were shot, and the kids were rowdy since the task was just so boring. Because we were so rushed, the profile sheets didn't even serve their purpose - to show the students and teachers in what areas the class/student is weak. We were just hurrying through the paperwork to meet the deadline. The only purpose it served was that the kids got a little taste of what MY life is like, filling out complicated forms and data sheets at the last minute to satisfy the whims of some person downtown.

It's so frustrating, because we're supposed to stay with the Scope and Sequence, a document that tells us what to teach and when in each subject. Losing just one day puts you behind. Then, when the district people come and want to know why scores are low or why we're not where we're supposed to be in the curriculum, they don't stop to think that perhaps they are part of the problem!

I realize that teachers have always been overworked and underpaid, but it just seems like there has to be a better way. I feel like I'm strapped to a table, and there are tubes and needles attached to my body, sucking the blood out and killing me slowly. I can't believe people do this for 10, 20, 30 or more years!

I hear it's different working in an inner city school. That when working in the suburbs or in a small town, teaching can be fun. Perhaps I should move. I've been considering it a lot lately. A pay cut, yes, but to not feel like jumping off the top of my school into a pool full of hungry alligators at the end of each day - I'd sacrifice a few thousand a year for that.

No Words.

It's been a hard seven days.

Last week...seriously...all those things I ever thought were the worst things that I ever had to do now seem ok, a little bit less terrible. See, last week I had to tell an eight-year-old boy that his mom was dead, and not from natural causes.

This is something that will affect me for the rest of my life. Screw my life though - little F. - his life - for the rest of his life whenever anyone asks anything about his mom, he'll remember the day that his ex-con dad took him out of his new school and drove back over to his old school where his dad hoped his second grade teacher still worked. He'll remember sitting outside my classroom, not knowing that I already knew - that one of his cousins had told me that morning what had happened over the weekend (and thank God he did - I think it would have been a lot more difficult if I hadn't had time to process that this woman - a woman I knew and liked, and who was the mother of one of my favorite students - had been shot to death).

He'll remember me coming outside, finally, and walking him and his daddy into the building. Into that room where the teachers went to get their coffee and eat their lunch away from the kids. He'll remember wondering why this other lady he didn't know (the school psychologist) was there too, and why I locked the door and then sat so close to him on the couch.

He may not, but I will always remember all this. I'll remember the confused look on his face when I told him his mother was with God and the angels (I spared him the details and facts - that his mother and stepdad were in the wrong place at the wrong time - outside a liquor store where two opposing gangs started shooting at each other - typical case of a good person getting caught in the crossfire). I won't forget his tears. His sad, sweet face, his body curling between mine and his father's on that hideous, sea foam green vinyl sofa in a room smelling of stale coffee and seven different kinds of reheated leftovers.

His dad told me he just couldn't do it. He couldn't tell the kid what had happened to his mom. He wasn't sure what he was going to do now - he was for all intents and purposes homeless (he slept in the mechanic shop where he did part-time work for a friend), had more or less given up on himself and had accepted that his ex and her new husband would raise his precious son, his Junior, his only child that was born when he was all of sixteen years old because they'd be better parents. The stepdad didn't want to keep the boy, and the mother's family was nowhere to be found, somewhere in Honduras and unreachable.

I don't know what happened to F. Senior and F. Junior. I talked to the father once after this meeting, and told him to take his son and go back to Mexico where they had family and people who loved them. That in his situation, being without a place to live for himself and the child - they'd probably take his son away. I don't know if it was the best or the right advice, but it was all I could think to say at the time. I didn't hear from them again after that, and I never heard from Child Protective Services (I was required by law to report the situation) again about the matter, so I like to think the two of them started a new life with their family in MX - maybe F. Senior remarried, learned to stay out of trouble - and junior got to grow up with cousins, aunts, grandparents...

I'll always remember these two and will always wonder about their fate.

Coming up for Air

It's kind of funny that I thought the first year was bad. Second year seemed awful too, but, wow! Nothing compares to this year!

I'd like to thank some people:

1. Thanks, George W. Bush, for No Child Left Behind [Subtitle: All Teachers Left Behind...or maybe All Schools Left Behind When All The Teachers Quit...joking!] which has made my job so much better. It's good to send very high demands down from the top, scare all our administrators into scaring us, and then tie our hands when it comes to resources. Please, cut education funding some more! Send ALL the federal education money straight to Iraq.

I think I will do a fun experiment in honor of NCLB. First I'll tell my students that they're going to be required to do a lot of things. A lot of paperwork. A lot of studying. A lot more work than they've ever done before, even though before some of them - many of them - were trying their best. Now, they're going to be excited to hear that for all this extra work, there are no extra rewards or incentives. Instead, there will be harsh punishments for those not meeting standards on the new work requirements. Finally, right before sending them off to do their new work [in addition, of course, to everything they were doing before] I'll quietly let them know that I won't be providing their supplies - the pencils had to be sent to another country to build pencil cabins. The paper's being used to help start campfires somewhere else. Sorry, kids, if you're going to get this stuff done, you'll have to purchase your own supplies. Oh - and it's all got to be done on your own time - no extra time during the school day to take care of the new demands!

Think that would go over very well with parents? With administrators? Why is it acceptable to treat our teachers like this, then? Why is it ok to increase our requirements and responsibilities without any resources or extra paid time to do the work?

I'm lucky. My school was awarded some kind of grant that at least allows for teachers to get paid for before and after school tutoring. We even have funding for some elective programs, like soccer and a manners class. There is not, however, money to compensate teachers [like me] who need to spend no less than 10, probably 15 hours a week outside of school doing school work. Between all the meetings after school and training classess during planning periods [illegal, I must add] and constant interruptions in the classroom, there's little time to get anything done.

2. Thanks, DISD, for the OASIS program! OASIS is our fun new online lesson plan and objective tracking system. Uh, it sucks. I mean, the idea is good, but this program is so messed up I can't even explain how messed up it really is. It's bad enough to force people to do their lessons online. Making them use a program that is confusing, filled with errors and just plain annoying to use is downright horrible. It's also cool how even though we're supposed to be tracking our progress with the TEKS online, we still have to have paper copies of this same information. Same thing with the lesson plans, Scope and Sequence, and other district documents. What the hell was the point of putting it all online if we have to have a stupid binder filled with all the papers in our classrooms anyway?

I sometimes like to imagine that the people downtown play a game where they blindfold themselves, run around in a room giggling, and then write district policies.

3. Thank you, Science department, for requiring us to spend 50 percent of class time doing laboratory experiments, but making it difficult for us to obtain the materials we need to do them. I think it's possible to get materials for experiments, but I'm not sure. The one time I tried, I was told to go to the middle school near my school to see if they had the chemical I needed. Many, um...all of the things I have used to do experiments this year have been purchased with money from my wallet. There's no such thing as being reimbursed, either.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, I know. Teachers have been complaining about this same kind of stuff as long as there have been public schools. Still doesn't mean that these things are acceptable, does it?

Mickey Mouse

Ugh. My caurrennt sthate of sthilence is due to the 20 shots of novacaine I've received in the last few days, and the fun that came after the injections. No amount of numbing agent can stop the pain of a drill in your gums and files removing the interior of your teeth.

The pain, stiffness and gore left behind by Dr. Wonderfuldentist's instruments made my voice sound pretty silly today - I had a lisp like a four-year-old girl. The children told me I sounded like Mickey Mouse about four sentences in to my reading from "Socks." And this was the nice class. I'm so glad I don't have to see the sassy class this week due to - surprise surprise - district-mandated testing.

The Complaint Department

Lately I've been grouchy. I have terrible allergies, my stress level at school is higher than ever, and yesterday I even had to have a root canal.

Various corporations and organizations have done little to help my mood. My phone bill has been completely wrong for the last three months. My bank was overcharging me for bill pay. I found out that one of my favorite restaurants has been lying to me for years - there is chicken stock in their Minestrone!

So, I started writing. I figured the only way I could resolve my issues with these businesses was to communicate my problems.

SBC was my first victim. Withholding payment money from them had done nothing more than earn me a late fee, therefore I finally broke down and spent more than an hour one afternoon on the phone, settling my problems with the bill. [Overcharged $90! When you only have a small amount of money to live on per month, $90 is a lot.] I figured this was the end of my troubles with SBC until I got my next bill. It, too, was very, very wrong.

This time I couldn't stand the thought of wasting 60 more of my precious minutes on a conversation with an automated system. [Well...10 minutes automated system, 49 minutes on hold, and 33 seconds actually speaking to a human.] I visited the SBC website and sent them a nasty letter.

Four days later, I received an email with the corrected bill amount included in the apology.

My next target was a local Italian chain restaurant. I've been eating at this place for a long time, and have always had the Minestrone soup. I've asked many times to make sure the soup is truly vegetarian [no beef, chicken or other animal stock] and have always been told the soup is safe for me to eat.

Last week, the waitress serving me mentioned that the soup contained chicken stock. I couldn't believe it! I was so angry that I went home and emailed the company headquarters. I wasn't rude; I just let them know that they need to be honest about the contents of the food they serve.

Not only did the manager call to apologize, he sent me flowers. Uh...no one's ever sent me flowers at work, not even my boyfriend or mom. I feel bad now about getting angry at the restaurant. Had I not written the letter, I'd still be annoyed with the place, and would tell lots of my friends not to eat there. I might even cost the company some business besides my own. Now, though, all because of a simple phone call and maybe $40 on a vase of flowers, I'll go to the restaurant and will tell other people that it's a nice place, too.

Not all of the recipients of my letters felt inclined to try and earn my business back. I'll be switching to Green Mountain Energy as soon as possible due to my annoyance with TXU.

I'll admit that this one's petty. But when you think about it this way it makes sense: if 100,000 people pay their TXU bills online next month, the company will receive an extra $225,000 for doing nothing. SBC, T-Mobile and every other company I deal with allows customers to pay online without any fee. TXU charges an outrageous $2.25 per transaction. When you add that with the $6.95 Wells Fargo was charging me for Online Bill Pay each month, it makes the small price of stamps seem ok. [Wells Fargo's gotten a letter from me too, cancelling Bill Pay. Chase bank not only gave me a free checking account with free bill pay - they gave me $100 just for opening the account!]

Now I've just gone crazy with it. The Albertsons by my house is disgustingly filthy all the time, and is too crowded with too few cashiers. I can't shop there because it's so awful. Albertsons got their letter this afternoon, as did the lovely Kroger down the street, though their letter was complimentary rather than filled with complaints.

I don't know anyone else who does this - who cares enough about getting good service that they complain or compliment via mail or email. Listen. I sent my dentist a thank you note because he worked me in one busy afternoon and got me out in time to make an afternoon meeting outside of town. Is the problem that I have too much time on my hands, or do I just truly love talking [even by way of writing] that much?

Perhaps I'm old fashioned. Maybe it's because I spent so many years working in stores, shops, dry cleaners and restaurants. I know how easy it is to please customers. Be polite. Thank them for their business. Be honest when you make a mistake, and do what you can to remedy it. That's really all it takes to satisfy most people.

Next on my hit list is Comcast. Tomorrow is round three of sitting here for hours waiting for the slow tech repair guy to show up and do nothing. My cable's been garbage for two weeks. I'm not paying my bill for this month. They can forget about that. They've wasted so much of my time!

But then again, how much of my own time do I waste? Ah...it doesn't matter. Never forget the power of the pen [Or the keyboard, as the case may be].

The Joy of Sex Ed

On Saturday, while the rest of DISD's thousands of teachers were happily resting in bed, out enjoying the sunshine or doing chores, I, along with about 40 other people, was sitting in a comfortable chair, enjoying delicious, FREE coffee out of a real cup, and eating a tasty slice of banana bread. They were, they said, trying to make the idea of being at DISD training on a Saturday morning not seem so bad in comparison to what we could have been doing.

And would you believe it - they were actually successful!

I kept looking around to make sure I was in the right place. My experience at past training sessions was that if you wanted coffee, you'd better stop at Starbucks or be prepared to pay $0.50 for a Styrofoam cup of lukewarm motor oil and some powdered creamer. Heck, even at my school if we want coffee, we have to pay, or at least bring coffee supplies. Not at Sex Ed training, though. There, both the coffee and fresh cream containers were of a shiny silver, and always full. That was really enough to make me happy for the whole day - free coffee and pastries that were not donuts served on real plates with real forks. It was hilarious how many teachers made comments like, "Wow! Real forks! For us? Wow!" You'd think we'd never seen forks or decent food before.

But that was just breakfast! Just the start! At lunch, which was in a room separate from the training area and provided for us, again, free of charge, we were amazed again. Everything was so fancy, from the white tablecloths to the amazing chocolate cake we had for dessert. They even made a special meal for vegetarians like me. Well, I was the only vegetarian, yet they still made accommodations for me. I felt so special. We all felt special. And relaxed, and comfortable, which, of course, let to us feeling prepared and ready to do what we were there to do - learn.

Boy, did some people in that room learn. Human sexuality isn't a topic without controversy, obviously, and a few of the topics we discussed definitely raised some eyebrows. This first segment was only background information for adults, not students, so it got pretty graphic. The idea of that alone - giving us background information, making us more educated adults before sending us out to share knowledge with children - that was brilliant. Of course, many of the things we learned were not intended for us to share with the kids, but being totally informed on STD's, AIDS and alternative lifestyles will do nothing but make us better at our jobs as newly-minted campus sex ed teachers.

It's weird to say this, but I'm actually looking forward to the next meeting of this three-part training course. Dealing with focused, organized, and highly intelligent trainers and guest speakers was so incredibly refreshing. It was so different from the usual - cramming ourselves into kid-sized desks, no refreshments other than the occasional pile of candies in the center of the table and leaving feeling you've gained nothing more than another packet of handouts to file away - that many of us felt like we weren't DISD employees that day. I mentioned this to the director of the program, and she said, "Good, that's how we wanted you to feel - like true professionals." Mission accomplished.

I may have left with nothing to carry out but two Planned Parenthood pamphlets and a full tummy, but my brain left filled with many new ideas and more knowledge than I expected. I also gained hope - hope that DISD can be good and successful. The district's department of Human Growth, Development and Sexuality is proof that even in the zoo that is DISD, when the right people are in charge, things work.

Oh, and the icing on the cake? We actually got paid for this! This is my third year with DISD and the first time I've attended training where teachers receive a stipend.

Now, when I start actually teaching Sex Ed...we'll see how that goes. I'm already dreading the questions they're going to ask...

Sick AGAIN

Maybe it's the building - it's been around since before modern safety codes. Place is full of mold/asbestos. Yuck. Maybe it's the kids. I guess their parents don't really have the money to take them to the doctor when they're sick. They just send them to school. Maybe it's me - a sorry immune system, not enough sleep...

Whatever it is, I can't get a month into school without medical trauma. Fever, sore throat, sneezing...I've got it all. We do the hand sanitizer thing, cover your mouth when you cough thing, wash the hands frequently thing, and nothing works. I still get sick all the time, every year. Right now I'm miserable. I woke up in the middle of last night with firethroat and beatenwithhammer head. I kicked its butt all day and made it through my eight hours, but now I'm paying the price for working through the pain.

I'm so frustrated with so many things/people at my school that I could scream. I do enjoy sixth grade far more than I did the younger grades, but these people come with their own set of problems. Romance drama, hormones, and cursing fill my days. And that's just the coworkers...only joking. Teenagers are insane. I realize this is news to nobody, but I'm only now realizing the truth in the statement. The only previous experience I had with teenagers was being one, and I, of course, was nothing like the stereotypes. [ha...]

The students are the least of my worries, though. They're helpful and respectful enough to truly seem to feel bad when they dissapoint me [read: when I catch a bunch of girls cursing and/or talking filthy] or get caught doing something wrong. They do their work and are as responsible as 11-13 year old people can be expected to be.

My main trouble is the adults I work with. I've been through this before so I'll spare myself going through it all again... Didn't these people have to attend college? You'd think that a bunch of 20-40-somethings would have outgrown high school, but that brand of drama is alive and well amongst my colleagues.

[One might say that I am no better, ranting away on my little website instead of confronting people I have trouble with, and I accept that. However, I separate myself from work-related drama, keep to myself and stay out of the gossip circles. Therefore I feel I am exempt from any and all high school comparisons, unless, of course, we're talking about the people who look at me and think I'm still in high school. I'm all for that.]

Blah Blah Negativity Blah. Just writing about these things makes me feel worse. On to something happier.

Things I have to Look Forward to in the Coming Weeks:

1. Training this Saturday. No joke - I'm happy about it despite the subject matter: Human Growth and Sexuality. Yep - I get to give the girls at my school The Talk. Perhaps it's due to the fact that I get to feel some degree of pride in knowing that I will share with these girls information that could keep them from having a baby as a teenager, or maybe it's the $375 I get for attending, since the district has a nearly impossible time getting anyone to sign up for the course. Either way, I'm not dreading training for once. Pretty cool.

2. Day at the Estee Lauder Spa at Neiman-Marcus next Saturday. Obviously this was a gift - teachers can't afford fancy spas. I'm going to feel like the most spoiled, pampered princess in Dallas.

3. Two root canals. Again! Probably shouldn't be happy about this, but the ends definitely justify the means, and I can't wait to be free of dental pain.

4. Payday! A week early! God bless the union for fighting for us! Instead of an erratic pay schedule that sometimes left us six weeks without a paycheck, we'll now get paid every month on the 15th. I hear we got a raise too, but I'm not getting my hopes up. 

5. May 2...wait. That's really far off. Oh well. I guess there's Winter Break to look forward to...

One is not the Lonliest Number

My first solo flight [as a passenger, of course, not a pilot] was to London in 1997. I was 20 years old, and visiting a friend who had been an exchange student at my university.

Thanksgiving break was coming up, so I planned my trip for the long weekend. That's the folly of youth, I suppose, choosing a time period of only five days to embark on a trip involving two transatlantic flights.

Everything about the flight was so exciting to me. I could order drinks! Under 21! And it was legal! The airline provided a little goodie bag! With slippers! Free slippers on a plane! It amazed me. Even the flight attendants were spectacular - I had a headache and this lovely employee of British Airways gave me Parecetamol out of her own purse. I was immediately in love, convinced that the British were the kindest people on Earth.

The trip involved loads of [solo] train travel, a long bus ride from Sheffield to London, and, of course, lots of time in the subway. I'd been on vacation before - but never anything like this: it was so amazing to discover the joy of traveling alone.

Most people I know wouldn't consider going out to dinner alone, much less taking an international flight with no one to talk with during the long hours in the air. I see the situation in quite the opposite way. Traveling or dining alone gives me so many opportunities to meet new people. I'll never forget Hugo, the sweet man from Norway who let me in on the drinking under 21 on flights secret by ordering multiple screwdrivers for us both. And I'll always remember Sam, the guy I shared a flight to Atlanta with back in 1999. He and I had so much in common; the three hour flight, well, flew by. I've met corporate women away on business, grandparents going to visit grandkids, and, once, even an entire Swedish soccer team traveling to America.

These days I've got another solo flight in mind. I'm dreaming of going around the world alone. I'd like to start with a train trek up the middle of the USA, head West, and the fly to India from California. A stop in Russia and a little time in both Eastern and Western Europe would round the trip out. It's a huge goal - personally and financially. The world's so messed up anymore, though, that I want to see all these places and experience the people and cultures this planet has to offer before it's all gone. That's pessimistic thinking - I take it back. I have faith in the good of humanity; kind people will prevail, eventually.

Of course, I think it might help if we, say, got a new president in a couple of months...

Ahem. My advice to you is this: if you have never done anything by yourself, try it. Go to a nice restaurant alone. Order what you like - you don't have to worry about paying for someone else or worry that the person paying for you is worrying about the price of what you order. Then take it a step further. Go on a day trip alone. Visit the flea market two hours outside of town and see how delightful it is to spend as much or as little time as you want at a booth. Jump on a plane to somewhere far away and notice that you feel more relaxed not having to consider another person's hunger, fatigue, or desire to visit some over-promoted tourist trap. And if you're the one who wants to tour every wax museum and old building your vacation spot has to offer, you won't have to endure the impatience and rolling of the eyes of your travel companion.

The greatest part about doing things on your own [aside from the confidence you gain by doing things like mastering a forigen city's subway system] is that it gives you a clear chance to figure out who you are. You get to see what kind of choices and decisions you make when you are the only person they affect. You have an opportunity to experience the things that truly interest you and you alone. Maybe you never go to seafood restaurants because your spouse/partner/kid/whatever hates the smell of fish. On a trip alone, you can have lobster every night. Or perhaps you really don't care for art museums, and your usual travel companion can't go through a city without seeing every gallery it has to offer. Alone, you can spend all your time outdoors or in cooking shops or clothing boutiques or anything you want, really, because you get to set the itenerary - or not, if an itenerary-free trip is what you desire.

I'm not promoting a selfish everyday lifestyle. However, I do feel that just a little time alone every once and a while helps keep me grounded, in the same way that visiting an old friend does. Reconnecting with people feels good, even if the person you're connecting with is the same one you see in the mirror each day.

Year Three, Week Two

At the risk of sounding negative again, I have some complaints about the way this school year has started out. Rather than going into specifics, I'll just list The Five Things I'd Make Sure to Take Care of Before School Starts if I Were a Principal or District Administrator.

The Five Things I'd Make Sure to Take Care of Before School Starts if I Were a Principal or District Administrator

1. I'd make sure that all the textbooks, workbooks and other necessary materials are ready to go on day one. They would be in the teachers' rooms, unpacked and organized at least a week before school begins. This way, the teachers would have time to analyze and plan before the children arrive.

2. I'd make sure that there were teachers for every necessary position in the school. I'd harass central office to make sure everyone was cleared before school starts. Let's take it a step further. I'd change the contract timing to make sure that everyone was hired for the next year before the current year ends. I'd have a full staff, with each teacher knowing exactly what grade and subjects they will be teaching when school begins. It all comes back to preparation time. Going into week two with two positions still vacant due to paper shuffling downtown does not make for happy parents or a successful start of the year for students. Bonding with a substitute and then having to make the transition to a regular teacher who is in total chaos and feeling overwhelmed is not good for the children. Any teacher will tell you that the first few weeks set the tone for the year - you establish routines, boundaries and goals during those important days. Starting one group of children out at a disadvantage to their peers is clearly unfair. Sure, life's not fair, but when it comes to public education, fair and equal is the law, right?

3. I'd have Open House/Meet the Teacher Night planned before school begins. Parents want to know when these things are going to happen some time in advance so they can get off of work, get a babysitter, or whatever else their circumstances require. A note home two days before the event is not sufficient.

4. I'd have the budget finished before school starts. I realize some of this is based on enrollment, but make a conservative budget, and then add or take away from areas as needed once the final numbers are known.

5. Most importantly, I'd make sure the teachers felt comfortable, appreciated, organized and ready for the year. I wish I could do a formal survey about the morale of teachers in this district. Many people I know from several different schools in different areas of the district all have the same complaints - the disorganization and chaos found at our schools is overwhelming. This, paired with the higher expectations and accountability standards [without, of course, any additional resources to achieve these goals] makes for a very fussy bunch when my teacher friends get together.

On the positive side, I absolutely love my class. They're good and respectful, and eager to learn. They like Science, and I think I can get them to like Reading and Language Arts more. My tactic is this: they're teenagers or about to be, and so they're at the point in their lives where they want to identify themselves as individuals and explore things that interest them. It's less about doing what family/teachers want them to do, and more about figuring out who they are and what they like. So, I'm going to try and help them while sneaking in the required elements and concepts. I'm going to let them choose books to read and study, and write about things that interest them rather than give everyone in the class a generic prompt about a time when they felt brave or a research paper about earthworms - that is, of course, unless earthworms are their thing, in which case I'd be happy to help them learn more about them.

Today I had them list ten book titles, authors, or subject areas they'd like to read this year. They don't know it, but I'm going to take their lists over to Half Price Books, and buy each of them a book they're guaranteed to like. I can't wait to see their faces when they come into the room next Monday and see their books tied up with little bows. I also can't wait to see their faces when I tell them, yes, you can write about different types of engines in fast cars, and yes, if you want to write about Hilary Duff that's ok too. My journalism teachers always told us the best policy is to write what you know, so that's what they're going to do.

Eh, if I plan to have any affect tomorrow, I need to go to sleep. I've been getting more sleep this year so far, and taking the time to pick out clothes I'm more comfortable and confident in. Don't say teacher clothes, because they're not, but the stuff I got for school this year definitely isn't anything I'd want to wear anywhere but work. I figure it's fine - businesspeople don't wear their suits to baseball games, doctors don't wear scrubs to the grocery store - there's nothing wrong with having a modified uniform for one's job. Ok, yeah, I'm justifying wearing long, floral dresses in public. Forgive me.

Last thing - highlight of my day - hearing an 11-year-old boy say "I'm a Democrat. I don't like our president at all. My mom hates him too."

Low point of my day - upon telling that kid to tell his mom to make sure and vote, he told me, "My mom doesn't want to vote because she thinks it's stupid."

Year Three

I took the summer off. Should have spent some time writing, but it's funny how the allure of beaches, sand and relaxation will keep one away from the computer.

Today was the first day back at school for the teachers. It's out of character for me to say this, but I feel really good about this year. I like the people I work with in my grade level. It's an easygoing group, but serious about making sure the kids are ready for middle school when we close the doors at the end of this year.

Oh, yeah, I moved up to sixth grade. It's a big change from second grade. I'm very pleased with my decision to move up; I think a large part of my frustration with my job over the last two years has been dealing with little, tiny children on a daily basis. They're adorable and quite charming sometimes, but they are just so needy! I'm ready to work with people who are a little more capable of taking care of themselves. Just the little stuff - tying shoelaces, knowing their birthday - simple things like that really got to me with the second graders.

I'm no fool - I realize that a room full of 11-13 year olds is no place to be. I collected a wardrobe of conservative attire and plan to try to make myself look older. My position is a dream - I'm only teaching Science. I absolutely love Science and can't wait to share how interesting it is with my students. I know some will think it's boring, but I'm going to change their minds. I have so many ideas - so many MORE ideas than I've ever had before - about projects and thematic units I want to plan. Science offers so many opportunities for fun. We've got a garden at school that is quite neglected; it will be fun to have the kids grow vegetables and flowers out there. We'll go to the IMAX and we'll have pets, maybe some fish or turtles. No hamsters, though - warm-blooded animals are too much trouble.

I'm actually looking forward to going to work tomorrow. This is so weird.

33

Thirty-three days. That's all that remains of this school year. Take out at least four or five days for tests, another field trip, field day, and the last day of school, and that leaves only about 25 more days. It's sort of hard to believe.

My brain's so wiped out with the overwhelming stress of my job, not to mention my personal life...what's that? I remember as a child thinking it was so weird to see a teacher at the grocery store or out at a restaurant - those people weren't supposed to have lives outside of school! Many don't, and now I understand why. There's just too much to do. I could stay at work until 7:00 every night for a month and still not get it all done.

I just hate how uncertain everything feels. I have no idea what grade I'll be teaching next year, no idea what classroom, no clue who I'll be working with or working for - our principal retired. So much flexibility is required of everyone working in a school. That's fine, but sometimes I wonder if a little stability would do the system some good. Keep someone in the same grade for a few years. Let them really get to know the age group and the curriculum. I know if I get put in an upper grade next year, I'll feel like a brand new teacher all over again. Hell, I still feel like a brand new teacher now.

Maybe the flexibility wouldn't bother me so much if it wasn't combined with such mass disorganization. So many discrepancies between the curriculum, tests, scope and sequence and expanded curriculum exist. Meetings and training sessions are often delayed or canceled due to poor planning.

A couple of weeks ago, for example, there was supposed to be a training session about classroom management on my campus from 3:15-4:00. One representative from each grade was all that the principal required, but my grade level decided as a team that we all wanted to go. Arrangements were made, tutoring sessions were canceled, and after school plans were altered. We all showed up, on time, for training that we all felt we needed. We waited. And waited some more. Finally, a woman showed up, but stated that she was there to train support staff only; the teachers' training session was from 4:00-6:00 p.m.

Who knows where the communication chain was broken. None of the teachers had made plans to attend training until that late in the day, so no one was there when (or if, I should say) the facilitator showed up. People have lives outside of their jobs. Our workday is scheduled to end at 3:45. We were already altering our schedule to stay until 4:00. Asking us to stay another two hours was out of the question. I have no problem with staying at work late - I stay until 6 or 7:00 at least a couple of times a week. And had I known the previous week - even the previous day that the training session would be an after-hours sort of thing, that would have been fine. It's just unrealistic to expect that 15 people can alter their schedules at the last minute like that. People have kids of their own to pick up, classes to attend, lives to lead. The worst part is that we all really could have used that training. And it wasn't rescheduled. No one ever told any of us what happened or who screwed up the planning.

Ugh. It's Saturday morning. I'm done thinking about this right now. Besides, I have five classes worth of grades to average this weekend. I'd better get to work.

P.S. Don't tell me that it's my own fault for waiting until the last minute to average grades. The six weeks ended on Friday, and grades have to be entered into the computer by 4:00 on Wednesday. It takes at least a half an hour per class to average the grades, and probably 20 minutes to enter the scores into the (very archaic) grade system. That's 50 minutes times five classes...250 minutes...at least four hours worth of work - probably more. I get 45 minutes per day of work time. And I can pretty much forget about getting anything done during that time - there's always so much else to do. Last week three days of my planning period were spent dealing with one kid from my class's out-of-control behavior problems. I thought the kid I had last year that cursed me and made fun of the other kids was bad - now I've got one that threatens, kicks, and punches kids - sometimes right in front of my face and once last week right in front of the principal. I have to do all this paperwork, call home, write letters to mom, develop and institute a behavior plan, when all the kid really needs is a good spanking. Kids have absolutely no fear anymore. They know there's nothing that you can do to them that will really harm them or make them unhappy in any way aside from telling their parents about their behavior, which, for some kids leads to spankings at home. The students in my class who know that a letter home will lead to a 'whuppin,' as one of my boys calls it, behave very well most of the time. It's the group of kids who know that all their parents will do to them is send them to time out or take away video games for a couple of days that are the problem. No fear, no respect, bad behavior...doesn't it say somewhere in the Bible something about sparing the rod and spoiling the child?

Help for the Teachers

3. 24 March 14:38 United States (dallasisd.org)

Ok, so that bothers me. Every now and then, I look at the stats just to see what brings people to this page. The third person to visit this page on March 24th visited from a Dallas ISD computer. This means one of two things:

1) One of my two friends who knows about this page looked at it at work.

2) Somebody who I wouldn't want reading this site found it.

I've been back through all the entries I've done over the last three years that I've had this site [fourth year now - crazy!] and edited and unpublished and even deleted some entries. When I saw that someone had looked at this site from a district computer, my first instinct was to take the whole thing down.

But, upon further thought [it's several hours later now] I realized that it doesn't really matter, because if anyone did happen to read this site they probably wouldn't take me seriously anyway.

I had some great conversations today at work about just exactly what's wrong with the system, but now I'm a little afraid to spill it all.

On a different note, I must express my new dislike for hardwood floors. I was all for them and loved them until tonight, because I've given away both of my couches, so the room is virtually empty. Every sound is amplified. Hmm...I think I'll go play some records and pay my next-door neighbors back for their blasting alarm that wakes me up every morning...

And one more thing: When I go back and read what I write here, I realize that it sounds like I hate teaching. This is so far from true - I absolutely love teaching, I just don't really care for all the BSthat goes along with it. Important business managers and lawyers and doctors don't do all of their own administrative work, and I don't feel like teachers should have to either! Our time should be spent planning lessons, assessing student progress, and teaching. Nothing more. We shouldn't have to worry about buying supplies, making copies or creating curriculum. The tools provided to us should be the best, and should be aligned with the goals we're given. We should have assistants - one for every two teachers, or at least one for every grade level. These jobs could be filled by college students studying to work in education or research. How valuable it would be for a person planning a career in education to really experience what goes on in the classroom - to get a feel for classroom management, to see what it's like to deliver a lesson.

I'm not talking about student teachers in the traditional sense; I'm talking about college kids interning in the schools as an assistant to the teachers. Student journalists work for free - I remember when I was in journalism school nearly all of my friends worked at local publications for little or no money - they just needed to get experience. I worked for MTV Online for a year for free, just to get experience writing for someone other than myself or my professors. The same is true for business students, law students - whatever field you're talking about, there's usually some kind of internship thing that happens at some point in the educational process. Think about the high school kids who volunteer in hospitals because it will look good on their application later when they're applying for pre-med programs. It looks good for a reason!

I really believe that if school districts would tap into the resources that are already present in the community, they could make a huge change in the performance of students and schools. If the teachers' time is freed up to plan and implement lessons, things can only improve.

Last semester, I had a girl from the area high school that came a couple of times a week to tutor my students. One day, she showed up a half hour early, on a day when I was really swamped with things to do, paperwork to complete, and too little time to get it all done. She asked how she could help, and I told her it would really help me out if she could just go laminate this huge stack of posters that I needed to hang in the classroom that afternoon. It was a simple task, laminating the posters, but it would have taken up 20 minutes of my planning period. Anyone who teaches knows that 20 minutes is a long time! You can do so much with just 15 or 20 minutes.

My point is that Lucia was only in my classroom a few hours a week, and her presence made a huge difference. Imagine if I had someone to help me full or part time every day! If I added up all the time I've spent laminating, copying, checking homework, cleaning up the classroom, finding supplies, sharpening pencils...If I added up all this time, it would probably be so much that I could still have these kids where they need to be in their studies, and actually have time for some enrichment and one-on-one activities with higher-level kids - not just the students who really need the one-on-one instruction.

And that's another thing. If a second adult or young adult was in the room, it would help so much with small-group instruction. For example, while I'm leading the class in the whole-group lesson, the assistant is correcting homework or filing papers. When I finish and the class breaks up into groups - let's say four - the assistant comes over to help. One group works on the computers, [that's one thing I will say for this district - at my school we have excellent technology resources and a wonderful tech teacher who actually teaches the kids to type and to use the computer] one group works with the teacher's assistant, and the other two groups work with me. The opportunities I have had to work in this sort of situation [when, for example, one group of kids are away from the room testing or getting hearing checked] have been wonderful and the lessons have gone very smoothly.

The thing that irritates me the most is that bilingual teachers not only get $3,000 more in pay, they also get a teacher's assistant. We ESL teachers probably need an assistant more than the bilingual teachers do, since we have to spend more time on concepts because we can't just translate a confusing word for them. Honestly, I don't know enough about the bilingual ed program to make a statement like that. I just know what I know, and that is that I do not speak Spanish fluently and there have been many occasions when I really could have used some help because I needed to spend some time one-on-one with a student who was a new immigrant and needed some extra help due to language issues.

It's not just language issues either. I have a few students who can't write the thoughts they have in their heads. I won't go into details, but it's not their fault. The only way, sometimes, to get a writing assignment done with these students is for them to tell me what they want to say, which I write out exactly in their words without corrections, and then they copy it in their writing. I basically act as a machine, or a link in a chain, for these kids. Something like those computers that type what you say into the microphone. These kids get so excited and feel so proud when their thoughts and their handwriting come together. It helps them learn so much in the areas of sentence structure, vocabulary development, sequencing...all things that they have to know for the most important subject in school: reading.

The problem is, this activity takes a lot of time. On average, for a one-paragraph assignment, it takes about 10 or 15 minutes - for one child. I have three who need this much one-on-one attention to complete a writing assignment. That's at least 30 minutes right there - and we only have 30 minutes of working time during writing! That means if I work with these three kids each day, I'm only reaching three of 20 students with one-on-one help. All of the students need one-on-one help. Some only need 30 seconds of my time to explain contractions once more or to remind them how to punctuate dialogue, some need a few minutes, some maybe five or seven to help edit a paragraph. But, if I'm tied down to those three kids every day, I'm never able to help any of the rest of the class. Sure, I can have other students in the class help those kids, but they have their own work to do!

If I had a high school or college student assisting me in the classroom, working with just those three students each day, I could make the rounds to every other student in the class every single day. I could monitor everyone's writing progress and make suggestions to each child every single day. That sounds a lot more desirable than working with three then staying at school an extra hour to check the writing journals of the other 17 and write comments in the margins. And I don't know - maybe I'm crazy - but it seems to me that an active conversation between the student and the teacher about their writing is a lot more effective than some red ink scribbled on the side of the page. I know that when I was in journalism school it helped me so much more when a professor actually talked to me about problems with my writing rather than drawing arrows from one thing to another in the middle of a paragraph.

So, my grand scheme to fix education is to use high school and college students as slave labor in public schools. Joking! Create an internship and mentoring program similar to those in other professional fields, and employ qualified high school and college students who wish to work in education in the future. The cost will be minimal because the interns don't need to be paid. They're getting paid in experience, just like I did for MTV. They will be better teachers when they begin their career because they won't be jumping in with no knowledge of how a school runs.

This makes so much sense to me that it seems insane that it's not already happening. Maybe it is somewhere.

10 Hours/10 Weeks

Ten hours of spring break left.

Ten weeks of school left.

It's sort of time to start counting down. I mean, after this week, we're in the single digits. And the last week is only a half-week. Also, before school's out, we've got a couple more field trips, a ton of tests (duh) and assemblies. It's just taking all the strength in my body not to get upset, nervous or just sad about going back to school tomorrow. My strategy is to not think at all about the school day, and to just think about 3:00 p.m.

I just can't explain how much I enjoyed not being at work. It's really sad. I hardly missed any of the children, certainly didn't miss working... I'm beginning to think that perhaps I am not cut out for this profession, but I feel so stuck. I don't know what else I could do now, especially since I'm so used to having so much time off.

I've thought about switching to a higher grade level. My friend is teaching sixth grade now, and says it is much more enjoyable than second or third grade. I think I'm just tired of playing maid, mommy, nurse and teacher. With older kids, we could have actual conversations and they definitely won't want me to baby them, wheras my students now almost require it.

Ten more weeks...I can get through that. I think.

Recess

A few days ago I mentioned something to my class about recess. By "mentioned" I guess I mean that I basically said, "ha-ha, when I was a kid we got 30 minutes of recess every single day."

Honestly and seriously some of the kids in my class did not even know what the word 'recess' means.

Recess, is, of course, outlawed at my school. In fact, in the first few days I was teaching last year, I believe the Assistant Principal's exact words were, upon finding me outside playing with the kids for the last 10 minutes of the day, "Miss ---! Recess is not allowed at this school! You are wasting valuable instruction time!"

Ok, so we could have been inside drilling our multiplication tables, but my question is this: when are these children going to learn the types of things you can't learn in a classroom? Social skills. Conflict resolution. Physical activity for the sheer joy and fun of it. [Gee, I wonder why there are so many obese - and I mean obese - kids at my school? I won't even go into the sad state of Physical Education at my campus...]

The biggest problem, in my eyes, is that the students never have an opportunity to blow off steam. They sit in a classroom all day. When they go to P.E., some days there are so many students crowded in the gym that they can't play or exercise. On the days when they go to the computer lab or library, they don't go to P.E. So they sit all day, sit in front of the television or XBox when they get home, and they don't get recess.

I should add that my school administration does believe that the five minutes the kids get to run around on the playground after lunch counts as recess. They already only get 30 minutes for lunch, five of which are wasted on lining up and such; another ten minutes are wasted getting through the lunch line, since we've installed these fancy computer checkout systems that have slowed things down considerably.

So, they literally get about eight minutes to eat and then run outside and try to play for five measly minutes. [And, of course, on cold or rainy days, they are placed in the auditorium - imagine the frustration they feel after being told they don't get to burn off any of that kid energy, instead they have to sit in a hard wooden chair and be quiet.]

During this time, there are many fights. One person is generally all that is outside to supervise five to seven classes. I teach second grade - seven-year-olds - and even they get into violent arguments. On Wednesday of this week, I was greeted after lunch by two of my finest students - academically gifted, kind, polite boys - on either side of the assistant principal, both sweaty and angry, one with a torn shirt and a scratch, the other with red hands.

I realize that kids will fight, but we're talking anger here. Rage. True contempt for other people.

Yesterday my grade level got special permission to spend the last half hour of the day outside playing, and we witnessed things that were highly disturbing.

Each of the five teachers broke up at least one fight. Imagine a little kid pinned to the ground by two older kids, while one of them punches and the other one kicks in the head/face. Imagine one big boy pinned and crying to the ground, too weak to fight back because he's so overweight, getting pounded in the face by an older boy. Imagine hearing kids use profanity so explicit even I won't repeat it.

If we saw adults behaving this way, we'd call it crime. When criminals are asked why they do violent things, they often answer that they lost control of themselves. I think that's what's happening here with these children. They have no opportunity to release the stress that's built up inside their bodies. And these kids have a lot more stress than most of today's adults ever did as children.

Ninety-nine percent of the students in my school, and I'd venture to say more than 70 percent of the district, are extremely poor. I know when my mom and I went through tough times when I was small, her stress definitely trickled down to me. I was just one kid. Many of my students are members of very large families - some have six, seven, even eight [!] siblings/cousins at home.

And one parent working. And very little food on the table. And no money for entertainment or fun. And a two-bedroom apartment in an unsafe part of town. No privacy. Ever. No solitude and quiet. Ever. At school, the teacher's beating test! test! test! into their heads. At home, it's "help with the baby, clean the dishes, help, help, help." Add to that the fact that a lot of these kids came to this country with only part of their family, so they're missing and pining for the daddy that's left behind in Honduras, the big sister who stayed in Mexico with her boyfriend, the Guatemalan grandma they'll never see again because nobody in their family can afford the papers they need to travel between the two places (these are all actual scenarios some of my students are going through).

And because of the test! test! test! these kids get more homework than I ever got in high school, starting in Pre-Kindergarten. Homework in preschool. It's insane to me. We load them down with stress and work, feed them garbage [Seriously. You should see the stuff that they have to eat in the cafeteria. Makes me want to kiss my mother's hands for never sending me to school without a lunch when I was growing up.] and send them home to another world of stress and work.

I truly believe if we'd feed the kids actual healthy, tasty meals and allow them half an hour a day to move their little bodies freely, we'd see a lot of improvement - if not in test scores, at least in the quality of these people's lives.

And besides, I must say, my life was so much easier yesterday. Discipline problems? None. That threat of having playtime taken away kept everyone on their best behavior. With no privileges to take away and no threat of punishment in school, I don't have to wonder why kids act up. Why wouldn't they?

Off the Wagon

Right, so it seems I haven't had a thing to say since sometime last year. The truth is I've had plenty to say, most of it, of course, about the state of American public education - something I decided a while back not to discuss anymore.

But it's started getting to me again. It's less of an "I hate my job! I'm so stressed out!" sort of thing, more of an anger about how the whole system is set up, and how it's just so wrong. Wrong for the people who work in the schools, wrong for the people who teach, wrong for, most importantly, the students.

Lately the buzz is that superintendent Dr. M wants 25 percent of our teacher evaluations to be based on student performance...which sounds good until you get to the rest of it: on standardized tests.

There are some grades [including the one I currently teach] that do not have to administer the big, nasty, evil TAKS test. The tests that grades PK-2 administer include the Texas Primary Reading Inventory [TPRI] and Dallas ISD-created Benchmark tests.

The TPRI is extremely time consuming - the test is administered one child at a time, and can take anywhere from 15 minutes for a very good reader, to an hour if the student is really struggling and reads below grade level. During the time that these tests are given, the rest of the students in the class are basically left unattended, since, at least at my school, there are not enough teacher's aides to go around. Besides, unless you're a bilingual teacher, you'd better forget about asking for the help of an aide.

So, there are 18 kids in the classroom doing busywork, one kid and the teacher in the hall doing a test. Now, I'll admit that the TPRI does seem to be a good measure for tracking student reading progress, but I must add that there is a lot of room for errors in this thing, and I wouldn't doubt that some teachers might fudge their findings a little to cut down on testing time and paperwork.

The District benchmark tests, too, leave a lot of room for, let's say...freedom in scoring. I have to begin by stating just how asinine these tests are. Fellow teachers and I have speculated on what variety of monkeys created the tests, or perhaps, we concluded, they were created by someone in a district Microsoft Word training program. The Social Studies test alone was so filled with clip art that it led me to, somewhat jokingly, sadly, somewhat seriously, note on a data analysis of the test that I would need to incorporate more clip art into my lessons to ensure higher passing rates on the next round of Social Studies benchmarks.

The math test included things that we were instructed by our Scope and Sequence [a sort of blueprint of what we're supposed to teach and when - Jim Schutze wrote an excellent article about the contradictions and flat-out errors in these documents for the Dallas Observer back in November] not to have taught yet; the reading test was far too challenging for, at least, my school's population, as most of them are still struggling to acquire English, their second language. Bottom line: these tests are filled with errors, they're hard for students to read due to poor quality of copies - they don't really mean anything! And now the boss wants this to be one quarter of the measure of my aptitude as an educator?

I know these people. I spend eight hours a day with them, and know some of them better than their own families know them. They tell me things they don't tell their parents, and I see them do things that no test can measure. I see other teachers with their students, too, and it's pretty much the same everywhere. We work and work with them, we teach and reteach, we struggle and we try, and so do the kids. But we all still get to feel like failures when we receive the benchmark scores - few kids score above 80 percent; most kids fail at least one of the tests. I only had two students in my class pass all four tests. Does this mean I'm a bad teacher teaching a class full of idiots? I don't think so, and I don't think that my evaluation should be measured this way.

Why not talk to the students? The parents? I don't know...maybe the teachers themselves? We are required to do a small self-evaluation, but it's not anonymous, so I'm sure many people are not totally honest. Speaking of - these benchmark tests? How might you think they're scored? Do the students enter their answers themselves? No, no. Not in the primary [PK-2] grades. They're too little to fill in circles on a Scantron sheet, so the teachers fill in the answers from what the students have marked in a test booklet. What's to say a teacher, in fear of a negative evaluation, won't just go ahead and fix some of those incorrect answers? No one audits this stuff, and no one would ever know.

My idea to solve some of this mess? Start with a totally anonymous self-evaluation by every teacher in the district. Ask tough questions - things like, "Do you yell at students in your class?" "Do you feel that your school's principal is a good leader?" Ask things that we're afraid to answer when our names are tied to it. Get the real truth about what's going on in classrooms. No silly benchmark test is going to tell you that.