Belize and Guatemala

I went to Belize and Guatemala for spring break. The trip was fun. I liked Guatemala a lot more than Belize, especially now that I'm back.

We saw a ton of Mayan ruins at Tikal in Guatemala. It was so exciting. I have never seen anything that old! Taking a 'chicken bus' was also quite an experience. I met some really interesting people and ended up continuing the travel into Belize with some of them. None of us really had any set plans, so we headed to the town of Hopkins, Belize. It was really awesome. The cab (well, guy with a truck who would drive us) driver took us to this hippie woman's house/commune place on the  beach where we all proceeded to stay for several days. She had an Aussie girl living there - she'd been there for six months or more - told us she got there and just didn't want to leave - who baked fresh bread twice a day. And the food! They prepared fresh vegetarian meals for breakfast and dinner. Amazing. I loved this place and hope I can go back someday.

However, while at the beach in Belize, I got attacked by these awful sand flies. I look and feel like I have the chicken pox again. It's HORRIBLE. It drives me crazy all day long. And I have to go back to work tomorrow. Not quite sure how I'm going to deal with it at work.

Speaking of work, things are cool there - it's cool, right, when two months before school is over, the principal decides to change the schedule and the subjects we teach. I lucked out on this one, though -  I get to teach only History and Geography for the rest of the year. No more teaching to the TAKS Reading test (since the TAKS season is over). This, coupled with the dwindling number of days left in the year, leads me to believe I just might make it.

Nice Things

For all the complaining I do about my job, I rarely talk about the positive things that happen. It's not all bad:

1) Tonight a parent brought me cheese tamales since I'm a vegetarian.

2) This lady told me she wanted me to come and stay with her family at their home in Guanajuato, Mexico. Her son's in my class.

3) On Valentine's day, the principal made all the kids write an essay: "I love my teacher because..." and while I thought none of my students would write about me - they loved their teacher last year and were allowed to choose who they wrote about - all but two of them did - and most of my class from the previous year chose to write about me too. The things some of these kids wrote absolutely made me want to cry!

4) I busted this girl skipping school with older boys (really, these were likely men), and called her mom to tell her where she was and how to find her. On Valentine's day, her mom brought me flowers.

5) Since starting my job, I've been to Costa Rica, Mexico three times, the Bahamas, 14 states and next week I'm going to Guatemala and Belize. I've been able to do all of this because I have so much vacation time.

6) I have no less than 15 families in various Latin American countries who would put me up any time and treat me like a queen (teachers are actually respected there).

7) I'm getting paid to learn Spanish.

8) I've got some students who are so incredible that I know years from now* I'll still talk to them, and they'll be in some great college with a bright future. I'd love to be rich and pay for all of them to go to school.

9) I got to do all the projects I loved doing in school all over again. Having my students sweep the sixth grade science fair felt as good as when I won the science fair in eighth grade.

10) Really, though, my favorite thing has been getting to truly know Mexican culture. I've loved all the 15 parties, birthdays, First Communions - all of it.

*Edit in 2011. This happened. I'm still really close with so many of my students (viva Facebook!) and a bunch of them are in excellent colleges, right at the doorsteps of super bright and shiny futures. I couldn't be more proud of them.

60 Days

Finally, I'm able to talk about my job again. It's been months since I've had an outlet, and honestly my friends are getting sick of hearing about the murders and the overly hormonal teenagers, the cheating, skipping school, lying, stealing, etc. that goes on in a sixth grade classroom.

So many stories I haven't been able to share! School's not like it used to be. I'm not even that old - young enough that my students think I'm young still - and I feel like somebody's grandma going on about the good old days and the way things used to be. The main thing that's missing from school is a good old fashioned spanking. Kids need that fear of physical punishment to keep them from misbehaving. It's gone, and hell - getting suspended is fun - so what recourse is there for bad behavior?

NOTHING. Nothing at all. Parents don't help. Well, a few do, but the majority don't. Administrators try to help, but they're overwhelmed too. And what tools do they have? Alternative School is hard to justify, and requires tons and tons of documentation. It's gotten to where kids act up on purpose because they want out of class, and they know no one is going to "do anything" to them. Whatever.

I'm sick of their behavior and the obscene amounts of paperwork demanded by the district. I'm out. I quit. I finally gave up. Turned in my resignation letter already. I'll make it until the end of the year - 60 more school days - but after that, no more. I already gave notice. Can't wait to close that door on May 26.

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.