October Beatings

I just got spanked by October.  

This was no friendly swat on the rear as October happily waltzed by.  Oh no.  We're talking much more along the lines of "head out to the backyard and pick your own switch 'cause you's gonna get a whuppin'" flip- me-over-its-knee kind of spanking.  For all its pretty leaves, sparkly weather, and spicy pumpkin recipes, October hides a nasty mean streak.

Just ask my tutor.  I have an honors student who is a saint.  She volunteers to come into my classroom after school once a week and help with a group of freshman boys who struggle.

"How's it going?" I asked her this week, after hearing howling laughter from her corner of the room.

"DUDE, he drew a cat that looks like a sausage!" screamed one of my boys.

"Sausage!  Sausage, sausage, sausage!" sang referenced "dude."  "I'm a sausage, and I like cats!"

The third boy threw his hat at the window.  Five feet above his head.  On the other side of the room.

"I'm running out of ideas..." said my tutor calmly, looking at the limited vocabulary on the Spanish I sheet.  The hat fell out of the window sill and dropped two inches in front of her on the floor.

"...and patience."  She looked at me sweetly.

"It's cool," I told her.  "You're working for free.  Why don't you call it a day, and I'll take over the hooligans."

"WE'RE NOT HOOLIGANS!" Dude-boy bellowed, grinning.

"ClickTHWACKowdearGOD!" "Señora, wait...I don't get this.."  "I"m done!"  "Psst, señora, I kind of need to talk to you." "I remembered!"

That was, in chronological order:

1.  Fourth freshman boy launching himself through the door, shoulder-slamming into a desk, bouncing off the wall and into a chair where he was supposed to be finishing an essay.

2.  Sweet and very confused girl attempting to complete an exam I had given her class six weeks ago.

3.  Darling boy who must pass my class to graduate completing the practice problems I had assigned him.

4.  Spectacularly shy boy attempting to get my attention to discuss how he felt he was drowning in my honors section.

5.  Frequently absent girl arriving for her exam make-up 30 minutes after we had agreed to meet.

A stunned silence reigned as even the students realize that they had exceeded the neediness quota for any  3.5 seconds of a teacher's time.

My reactions, in chronological order:

1.  "Good god, man, what do your parents feed you for breakfast?  Caffeine laced with sugar?!  Park your butt.  Double-spaced.  Now."

2.  "Nora, it's the same as the practice sheet I gave you.  Present tense, not past."

3.  "Jack, take a 5 minute breather, then I'll check your answers."

4.  "Ivan, let's talk in the hall.  Meet you out there."

5.  "Jenna. Test. Table. Go."

My sweet tutor made a move for the door.  Can't say that I blame her.

And it's somewhere between booting out my hoodlums, ("You guys ready for the test tomorrow?"  "Yeah."  "Prove it."  "We can explain the difference between 'your mother is a fat sausage' and your mother is the fat sausage.'"  "Ok.  You're good.  Now get the heck out.") reassuring my honors kid that it's ok to struggle, and praying to Allah, Buddha and any number of other deities that my borderline students whip out a passing grade, that I become reflective.  More than a decade in the classroom, I muse, nearly two-thousand students taught, and countless professional lessons learned, so why, after all this time...

have I still not learned to avoid assigning nearly 500 pages of assessments in a span of two weeks?

Oh, right.  Silly curriculum.  Then there's the non-instructional stuff.

"Hey, was wondering if you could pop in and do an observation..."

"Staff meeting time on Friday, cover a workshop?  

"Got any resources on your instructional lead position that you could pass my way?"

"Was hoping you could lend a hand to a colleague.."

"Three presentations in one week too much?"

It's the administrave equivalent of launching oneself through a doorway and shoulder-slamming a desk. While shouting about sausage cats.

"Ah, right..." one admin had the decency to acknowledge which involved a conflict getting me into another classroom due to the fact, oddly enough, that I needed to be in my classroom, "you teach, too."  Though I'm pretty sure that if one could smirk via email, she was.

Ok.  To be fair.  I do bring a bit of it upon myself.

But gosh durn it, when a student actually brings me an apple after ten apple-less years and hands it to me with a goofy grin, I'm done.  And when a colleague sends me a note about my meetings being a bright spot in her week, I'm just a full-blown glutton for punishment.  

But punishment is one thing.  Full on physical abuse is another.  So I've had about enough of you, October, you sneaky first semester February disguised in sexy leaves.  I won't miss you.  November's on his way. He may not have your hot bod and swingin' fall style, but you know what he does have?

Thanksgiving break.

Curriculum Wine

I'm afraid I've got a few whiners out there.

Got a group of teachers from a school we'll call Nemo (you know who you are) fussing about a task that we in the business like to call Curriculum Writing.

For those of you not be familiar with the bureaucratic delights of teaching, Curriculum Writing goes a little something like this:

1.   Sit at computer for hours upon hours.

2.  Enter a play-by-play of what you teach,  removing absolutely every joyful and/or emotive word from description.  (i.e. "Use teenagers' obsession with video games against them, and create the Anatomy and Physiology version of Dance Dance Revolution in which students listen to crappy pop music while simultaneously identifying and touching unpronounceable names of joints, muscles and other body parts in rapid succession thus making them look like spastic monkeys who jump at the word scapula..." becomes "Students will use a variety of visual and kinesthetic leaning activities to master chapter vocabulary.")

3.  Link joyless play-by-play to even more joyless content standards and benchmarks.

Oh, standards and benchmarks.  The tediously obvious quality control of education.

Let me give you one priceless example from my own content area:

STANDARDS FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING

COMMUNICATION- Communicate in Languages Other Than English

Standard 1.1: Students engage in conversations, provide and obtain information, express feelings and emotions, and exchange opinions

Hang on just a...you mean that students in a Foreign Language class are going to have conversations?  And that this is a notable enough occurrence that it must be indicated with its own standard?  (And that "conversation" must be further explained as "providing and obtaining information and exchanging opinions.")

No wonder you've got so many problems, America.  You took common sense right out of the equation.  

Sorry, where were we?

4.  Repeat steps 1-3 for about eight bajillion hours.

5.  Congratulations!  Your curriculum is now complete!  Go have a drink.  Except, since we're all teachers and poor it's going to have to be BYOB.  Which, neatly, brings me to my next point.

BYOC

Build Your Own Curriculum

Some clown named one of the biggest curriculum building sites "Build Your Own Curriculum."  Which, considering the educational affection for acronyms, is inevitably going to be abbreviated as BYOC.  Which means that that clown was either:

a) an evil genius who sat smirking at his desk as teachers slaving away on BYOC wistfully dreamt of Bringing Beer to the occasion or,

b) a dorky tool who completely missed the obvious alcoholic, college party-day reference of his creation.

I prefer to vote for option A.  Mostly because I like to think that other people live in the same snarky world of sass as me, but also because the other curriculum building sites have even crappier names.  "Curriculum Mapper" (way to state the obvious)  "CurriuPLAN" (dorks) and "Atlas Curriculum Mapping" (Atlas? Maps?  Really bad pun?)

Regardless, Nemo.  Quit your whining.  As painful as it is, stop for a moment and think about what it would be like to teach without a curriculum.

No, really.  Nip that maliciously delighted little giggle in the bud and think about it for a second.  Without curriculum, you'd be "that teacher."

You know who I'm talking about.  You've worked with That Teacher.

It's that colleague who, when everyone else is teaching the past tense,  randomly makes students memorize lyrics to Spanish ballads.  That teacher who, when everyone else is covering causes of the civil war, does a critical analysis of Scarlett O'hara's wardrobe.  That teacher who, rather than teach anything even vaguely related to physics chooses to reenact The West Side Story with dancing hamsters*.

*True story.  Don't ask.

In short, it's that teacher who makes you mildly homicidal because when you inherit his/her students the following year, you have to spend your time filling in knowledge gaps about vectors and the theory of relativity, as well as teach your own content.  All while thirty children serenade you with "I Feel Pretty."

You don't want to be That Teacher, Nemo.  You're too good for that.

So as painful as it is, admit it.  You need curriculum.

Writing it is going to suck, though.  No way around that.  So I thought I would lighten your load a little. By giving you more work.  A whole new set of standards and benchmarks to work with.  Thank you for the inspiration, Nemo.  Consider yourself responsible for...

THE NATIONAL STANDARDS FOR SINGING PIG* EDUCATION

*Singing Pig is hereby defined as any educator who cares to voice his/her opinion on this blog, in comments on this blog, or on pages related to this blog.  We simply remind you that you do so at your own risk.

1.  COMMUNICATION

Singing Pigs will communicate freely and openly about education and educational issues

Standard 1.1:  Singing Pigs will randomly denote any topic of their choice as "education-related" and tackle it (in)appropriately and enthusiastically.

Standard 1.2:  Singing Pigs will metaphorically (or literally, as the individual Pig sees fit) moon any person or party who suggests that teachers should not possess or express controversial opinions related to education.

Standard 1.3: Singing Pigs will incorporate sass into all communication where it is deemed appropriate and/or too good an opportunity to pass up.

Standard 1.4  Singing Pigs will embrace the delicate balance of using inappropriate innuendos as frequently as possible.  In every conversation.  Education-related or not.  (Refer to Standard 1.1)

2.  TRASPARENCY:

Singing Pigs will employ honesty around the education profession.

Standard 2.1:  Singing Pigs will be open and frank about and entirely entertained by anything and everything that teachers aren't supposed to talk about.

Standard 2.2:  Singing Pigs will not sugar coat any realities of the American public education system.

Standard 2.3:  Singing Pigs will demand that individuals with whom they engage in conversation do not sugar coat the realities of the American public education system.  

Standard 2.4  Singing Pigs shall encourage said honesty by obnoxiously thumbing their noses at any would-be sugar-coater while shouting that said individual's mother was a hamster and his/her father smelled of elderberry.

3.  FUN:

Singing Pigs will love what they do and have fun doing it.

Standard 3.1: Singing Pigs will acknowledge that they will never be paid what they are worth.

Standard 3.2:  Singing Pigs will replace lacking financial benefits with the health benefits of laughing until they pee themselves at the shit kids pull. 

Standard 3.3:  Singing Pigs will happily and shamelessly poke fun at all the education crap that deserves to have its fun poked.*

*A true Singing Pig also just snickered at the word "poked."

Standard 3.4:  When Singing Pigs no longer feel passionate about education, they will get the hell  out.  A good Pig knows when to call it a career.

4.  SUPPORT:

Singing Pigs will maintain life balance and serve as a support network for fellow Pigs.

Standard 4.1: Singing Pigs will indulge in frequent and therapeutic happy hours containing some or all of the following coping techniques: oversharing, overdrinking, and/or getting kicked out of public establishments for riotous overlaughing.

Standard 4.2: Singing Pig posses will forcibly remove from school premises teachers who voluntarily spend more than ten consecutive hours on campus.  Singing Pigs will then forcibly submit said teachers to previous standard.

Standard 4.3:  Singing Pigs will take a minimum of one mental health day per semester without feeling the smallest shred of guilt.  You teach in public education, for crying out loud.  You outdid Mother Teresa in good deeds after the fifth bloody nose, third hallway fight and seven hundredth impromptu hallway counseling session - in one day.

So I'm sorry, school Nemo.  You may have thought you were nearly finished with your BYOC, but I'm going to need you to go back and check your standards.  That lesson on medieval England?  Have you included SP Standard 3.2 - laugh until you pee yourself?  Or does your unit plan on fractions specify a date for Sstandard 4.1 - drunken oversharing?

Although, if that seems like too much work, Nemo, there is a shorter way to a successful Singing Pigs curriculum. 

Just change the main verb of each sentence to "fart."  

"Students will use a variety of visual and kinesthetic leaning activities to fart chapter vocabulary."

Bathroom humor.  Works like a charm every time.  Go ahead.  Try it.  What was the last sentence you wrote?  Feel free to leave it in a comment below for the rest of us to enjoy.

But if all else fails, Nemo, there's only one solution.

You're just going to have to Bring Your Own Chardonnay.

Cheers.