Email of the Week: Light Bulbs

Please note:  All emails of the week are real, though identifying details have been changed.  They are not, however, current.  Nor are they all mine.  But they are, indeed, funny as hell.

Dear Teacher,

I appreciate the quick response. It has been a tough year for Dwight but

I have seen him turn the corner. The light bulb, though not bright,

is not as dim as it once was. 

Sincerely,

Parent

MacGyvering the Classroom

I hollered at two kids yesterday for using my tape.

I only have 1.5 roles of Scotch tape to last me through the foreseeable future.  And I am guarding those sonsabitches like nobody's business.

Why, you ask, in a world where most cutting and pasting is done in Microsoft Word, am I so hyper possessive of my tape?

Dictionaries, for one. I'm constantly taping them back together.   I have no idea how teenagers manage to make a simple Spanish to English Dictionary look more well-worn than a trashy mag in a sketchy men's restroom, but manage it they do, with under-the-radar dictionary destroying abilities, even when I'm at my most vigilant.  (By coincidence, of course, the binding is usually split open to the page where the word shit handily announces that you are now in the sh- section of the alphabet.)

Shit dictionaries aside (ha! pun!) it's the damn tape that stresses me out.  What the hell am I going to use to stick my books (not to mention the various homework assignments, tests, and the occasional flip-flop)  back together once my 1.5 rolls are gone?

Buy more?  What?  What is this crazy excess of which you speak?

Forget MacGyver. Any clown can make a walkie-talkie out of toothpaste and a hairnet.  I've gotta teach 120 students on fifty cents per student per year.  Give MacGyver 120 teenagers,  sixty bucks and 180 days and I guarantee something will blow up.  Probably good ol' Angus' head once he realizes that his teenagers have already destroyed sixty dollars worth of pencils in the first five minutes.  (Bet you didn't know that MacGyver's first name was Angus.  Yeah, neither did I.  Google!)

Gather 'round kiddos.  Time for a little math and the joys of inter-curricular learning.
Eight full time world language teachers + load of ~ 125 students per teacher (not including study halls or related responsibilities) = 1,000 students/ a department budget of $500 = 50 cents per student.
Voilá!

And ours is not the biggest department in the school.  The doozies - the history department, English department - they teach way more kids than us.  And guess how much they get this year?  $500!  Wheee! So they're really looking at more like 30 cents a kid, with which they will buy:

whiteboard markers
erasers
pencils
pens
staples
tape
paper clips
file folders
hanging folders
three ring binders
glue
scissors

Oh...forget it.  Just go open your desk drawer, take note of everything in there and then multiply it by one high school.  Checked out the price of a roll of Scotch tape lately?  Nearly two bucks.  There go four students' entire annual budgets.

But I'm a lucky gal.  I work at a school that would rather cut the budgets for absolutely everything else but leave my job and my salary intact.  So I'll pay it forward.  I may not be as '80s fab-tastic as McGyver, but I can pull some impressive feats.  I will not cheat my students just because the system has.

"Alright, punks," I tell them.  "You want to make masks for Day of the Dead?  Fair enough.  But part of my job as a teacher isn't just teaching you Spanish...it's teaching you how to think.  So, make the most culturally accurate mask you can, but each one of you is limited to one piece of paper, five staples and three colors.  GO!"  Suddenly,  they're competitive.  And clever, bragging to me when they underuse their limits.  And thinking harder than they would be if I had supplies coming out my wazoo.

Yes, I could teach better if I had a few more resources.  But I try not to teach worse, just because I don't.  And even though I've just completely contradicted myself, I get to do that because I'm a teacher.

I'm not contradicting myself.  I'm making you think.

Which brings me to the hidden perks of teaching.  Shit I Can Get Away With Because I'm a Teacher and You're Not.

But that's for another blog post.  For now, I'm off to grade ninety compositions with nothing but a butter knife and some tweezers.

And in case you're wondering...all those MacGyver references?  Don't use them in your classes.

They just make you look old.

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.

PTCF

Parent Teacher ConFerences

Please Take Children Far

Possibly Time to Create Fear

Pretty Tough Children Freak

No, wait...I've got it...

Parent Teacher Cluster F--k

Here's the thing about conferences:

I don't really mind them.  

Ha.  Bet that's not what you thought I was going to say.  Bet you thought I was going to launch straight into a rant about long days, overworked teachers, and rude parents.

Nah.

I'll save the rant for later.

It's just that I'm slightly old-fashioned.  As great as I think technology is, and as insanely happy as it makes me to be able to shoot home a quick email about student progress rather than having to call and get sucked into a fifteen minute conversation about little Suzie's inability to complete her classwork due to incessant flirting with her classmates, I like face-to-face communication.  I can read a lying teenager easier than Dick and Jane Go To School and I can pick out the slightest undercurrent of defiance in the smallest of gestures.  With my back turned.

So one would think it would be handy to meet the parents of the children I teach, useful to get a vibe for the people who produced the offspring I spend my days with. I might discover if the snooty kids have snooty parents, and the sweet kids have sweet ones, or if biology just decided to play Russian roulette with the parental DNA. It should provide a whole new understanding of my demographic.

But most of the time, it's just a clusterf--k.

Everywhere I have taught, PTCFs have been organized in one way:  three to four hours of teacher meetings after a full day of teaching school.

So a quick question for you parents of teenagers:  when was the last time you spent seven hours straight with your child(ren)?  And I don't mean seven hours sleeping, or you making dinner in the kitchen while they madly text away on their phone.  I mean seven.straight.hours. Of teenage face-to-face, quality-time interaction.

Exhausting to think about, isn't it?

Now up the ante.  When was the last time you hosted a teenage event?  Five to ten teenagers in your house, having fun, wreaking havoc, leaving a trail of adolscent mayhem in their wake...
Yup.  So now do that for seven hours, non-stop, with 120-150 (maybe even 170 or more, depending on your school) teenagers who aren't even your offsping and who, in the perfect world, you will also somehow make smarter before they leave your room.

I'm supposed to be coherent after this?  Not just coherent, but pleasant, informative, helpful and charming?

Good luck with that.

"Hi, I'm Kaitlyn's mother..." one woman introduced herself at conferences some years ago.
"Oh, I'm SO glad to see you!"  I gushed.  (At least I had the "pleasant" part of the job description going for me.)  "I don't always see the parents I need to talk to, but I was hoping you would come because Kaitlyn currently has an F in my class."

Her mother stared at me in shock.

"She does?  But she loves your class!  In that case, I'm glad I came, too.  We need to talk!"

Halfway through the delivery of Kaitlyn's poor homework habits, reluctance to participate and failing test scores, I realized with a sinking stomach that I taught two Kaitlyn's that year.

Whoopsie.

"Wait..." I interrupted myself.  "Your daughter is Kaitlyn...who?"

Awkward.  But I still count that as one of my finer PTCF moments.  At least I caught and corrected myself.  What's one of my less finer moments, you wonder?  Why, I'm so glad you asked!   Staring at boobs would be the unequivocal answer.

I once taught a student of whom I have absolutely no memory.  If you asked, I couldn't tell you her name, the level of Spanish she was in, or the tiniest personal detail about her.  But I remember the parent teacher conference.  Her mother had some knockers.  I mean, those suckers were HUGE.  And, so far as I could tell, completely natural.  (And no, I didn't grab them to find out...though the thought crossed my mind.)

"Hi, Teach!" she greeted me kindly.  "How's Abigail (name obviously invented since I don't have a flippin' clue as to who her daughter was) doing?"
"Great!" I answered.  Holy POO those are some boobies!   "Ummm..." Ignore boobies.  Do not stare at boobies.  Weird to stare at parents' boobies.  Especially when you're a straight female. "She's a delight in class.  Pulling a solid grade..." Boobs!  "I'm really glad to have gotten to know her this year."  How does she even hold those things up?  


That was one of my more painful conferences.  But not, I'm sure, any more painful than trying to jog with those melons.  Wrapped up in four different sports bras.

150 kids this year.  Which means I am the proud teacher of around 300 parents who, of course, I share with other teachers, but still...

Let's take a reasonably average American high school.  1,800 students.  Which means around 3,600 parents.  (We'll figure that the single parents average out with the blended family parents.)  Not all attend, so let's shoot for only 30% attendance and assume that only one parent per student shows.  (Both are kind of ridiculous assumptions, but I don't teach math, nor do I have any desire to do so, you weird number-people freaks.)  That still means you have 540 parents, 190 teachers, a handful of students and full administration crammed into your school's cafeteria.  Which, of course, has amazing acoustics (because the government spares no cost in building the public schools which will educate the future government of America) so that when, after a full day of teaching, (which involves multiple repetitions of "Bobby stop that.  Johnny knock it off, Jane are you even listening to what I am saying?") you get to shout things like "WELL, YOUR CHILD HAS A 97% SO I'M NOT REALLY SURE WHAT THE EFF YOU'RE DOING HERE...WHY DON'T YOU JUST TAKE THE KID OUT TO EAT AS A CELEBRATION INSTEAD?"

C'mon, peeps,  I've just spent seven hours using my authoritative voice to teach your kids.  Cut me a break and don't make me talk for another three hours if your child has above a 90%.

Nearly two hundred teachers and six hundred parents all talking loudly in a concrete room at one time?  Say it with me now...

Cluster-what?

And then there's that one kid.  That cute little freshman who plops himself down at my table with a happy "Hi, Sra.!"

"Hi, Owen," I reply.  "You holding a place in line for your mom?"

"Oh, no," he says.  "My parents are busy with my sister's conferences, so I decided to do my own."

"Really?"  I say, trying to hide the little sweet catch I always feel at one of my teens talking to me frankly.  "You're visiting all your teachers to check up on your progress?"

"Well, no..." he replies.  "I prioritized.  I went through my grades and decided that I most needed to go to just the classes where I have a borderline grade.  In yours I have a 90% so I'd like you to tell me what I need to do in the upcoming weeks to put myself in a better position."

"In that case, Owen, I'm very glad you stopped by..." and we have a serious talk about challenges and goals.

So, no.  I don't really mind conferences.

But it never hurts to toss a Starbucks card my way as a "Thanks."  That's right.  I'm looking at you, overachieving parent who makes me shout about how your kid can get from a 97 to a 98%.  And for the love of god...

If you have huge balongas, please don't wear thin cotton T's.

See you in the spring.

A Conversation with "That Kid"

I was a total nerd in high school.

Actually, let's back up.

I was always a total nerd.  So much so, that I sucked all the nerd genes out of the pool leaving none for my little brother who unconcernedly shrugged off worries about grades and set his academic sights on the much more entertaining endeavor of being That Kid.

All teachers know who I'm talking about.  That Kid that tries every last shred of your patience.  That Kid that asks a stupid question simply for the sake of asking a stupid question.   That Kid that arrives late every day and seems oblivious to any consequence you can dream up.  That Kid that lies, skips, annoys, irritates, distracts, sleeps...

You get the idea.

We're only beginning the school year, but I bet you're already well on your way to figuring out this year's "That Kid."  Quick - if you had to name a name, who would it be?

See.  Told you teachers know what I'm talking about.

In the interest of trying to figure out why, when I buy letter magnets so that students can practice Spanish in a new and unique way, I find phrases such as

I is big ribbed duck man

Communist sexo

I pee now

and, perhaps most inexplicably,

peanut Fred

on my whiteboard, I decided to interview That Kid.  If I could discover what makes him (or her) tick,  maybe I would be a better teacher.  Or at least I might reduce the number of times I say things like, "Cory.  Kindly remove your crotch from Mark's face," in my classroom.

Figuring there might be legal issues with walking up to my current That Kid and saying "Hey, you're obnoxious.  Can I interview you and then publish it online?" I decided to settle for the safer, less sue-able option of interviewing my brother.

"I have a kid this year that reminds me of you," I tell him frequently.

"You have a kid every year that reminds you of me," he responds, unimpressed.

Yep.  Sure do.  It's That One.

So for what it's worth in improving student/teacher relations, welcome to That Kid's Brain.

* * * * * * *

Me:  Okay, first and foremost, what qualities do you look for in a teacher?

Bro:  Tig ol' bitties.

Me:  I see.  We're jumping out of the gate with boobs.  Nice.  Anything else?

Bro:  A short attention span.  Smart-assery.

Me:  A short attention span?

Bro: Yeah.  So you can totally get them off topic and do nothing.  

Me:  Wonderful. Let's try some scenarios instead.  Your teacher has been lecturing too long.  What do you do?

Bro:  Silently pray for death.

Me:  Yours or theirs?

Bro: Mine.

Me:  Why not the teacher's?

Bro:  I'm not vengeful. 

 But I do also like to wait for a quiet pause in the lecture, then rip a big one.

Me:  Isn't it embarrassing to fart in front of your peers?

Bro: Isn't it embarrassing to be that teacher everybody hates?

Me:  Touché.

Me:  Moving on.  You don't know the answer to a question on an essay test.  What do you do?

Bro:  This is what I did on an actual music test for which I did NO studying.  I answered the entire test in rhyming iambic pentameter.  And I got a D instead of outright failing.

Me:  And what was your teacher's justification for passing you?

Bro:  She said I put a lot of work into it.  I also once answered a calculus proof with a sketch of a math textbook burning in a trashcan.

Bro:  That one I did fail.

Me:  Didn't you also draw family trees of random animals mating with celebrities, then write essays describing their offspring?

Bro:  That was your other brother.

Me:  Oh, right.  Mixing up the family overachievers.

Me:  Next scenario.  Your teacher drank too much coffee and has to pee.  She begs you to behave for 3 minutes so she can run to the bathroom.  She leaves the room and you...

Bro:  ...shout CARPE DIEM and flip my desk over triumphantly.

Me:  Why would you flip your desk over?

Bro:  Why not?

Me:  Actually...that explains a lot of what goes on in my classroom.

Bro:  It's also symbolic of the struggle against an oppressive regime, turning the establishment on its head.  Besides, f--k that desk.

Me:  What did that desk ever do to you?

Bro:  Sat there all hoity-toity with its uppity chair attachment.

Me:  Right...

*Cricket chirp*

Me:  Describe your thought process during any given class.

Bro:  1st period:  So tired.  Wonder if there is any way to sleep without the teacher caring.

2nd period.  Still tired.  Refreshed from first period nap.  Exhausted by boredom.  

3rd period: Hungry.  Wonder what's for lunch?  Better not be Salisbury steak again.  That's yesterday's meat in last week's gravy.  You're not fooling anyone, cafeteria lady.

4th period:  SO hungry.  Must eat now.  Stare at boobs.  Rate girls in class on a scale of 1 -10 in a chauvinistic, misogynistic way.  

5th period:  Late to class because I waited until the bell rang to go to the nurse for my Ritalin.  Score.  Doubly late because I forgot to get a pass from nurse back to class, so waste time returning to nurse for pass, then returning to class.

6th period:  My favorite teacher, so I actually pay attention...for about 25 minutes.  Then I doodle genitals and random lyrics from songs on my work.

7th period:  Dream about every wonderful aspect of the bus ride home; the muggy pungent bus air, the cracked pleather seats leaving imprints on sweaty things.  Mmmmmmm. Freedom.  Go home and furiously masturbate.

Me:  Aw, bro!  Too much information.

Bro:  You asked.

Me:  If that's your general thought process, describe a quality day in a high school class.

Bro:  a good high school class is like real estate:  location, location location.  Not all the way at the back where you'll be perceived as a slacker, not all the way at the front where you're a suck up. Middle-back, and your seat neighbors are crucial.  Get a good seat and good neighbors and any class is acceptable.

Me:  So what you're saying is that the class has a big fat diddly and squat to do with the material or the teacher?

Bro:  Mostly diddly.  Just a little squat.  

Me:  And what did you do when you sat in prime real estate with friends?

Bro: Talked with complete disregard for the teacher.  Or frequently we would write one sentence of a story and pass the paper to each other, each person writing the next line to the story...

Me:  That's actually a very academic undertaking.  I've used that structure in my classes.

Bro:...usually culminating in a profane adventure featuring the teacher in an uncomfortable and/or sexually deviant situation.

Me:  You made it a point to torture your teachers, then?

Bro:  That wasn't torture.  When we wanted to torture them, we intentionally answered questions wrong with sexual double entendres.  Or we answered them right with obscene over-enthusiasm.

Me:  So taking you and your buddies into consideration, what advice would you offer folks going into the teaching career?

Bro:  Don't.   
But if you must, carry a taser.

Me: Or...?

Bro:  Or a very sharp wit.

Job Description - Developing a Cooperative Relationship With Parents and Students

Students, unfortunately, come equipped with parents.


Most parents, to be fair, are alright.  In fact, I go most of the year without hearing from most parents.  Trouble is, I spend the rest of my year hearing from the crazies who have mistaken the Right to a Free Public Education for the Right to Be An Absolute Looney.  


"What is the difference," you ask?  Weeeeelllll......back to the ol' JD (Job Description, for those of you a few blog posts behind...)


1.  Teacher will develop with parents and students a cooperative partnership based on mutual respect and objectivity*.
*  NOTE: for Job Description Purposes, "mutual respect and objectivity" is hereby defined as respect and objectivity on the part of the teacher, and, apparently, only the teacher.


As a teacher (or an employee of the public education sector in any capacity,) one must relationship-build.  Conscious relationships provoke trust and through trust comes cooperation, thus allowing all parties involved to work toward productive plans for the student.  Still, relationship building can be tricky.  Teachers navigate an unpredictable world of race, religion, and political views.  We must encourage  students to think while simultaneously walking the fine line of respecting an infinite number of worldviews and life circumstances.


A reasonably good teacher will find it easy to relationship-build with students.  Walk in classroom, act like idiot, know the material, crack poop jokes, maintain control, give high fives.  You have now earned student respect.  Those little squirts (poop pun totally intended) will do whatever you ask.


Parents, however, are a tad trickier.  And as they come in a number of shapes. sizes, and levels of looney,  the ideal candidate for teaching will rate "highly qualified" in the skill set of Parental Winging It.


2.   Teacher will effectively deal with the clincally Balls to the Wall Crazy.


In reality, this subset of parents could be divided into sub-subsets.  You have your drunken crazies, mentally ill crazies, your wealthy entitled crazies, creepy crazies and your We Don't Know What the Hell is the Matter With You But You Are Crazy as Hell crazies. For JD purposes, however (and in the interest of saving myself material for a future blog post on types of crazies) all severely crazy parents receive the Balls to the Wall designation.


Cooperative Relationship Skill Set #1:  Avoidance


Nobody can change crazy, so in most circumstances the best weapon is simple Avoidance.  The difficulty with Avoidance, however, is that a parent first must be identified as crazy which is easy only at the highest levels of crazy.  At parent-teacher conferences one year, my principal booted a parent before she could even get in the door.  Imagine, if you will, the level of insanity you must exude in order to actually be kicked out before you get in.  Hell, your crazy just defied the laws of physics.


But those crazies are rare.  


Most parents can mask the crazy in order to slip into contact with a teacher, then scare the bejeesus out of everyone involved.


Take the Crazy Bitch crazy (another Ball to the Wall sub-designation.)  In my case, this was the mother who, when I  ran into her in the hall after school seemed quite pleasant, thanking me for giving her daughter make-up work after being ill for a few days.  


"No worries," I told her.  "I just hope Isabel is feeling better."


"Oh, she'll be fine," the mother told me.  "I told her she should be glad to have the stomach flu.  At least she'll loose a few pounds."


The fatty in question wore maybe a size 4.  On a good day.  Which allowed me to easily designate this mother as nutso and begin my avoidance.  Apparently, however, her daughter had the same idea, which complicated things a bit, thus forcing me to rely on the second essential skill of the teacher dealing with Crazies:  


Cooperative Relationship Skill Set #2:  Passing the Buck


The beauty of being a classroom teacher and not an administrator is that at some point, your crazy quota expires.


"Hey, Sra," Isabel greeted me after school one day.  


"Hey Isabel, how's it going?"


"Oh, alright."  she hung around my desk awkwardly.  Then my door banged open.  Isabel's mother barged in with a small boy of maybe four in tow.


"There you are you stupid little...Where the hell have you been?!"


"Um.  I told you I'd be at office hours today.  And it's earlier that you usually pick me up anyway..."  


Mom didn't hear.


" I've been calling you for an hour!  What do you think I have nothing better to do than chase you around all day? What the hell  were you thinking??  You are such a pathetic student! Don't pretend you care about your work becauseyourgradessuckAndyou'reaprettylousydaughtertoo!!"  the tongue lashing reached epic proportions before I could a) avoid the situation or b) indicate to Crazy Bitch that while she was busy ripping her perfectly sweet high school daughter a new one, her hellion of a son had already torn papers off my bulletin boards, knocked my dictionaries off the front table and was now making a move for the markers and a white wall, all the while shouting "mom, mom, mom, mom, MOM!"  


At that moment, the Dean of Students entered having, apparently, heard the ruckus.  He stared.


"Ma'am.  Is there a problem I can help you with?"  I asked in hopes of diffusing the situation, as my skill set of Avoidance was no longer an option.  


"And YOU!"  Crazy Mom turned on me.  "Didn't it occur to YOU that I might be looking for my daughter?  YOU should know..."


In the spirit of mutual respect and objectivity, I interrupted her.  "I generally hold office hours on Tuesdays after school.  It's perfectly normal for students to show up at this time."


"Yeah but not MY student.  If she showed up to actually work she wouldn't have the HORRIBLE GRADES SHE HAS AND YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT IF YOU WERE ANY KIND OF TEACHER!"


Hellion Boy threw a marker across the room.  Isabel cowered.


Years of teaching make one a master of subtlety.  I cocked my eyebrow ever-so-slightly, which my Dean (also a Master Teacher) immediately recognized as the international sign for "Get this Crazy Bitch out of here or I'm going to punch her in the face, then explain to her why she shouldn't be allowed to reproduce." 


"C'mon, Ms. X," he said calmly.  "Let's take this conversation in the hallway."  


Mission accomplished.  I was successfully able to 1)  objectively identify mom as a Looney 2)  treat said Looney with objectively undeserved respect 3)  Maintain future cooperative relations by effectively Passing the Buck before punching mom in face (the key here, truly, is the timing of the buck-passing) and, most importantly, 4) Maintain respectful and cooperative relations with Isabel who, as my student, is really the person I'm meant for in the first place.  


"Hey, Iz!" I told her the next day, "Good to see you!  I'm glad you've been working so hard in this class. I'm really proud of your B.  And you look so nice today.  You're such a pretty person, inside and out!"  


Take that, Crazy Bitch.  


Even if, in the end, you won.  


Because as any good teacher knows, Crazy is contagious.  So when, after being a perfectly normal freshman year, Isabel ended her high school career with an eating disorder, short skirts, stiletto heels and slipping grades I relied entirely upon Cooperative Relationship Skill Set # 3 in order to maintain my own personal sanity.


3.  Teacher will take no student or parent interactions personally realizing that, in some cases,  respect and objectivity will not change the world.


But in a few cases, it might.  


So let's see what you've got, Crazies.  Because I'll make a bet that I've got more faith in your kid than you've got Crazy in your head.  But in the interest of both of our personal welfare, I'm keeping my Dean on standby.


Just in case.