Cue The Circus Music

Well, it's time. It's time for me to face the fact that I am indeed stuck for another year in a career I despise more than anything in the world. If you have children, you probably know exactly what I'm talking about, because you've been saving up money for a few months to pay for this major event: Back to School.

I'm not going to get into all the reasons I hate teaching, or everything that's wrong with kids today. There are two main problems, and that's it.

1. A lack of parenting, values, and integrity. Character and self-respect not being taught at home. Apathy on the part of the families. Parents too lazy/tired to do the right thing, because the right thing is hard work.
2. The educational system in this country and this state. If kids can't meet these standards, that's okay...we'll just lower the standards. Can you reach them now? Good. Because your district's yearly allowance is based on how many kids attend class each day, standardized test scores, and retention rates. Nevermind that passing kids who don't deserve to pass is NOT doing them any favors.
   

My administration has no backbone. Regardless of what they personally believe, they've basically become mouthpieces of ignorance; yesmen of the district overlords. To Hell with what's right, what's best for the kids...what's best for our school and its bank account? I wonder how many of my superiors used to have ideals and standards and stick with them in their own classrooms. I wonder how many of them didn't just pass a kid to help out the numbers, but helped the kid that legitimately failed because they needed to learn the material one way or the other.

I hope they're happy. At the end of the last year, I sold my soul. They got what they want. They beat it out of me. I graduated from a Christian university. I made a promise to God, my grandmother, my professors, and myself that I would never take the easy way out, that I would raise the bar for expectations both with academics and behavior, and that I would do what it took to be involved in my kids' lives so that we could have fun as a classroom family and learn at the same time. I was going to demand personal responsibility, be firm yet fair, and be consistent regardless of the kid.

All of that was pounded out of me by the multiple conferences, walkthroughs, surprise visits, threats, and requests for grade changes. These came from coaches, as well as assistant and head principals. They made my life miserable because I would not lower my standards. I adhered to my guidelines and, honestly, THEIR policies, but my failure rate was still high. My kids severely lacked in two areas: attendance and turning things in. Zeroes were the main cause of failures. I was instructed, in some cases, to allow students to make up those assignments 8 months after the fact. That's practically the whole school year! And, if they still didn't pass, I was supposed to give them a 70 because of their 'effort' for coming in during lunch and after school to make this stuff up.

They hounded me about this shit for so long that I finally had to give up. They were calling me into the office probably 3 times a week to discuss one kid or another. Sometimes, they'd even interrupt my classes and send someone in to cover them while they bitched me out for not bending my rules for some kids (athletes*cough*athletes) and...it was just surreal. I was so stressed out that I was physically sick with headaches and stomachaches and I couldn't sleep at night because I was being bullies by administration. And, trust me, I may be cute, but when there's an angry coach waiting for you at your door in the mornings, it'll make you wonder if physical violence really does happen between coworkers.

Here's another point I must make: I had 143 students take the standardized test. Only 3 failed. Two of those were receiving special services for dyslexia and uncategorized learning disabilities, and the other just really doesn't know English well enough. If I wasn't doing my job, I wouldn't have had a success rate like that. Mine was the highest in the school, thank you very much. Do you think even one administrator took that into consideration? Of course not. Because the bottom line was about our failure rates.

Teachers are given so many conflicting messages by our administration. A principal tells the teachers to be polite to the students and parents, yet the principal is rude to the staff all the time. Our trainers tell us we need to build relationships to get into the kids' good graces (which I happen to believe, btw) so they feel safe and secure and want to learn in your class. They say it takes 5 minutes at the beginning of class to set the tone of a family-like setting. Our administrators insist on bell-to-bell instruction and want to see teaching 100% of the time. We're told to remember that the kids are humans and need us to care, yet we're bombarded with "all of this content we just have to cover before" a certain day, and it's never enough time. How can I be a holistic teacher when I'm not allowed to foster that environment?

Even in Teacher School (heh), we learned about how letting kids write in a journal for 5 minutes a day and sharing for another 5 will build relationships, create a safe climate, and break down emotional walls and allow for lots of learning. So I did. For a few years, that's what I did. Then my supervisor came in and observed my little "write-n-rap session," as I affectionately called them. My kids were engaged, interested, participating, and I'd even tied it into the lesson. I skillfully moderated a short class discussion, and we moved on to the lesson. I was thrilled she'd gotten to see me in action!

Until I read her report.

She was full of criticism, telling me that we didn't cover enough content in the class period, that I allowed for too much discussion, and that the writing they were doing was pointless if they never "revisited" that material to revise, recycle, or reflect. She told me (and all the others doing journals at the time) that we were to scrap the journals and get down to "meaningful teaching."

What in the world is more meaningful to an "at-risk," "economically disadvantaged" student? Learning how to narrow down 4 test questions like they do on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, or having an adult treat them like they're valued? To have an adult actually LISTEN to them and CARE about their opinions? And it's only 10 minutes out of a 72-minute class period!

When I told the kids that there would be no more journals or rap sessions, they were mad. With me, at first. But I eventually did just blame it on the administration. I couldn't bear to think that my kids thought I had lost interest or didn't care anymore. They never did get over that anger and feeling as if I'd abandoned them in some way.

Since I've had to stop doing that, my school years have been horrible. I have not been able to build those meaningful relationships and get to know my kids. As a result, we butt heads, they act out, they don't care about me at all, they don't care about each other, and they don't want to participate or do group work, except with their friends.

So here we go again. School starts Monday, and I'm already considering doubling up on my new Wellbutrin prescription dosage. I know I should probably go to an AA meeting - hell, I NEED a shrink - but I'm going to try to power on through it. At least let me get through the first week with kids, right? I haven't even STARTED yet!

There have been a lot of changes to our school over the summer. I've been trying to look at every single one of them as a positive, and I'm hoping I won't be proven wrong. I think it's going to be chaos this entire year because of the changes, but we'll see.