Which ones are the children?

Ok. I am sitting here in my classroom being a pyro. We are doing a "lab" today. Yes, the quotations are necessary - due to lack of any real supplies and lack of funding to buy them, my students are learning about chemical bonding by analyzing salt, sugar, vinegar, ethanol, tin, iron, clay, and vegetable oil. And by "analyzing," I mean looking at, putting in water, and trying to light on fire. Seriously. So this brings me to where I am a pyro. I got the urge to burn some sugar just to amuse myself for awhile, and then I thought it would be really cool to put ethanol on the sugar and then light it and see if the sugar would burn at the temperature that the ethanol burns. But now I'm just doing it because it looks cool. That's when I remembered that I finally have the web address for a proxy server, so I can write in my blog at school. Thank God.

The week back to school has brought a lot of frustration, but fortunately it's not frustration with the kids. At least, not with MY kids. The situation with kids being in the hallway and being loud has gotten much, much worse. Part of it is because a lot of teachers were out last week, but it also seems like people have reached a certain level of apathy that has prevented them from chasing kids when it is necessary. So I go out to chase kids (I've stopped threatening and started leveling with them..."Could you please leave this hallway so the children who are trying to learn can do so? You may go anywhere else in this building - just get out of this hall. The students in the rooms should not have to pay for your poor choices), and I get cussed out (though it decreases when I go out and speak calmly - they don't quite know how to respond to that), accused of being the police, and, my new favorite, asked if I get paid for this. That one took me awhile to formulate a response to that wasn't just "duh," but I finally came up with, "a teacher's job is to make sure students get an education. So by making you leave the hall, I am ensuring that the other students in this hallway have the opportunity to learn. So yes, I get paid for this." It's working well for me so far. And then there's my kids in the room, sitting, working, achieving. It's so nice (I'm listening to Taylor Hick's "Do I Make You Proud" right now, and thinking of my kids...it's bringing a little tear to my eye...).

So there's the kids. Which leaves the other 95% of my frustration the responsibility of the adults in the building. First, I was frustrated with the number of adults who were missing last week. Yes, I missed the two days before the break, but I had to travel nearly 2000 miles. I did not miss the full week after the break, like some did, and I didn't take off days after the break just because I didn't feel like coming back yet. I'm not sure that these teachers realize that when they are out, it's not like we have subs to cover their classes most of the time - the other teachers have to do it. So now TR, who is a phenomenal first year teacher, is covering classes and getting no planning period. And even if there is a sub in the room, it's still a lot of work for the other teachers to keep their kids in the room and to police the zone, because the subs don't do that. Yeah, that's what we all REALLY wanted to do on the first days back from our wonderful break - work twice as hard as we are supposed to because you just weren't ready to come back. Great. You know, on second thought, I think I'll take those days off next year just so I don't have to deal with the kids of the teachers who took those days off. Sounds like a flawless plan to me. To be fair, though, it's not like all of the teachers who WERE here actually do their jobs. I was just in the hall with a student and a parent, and the kid points around the hall at all the kids who were out of class - about 20 of them 10 minutes after the bell - and he says, "look at all these kids! Where are their teachers?" If a kid gets it, why don't the teachers? What the heck? I have had it up to here (imagine me holding my hand about 6 feet above my head) with irresponsible adults! Do your job! I don't care that most of the time there is no one holding you accountable for it! Be accountable to yourself and the students whose future rests on you EDUCATING them - which relies on YOU being there and on you keeping THEM there! UGH!

And then that brings me to adults who should be beaten swiftly about the head for their complete...ugh...I don't even know what to call this woman, she is so utterly offensive. Let me give you the brief run-down of my most recent department meeting. The Science department here consists of myself, Ms. Bruce (who is lovely, she teaches the 12th grade and is our IST), Ms. Wilson (who, again, is a nice person, but thinks that her problems are worse than everyone else's and has no faith in her 9th graders), Ms. Black (who I like, but who is still naive enough to think that complaining will actually get someone to come in and solve her problems), and Ms. George (who is the Special Ed teacher and is the demon spawn of Darth Vader and...I don't know, something else really ugly and heinous). Our meeting started off fairly normally, with information and a run-down of what was going on, and Ms. Bruce saying she didn't really have much for us. However, it soon deviated, inevitably, into a bitch fest. Ms. Wilson was complaining about how it's impossible to do lab tests with 50 kids (ok, we get that you have a lot of kids, however, there are 50 on roll but only 30 show up...), but wouldn't listen to recommendations about what to do because "they're Freshmen, they can't handle that." I finally gave up that battle. We moved on to what was making our kids not succeed on the HSA. Ms. Black said, quite correctly, that they're having trouble with BCRs (for those of you who aren't teaching in Baltimore, that means Brief Constructed Response, or short essay questions). Ms. George said that you just have to make your class 90% writing, so if they don't write they can't pass your class, and then the only ones who pass your class will be the ones who pass the test. I put forth my argument that it's not fair to do that...a kid shouldn't be penalized in Chemistry for what their third grade teacher didn't teach them. Their Chemistry grade should reflect how much they know about Chemistry, not how well they can write about it. Ms. Black gave the example of a student who is totally off the wall in her writing...she said you can ask her to write "Happy Birthday" and she'll write "Tuesday." Anyway, I was just thinking to myself what a sad learning disability when the SPECIAL EDUCATOR said "You just can't teach a student like that. She's a blank slate." I was going to keep my mouth shut, but then she went there - she picked on one of my students. It went something like this:
Darth: "Who teaches JaJuan?"
Me: "It's JaQUAN" (she might have known that, having taught him before)
Darth: Yeah, he's one of those. He can't read or write at all. You can't teach him."
Me: "Actually, you can. He has an 80% in my class right now, because if you actually take the time to sit down and read what he writes, it is clear that the concepts are all there, even if his speach/language impairment makes it difficult for him to communicate that information."
Darth: (who, remember, is a special educator) "No. If a kid can't read, you can't teach them."
Me: "I'm leaving."
At which point I stood up, handed Ms. Bruce my feedback form, and left. I slipped a note in her box later telling her that I will no longer be attending department meetings. And I intend to stick to that. If they try to write me up for it, I'll just point out that Garrett doesn't attend department meetings, the Social Studies department doesn't even have meetings, and Tom and Jeremy make up the foreign language department - what do you think their meetings look like? Roar!

I'm having a bit of a problem with another one of my fellow teachers. She is...well, nuts. She is mean to the kids (though she doesn't think she is), she is not understanding, and she puts them out like crazy. I don't think she really understands teenagers. However, she thinks that we are the same type of teacher. Now, when I have 4 of my favorite students put out of her class every day and sitting with me, I really have to question what is going on. She thinks we're on the same page but we're not...but I can't find a way to get through to her, about these students or about how showing more warmth and interest in the kids will help her get through to them. Any advice?

So there's that. Otherwise, I heart my kids, I think they are adorable and lovely. One of my kids who is just as sweet as can be had her home burn down on New Years, though...it was a sad jilt back to reality when I heard that from her on the 2nd. Sometimes it is really hard for me to rememeber what it is that my kids are going through and justify that with my vision of normalcy. Sigh. I guess that's my goal here - to set them up so this only has to be their youth, not their life. Maybe I should patent that phrase, or tattoo it on my forearm (that one's for you, Laureny) so I remember it through all this hell (remember, if you're going through hell, KEEP GOING!)