Up the Not-So-Corporate Ladder

When I first became a teacher, I firmly believed that with hard work and good results, I would soon have my pick of courses and students. My first year, I earned the respect of my peers and my department head, recognized for my grace under pressure and superb classroom management skills. I was on my way up, reaching towards that lofty goal of teaching AP. Just the letters are beautiful, evoking thoughts of students engaged in lively discussion about Literature and current events, bringing new perspectives and respecting each others views.

Excitedly, I waited for the day when I would receive the magical course list, the list that would tell me exactly what I would be teaching the next year. When that day came, I closed my eyes, held the paper in my hand, and imagined. What would it be? Senior English? AP Lit? Honors?

Nope. All regular English - juniors. The same thing I had been teaching that year.

I let out a small sigh and decided that I just had to put in one more year of grunt work, and then everything would be fine.

New year, same story, again ending with the same schedule. This time I was not so ambivalent about it. I was angry. I was more qualified to teacher upper level classes than anyone else. Why was I getting the dregs?

I had made a mistake that many idealists make. I thought that I would be able to move up based on my performance, and the education industry just doesn't work that way. I had to muscle my way in.

Finally, I got my chance. The previous department chair had stepped down from her position, due to the fact that her job had been eradicated from the school (don't worry, she was moved up in the county hierarchy despite having only been a classroom teacher for one year). This was my chance; I had to be the new department chair. I wanted it, I needed it, I had to have it. And lucky for me, the other teachers would rather die than hold such a thankless position.

And then, like magic, it happened. A week into my reign as head English honcho, I was offered seniors. Then, College Composition. Then, under-the-table machinations towards a coup for AP Language. My time had come. I had arrived.

I want to believe in a system where merit is rewarded, I truly do. But when I see people who haven't been in a classroom more than a year or two promoted over and over again for no reason other than the fact that they had the gumption to go out and get what they wanted, well, then I'm going to go out there and get what's mine, too.

Spelling. We all have to do it on a regular basis, yet when we make errors, the results can be hilarious.

For example, today I received a make-up assignment where a student was allowed to just write about whatever came to her. It was just a simple, easy, small point assignment, but it also kept her from an F in the class. On the paper was this: "I believe that abortion should not be illegal, because it is important to have in case a girl gets rapped."

Rapped.

Maybe it was the combination of the serious subject matter and the mental image of someone rapping over a woman to induce an abortion, but I just started laughing. In the middle of class.

Over the years, I have seen some very creative spellings, and every time I correct a student on it, they ask me that all important question: "Why is spelling so important? I mean, we have spell check!"

Apart from the obvious fact that spell check doesn't get every error, especially words that you spelled correctly technically but used incorrectly, the simple fact is that most of our work is handwritten, and every time I see a misspelled word, one of my brain cells dies.

I also learned that apparently life during WWII was "ruff." I didn't know they had a bunch of dogs walking around barking at them at the time, that really must have sucked.

So, is spelling important? It's a fairly subjective question. As an English teacher, my response would of course be yes, but ask any 17 year old and you'll get a different answer. Yet, when I worked retail, I would often help my manager go through the applications from prospective employees. The ones who had horrifying spelling and grammar errors were automatically sent to the bottom of the pile. Not that you really need to know how to spell in order to fold shirts and hock store credit cards, but I certainly didn't want to know or associate with those people. God forbid one of these children pull someone like me as their potential employer.

In my opinion, spelling is just something you should be relatively good at in order to be a functioning person. Like knowing when our country was founded or what colors are on traffic lights. Or how to add or subtract, which I am told by my math cohorts is also a dying skill amongst today's up-and-coming citizens. I don't expect them to know how to spell difficult words, especially without the help of a phonics background (which is another rant for another day), and I would never chastise someone for misspelling a word like "onomatopoeia."

The bottom line is that if you make a hilarious spelling error in my class, I am going to call you out on it, quite possibly in front of everyone. And they will laugh, knowing full well that they probably would have made the same error. Sometimes it backfires, as was the case with the student who's p's look like f's. Imagine the hilarity the first time I read his writing to myself. What a haffy day that was, until I realized he really did know the difference between the two, he was just incapable of making them look different in his handwriting. But most of the time, the kid will remember how to spell that word.

State of the Union

All over the country, teachers are coming under fire by their local governments, some with more far-reaching effects than others. In the state of Florida, a bill currently sits on the desk of Governor Charlie Crist that will determine the future of educators in that state. In true democratic form, the Senate shoved it though the line-up of other less controversial bills and rammed it all the way over to the House, who also passed it despite an overwhelming public outcry over the bill. When I first learned of the bill, SB6 or HB7189, I thought I was going to have a heart attack. The mere mention of the words “merit pay” send any low-income area teacher into panic mode.

The bill sounds good in theory, and there is no doubt that a simple one sentence summary of the bill would convince any intelligent person to vote for it: better teachers get better pay. The problem inevitably comes when you try to quantify something as subjective as whether or not a teacher is a good teacher. The writers of this bill decided that the best way to determine the worth of a teacher is to look at their output. This would be all well and good if teachers were factory workers or salesmen, but we all know that the teaching profession is a totally different monster. You can work your ass off with a kid, stay after hours and try every possible learning method, only to have them freeze and go blank on test day.

Last year, the administration at my school noticed that one testing classroom had low standardized test scores, and not one student in that room had made a gain in their score. The children were all products of different teachers, some honors, some not, but yet they all did poorly. After some research, it was discovered that there had been a fight in the classroom before the test. Keyed up and distraught, the students were still forced to take the test, yet clearly their minds were elsewhere. This snapshot of their abilities is not any indicator of what they could actually do, yet it will remain on their record.

Of course, this is an argument that is being made over and over again, not only in opposition to this particular piece of legislation but also to standardized tests in general. In various states, the tests beginning to fall by the wayside, replaced by subject area exams that actually test students on what they learned in the class, rather than general reading and mathematics skills.

The main purpose of the bill, according to legislators, is to weed out the bad teachers more easily while rewarding the good ones. It has received the nickname of the “teacher tenure” bill since it will essentially do away with continuing contracts. Continuing Contracts are not tenure; instead, they are 5 or 10 year contracts that assure the teacher that they will be gainfully employed in the coming years, and in this economy they are a wonderful security blanket to have. However, there seems to be this misconception that as soon as a teacher reaches this stage, they give up entirely. There was an episode of the Simpsons in which Lisa’s teacher is counting down the seconds until she finally announces “I just got tenure.” She then sits at her desk and relaxes, instructing the students to take care of themselves. While I don’t doubt that this (and probably even this exact scenario) has happened before, it does not happen often, or even rarely. I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve walked into other teachers classrooms to see students running around unsupervised as the teacher surfs the internet, or even worse, has completely left the classroom entirely, leaving the kids all alone. That behavior is abhorrent and absolutely must be addressed.

Except, SB6 doesn’t really address it. Under SB6, as I understand it, any teacher who currently is on a continuing contract will remain unaffected. Only teachers hired after July of this year will be under the thumb of the new law. If the whole point of this law is to get rid of the bad teachers, yet the current bad teachers will not be affected, the bill is basically saying that they don’t expect the new teachers to meet their expectations. The bill will not help them fire Mrs. So-and-So who told little Jimmy that he was never going to make it in the real world, but it will help them fire Suzie Bright Eyes who just got her Master’s in Education and was given a low-level reading class.

Until the lawmakers begin to read educational studies and talk to actual teachers, educational laws will continue to miss the mark. The teachers unions have earned labels for themselves, often making the public look unfavorably on them and lawmakers reluctant to work with them. The unions are strong and willing to fight for their teachers, which is the entire point of a union in the first place. They are not, however, unreasonable. Yes, teachers who work hard should be paid more. But working hard should also include the amount of time and effort it takes to earn advanced degrees or specialties, and especially the grueling and very expensive National Board Certification. Working hard as a teacher does not mean that you always see results, and many of us do what we do for the personal satisfaction. Until every student is the same, every teacher cannot be judged the same, and I will bet you dollars to donuts that day never comes.

You're really only stealing from yourself.

I believe that my classroom should be my haven, the place where every student can feel safe and every object is in its right place. Apparently, I am the only one who believes this. Despite numerous reminders that my desk is off limits, items are always disappearing from their assigned spots. The solution, I thought, would be a barricade around my desk, making is virtually impossible to force your way to my stash of Sharpies and stamps and whatnot without some serious calculation and stealth. For a while, it seemed to deter the ninjas who would steal anything that wasn’t nailed down, but now, the items have begun to disappear again.

Until recently, the most perplexing disappearance was that of my collection of 36 Sharpies, kept in a container behind my desk. They were taken, clearly, all in one fell swoop, a feat which I had to admire, though I mourned the loss of my beautiful markers heavily. I begged, pleaded, and bribed to try to coax the perpetrator to return my property. I even offered total amnesty: just put them on my desk, no questions asked. But they were long gone.

Mostly it’s the little things: a pen here, a piece of paper there, even a Literature book every now and then. Why they would want to abscond with one of my classroom textbooks is beyond me, especially considering that I can’t seem to get them to read it in class and they all get their own copy for home at the beginning of the year, free of charge. Yet, who am I to deny some child who wants to enjoy the wonders of literature outside the classroom?

However, none of these broke my spirit. I wouldn’t let a little thing like material loss affect my dedication to the students. None of these things were truly vital to the classroom anyway. We could make do.

Until now.

You see, some genius decided that the ultimate prize from my classroom would be the pencil sharpener. You know the one, the silver contraption that’s bolted to the wall, that taught you coordination at an early age because you were forced to hold a pencil and turn the handle at the same time. The one that often required ridiculous amounts of force in order to make your pencil that perfect specimen of sharpness, sharp enough to stab someone with. For years, I was without a pencil sharpener. Kids would have to borrow a pencil from someone else, or pray that they knew another teacher nearby who might let them use their sharpener instead. Finally, I got my coveted wall sharpener. It lasted a total of about 6 months, and now, it is gone. All that is left is the holes drilled into the cinderblock walls, four gaping reminders of the wood shaving device that once dwelled there.

And you, oh pencil-sharpener-stealer, exactly what was your endgame? What devious plans do you have that required a wall unit sharpener? Was it some trophy for you, some symbol of ultimate defiance? Did you delight in hearing me tell my students that they could sharpen their pencils no longer? How long did it take you to unscrew all those screws? Kudos, sharpener thief, whoever you may be.

No Love at the Prom

When I originally thought about starting this blog, I thought I would use it to post my musings about teaching and the education world. After all, in this day and age a little levity is always welcome, and while I certainly love my job, you just can't deny the comic value that is inherent in dealing with large amounts of teenage children.

But, as we all know, sometimes things don't work out the way you plan. Which is one of the many reasons I refer to my first period class as my "experimental class."

Recently, left-minded people all over the country have been up in arms about Constance McMillen, a high school student from Mississippi who was originally denied access to her senior prom on the basis that she wanted to bring her girlfriend. A few days ago, the story broke that McMillen attended her "prom," only to find that she was one of only a handful in attendance, while the rest of her classmates enjoyed their diversity-free rite of passage.

While I certainly feel for Constance, I can't help but be seriously concerned about the mental well-being of the parents and administrators who orchestrated (rather efficiently) both a secret "real" prom and a fake prom. Even more bizarre are the reports that the other students sent to Constance's fake prom were the ESE students ("special ed" for the lay folk). Really? I'm rather tempted to make a joke or two at the expense of the fine state of Mississippi, but even cracks about the deep South wouldn't explain the pure evil that had to be released in order for these machinations to come to fruition.

It's important to note that it was the adults who plotted and carried out this evil master plan, though the involvement of the students hasn't really been addressed. Call me an optimist, but I have seen nothing but acceptance from the hundreds of student who have come through my door. These kids would never even think about excluding someone for being gay or different or whatever. They're used to it, they've grown up with gay characters on T.V. and no doubt friends, family members, and neighbors who are gay. They recognize that there is nothing to be afraid of, no chance that the gay might rub off on them or whatever it is these backwards people think is going to happen.

And if that is the mentality of Constance's classmates, I see an ever bigger danger there. What sort of example is being set for them? "Oh, sorry honey, you can't go to that prom." "Why not?" "Because a girl might be dancing with another girl!" What do they think that the prom is, an orgy?

Every prom I've been to featured the couples grinding with each other on the floor to terrible music while the single men sat at tables and the sigle girls all *gasp* danced with each other. Prom is traditionally the night where girls decide to give up their innocence to whatever dude was nice enough to buy them a corsage and pay for dinner at the Olive Garden, at least until they get to the hotel room and realize that their dream date has turned into a noxious mess as a result of the contents of that super-awesome flask he had hidden in his jacket pocket that he thinks you don't know about. Prom is not a debutante ball, not an innocent dance where all the attendees will get dropped off at home before curfew and with their maidenhood intact. Prom is nasty, it's barbaric, and it is all just one long night of foreplay for a disappointing sexual experience, whether you get any or you don't.

So, why then would anyone want to deprive Constance of this same experience? What exactly could she do to tarnish the name of Prom, god of virgins and awkward Saturday mornings in a beach hotel? What exactly are these people trying to teach their children?

I know it's a stretch, considering the fact that this is Mississippi we're talking about (see what I did there?) but think about the poor children who will end up going to a large University next year? How will they cope when they find themselves surrounded by the invading homosexuals at every turn, even in their own dorms! Oh the humanity!

Part of me feels terrible just for giving this whole debacle more attention. You, who would be readers of my little blog, forgive me for my angry ranting, and let's all congratulate young Constance on her gumption and her wonderful poise during this whole ordeal. If only we could be as zen about the whole thing as you.