I'm so tired that...
I put the seat on the toilet down and then peed on the lid. I put my muffin in my pocket and ate my change.
this is a game that we play on our way to school because at 6 in the morning we teachers are fairly underslept. Some of the larger absudities of the week include the following.
We have a lap top cart of computers for student use on our floor. There are twenty some odd machines in it. Except that they continue to get stolen. This makes it so that no teacher wants to use the cart because the fear of being responsible or even associated with the missing computers is so great that it is simply too scary to want to let the kids use it. So... we decided to try a computer lab with desktop computers. After one week, the kids had stolen all the mice. Why? We'll never know. So, we can't use it. I tried to use it today anyway but it turns out that although we were told we could sign up for it, there are classes scheduled in there throughout most of the day. I got a teacher to switch with me but discovered quickly that the computers were pretty tough to use without mice.
A student in his gym shorts walked into my room to put on his jeans. I tried to explain to him that my room was not a dressing room but decided it was probably in my best interest to discuss this with him from outside my classroom door as I didn't want to get sued for some indiscretion. He laughed and told me that "I should not play him, and that you know you want to hit this." I shudder at the very notion.
After a month of discussing the meaning of research, several students told me today that they still did not have their research topics.
Several other students informed me that wikipedia, google, and ask jeeves are the only places a person needs to go for research.
I realized that I'd bitten off way more than I could chew when I attempted to teach them a works cited page. They thought it was impossible and after awhile so did I.
At one point there were 30 different versions of hip hop playing in the computer lab and my head was swelling.
A student and I reminiced about the good old days of her freshman year and we both meant it.
Another student told me that she'd had sex today and I could barely breathe. She is so young. Her mom is so Haitian. Please let her mom not find out. She might not let her live to see 18.
A student who never showed up to my AP English class asked to start attending. It's only been a month. I said ok and she still didn't show up but she took off with my book.
A teacher's wallet was stolen from my classroom.
This boy got mad at me for making him wear his uniform despite the fact that it is a school rule and I've been repeating it since the beginning of September.
I watched the school assistant pick up her paycheck. After taxes it was $18.
My friend, the union rep, got into a screaming match with the principal of another school simply for asking where to place a kid in an emergency situation.
I watched a boy try to beat another boy up in front of his mother. She is half of his size but managed to hold him back pretty well.
A mother complained to me in Spanish that her son was the only one of the four in her family who was "no good."
A kid who cuts my class everyday accused me of not "giving him the handouts." I tried not to laugh in his face.

surr fucking reality.

two years ago someone wanted our high school to have concentrations and so hours and hours of work went into planning and surveying the kids on what they wanted, choosing the concentrations, getting them all signed up for them, and planning our classes so that the kids could be in courses related to their concentrations. Fast forward to today. No one mentions them. Yet this is the reason that the 10th grade class I am teaching is in 10th grade instead of 11th or 12th. So, I am teaching a different age and an entirely different course, why again? I don't know.

today I found out that someone in my department is teaching the same kids I am for no reason whatsoever. I teach the entire tenth grade english but somehow she has all the same kids for something called enriched english. she is supposed to be the special ed teacher helping the kids with the work in my class but no, instead she is giving them extra work so that they can fail two classes. this is not her fault. this is apparently what she was told to do.

yesterday I attended a meeting where we spent 20 minutes discussing what the meeting was supposed to be about. Hours later, I still don't know and worse than that it appears to have NOTHING to do with the position that I hold which enables me to attend the meeting in the first place.

advisories were told today that they have to plan college trips with their advisories, they have to raise half of the money and that these trips will be held the day before Thanksgiving break in an attempt to increase attendence the day before a major holiday. Oh yeah, and most of the colleges will be closed.

we sit in meetings and are told things that make no fucking sense. then go to other meetings to create policies that make no fucking sense.

everyone is disgruntled. this is because on some days people are teaching for 6 or 7 period in a row. This is entirely illegal. But on other days, those same teachers are done by about 10 and the administration gets upset when they aren't doing anything.

there are people on staff who don't do shit and who can not teach and nothing happens to them while others bust their asses and are ignored.

today both the principal and the assistant principal left us entirely alone in the building for the entire afternoon. The dean was "in charge" while they were away. No one knew about this. I figured it out only after trying for several hours to track them both down.

a staff employee picked up a check today that was for 80, but after taxes she got $13. She said she was going to take us out to lunch with it. She'd just been asked to do more work.

my students and I had a hilarious conversation about manatee sex and we conjugated verbs in the past tense at the top of our lungs. Someone who is finally catching on to the whole concept of verbs shouted out "She sucks dick. She sucked dick." They were shocked when I congratulated them on the inventive demonstration of learning and requested that perhaps they choose a better verb.

Ah, public school.

Some days are just like this:
Wake up at 6, take temperature in a futile search for a pattern to your non-existant cycle. Shower. can't find a clean towel and the one that is there smells like rat piss/mildew. Search for clothes that don't make you look fat. Give up and wear whatever is around. Go downstairs to make breakfast. Decide that it is impossible to make breakfast until the dishes are out of the sink. Open the dishwasher. Discover murky, swamp like puddle of water clogging the machine. Try to fix it by running the dishwasher disposal in the sink. Discover that it is not working. Madly flip power sockets suspecting power outage. Try again. Fail miserably. Watch as water pours from under the dishwasher creating a flood effect on your already damaged kitchen floors. Throw mildew rat piss towel from shower on top of damaged floor in pointless effort at saving floor. Wake husband. Husband does the same thing, but manages to make it work simply because he is male and you are female. Mix disgusting chinese herbs in hot water and guzzle because you hope that this nasty bark crap will somehow create a cycle and make you have a chance at becoming pregnant. Make an equally horrible bananna shake because there is no time to make eggs nor is there cereal. Wince. Try to find keys. Realize keys are no where to be found. Wake husband again. Husband finds keys in about thirty seconds. Feel like a super ass for waking husband twice in the space of twenty minutes. Drive with co-worker to Bushwick. Passanger seat side of car has broken glove compartment box that hits your knees as you drive. Car has 100 K on it, so you're damn lucky you even have a ride but this thought elludes you.
Meet with AP class. Feel horrified by papers whose opening sentences begin with such eloquent phrases as "poverty has always been around and will always be around, it is what it is." Shudder that it is supposed to be your responsibility to help these children pass the AP exam in May. Giggle at the impossibility of it all. Spend the next three hours squeezing your bladder as you attempt to teach students who rarely crack a book, to cite multiple sources on index cards for a research paper. Feel incredibly depressed when having given the directions fourteen times, another student approaches asking what to do. Try not to punch Jeffrey in the stomach when he threatens to leave the room simply because you will not let him on the computer. Forget to take the official attendance and piss off the school aide who has been waiting for it for an hour. Try not to scream when Clarissa Velasquez shows up to your class for the FIRST FUCKING TIME even though it is now the second week of school and she has already failed the marking period. Try to calmly suggest that she comes during her lunch period to pick up the work that she has missed knowing full well that she is only in school to pick up her metro card and will not be seen again until next month. Try not to cry that this is the third year in a row you've had her in a class and she has never passed because she has attended school for more than about 10 days a year.
Remind Michael M. that he is falling behind on his homework. Tell 3rd period that they will be taking a trip on Friday. Remind 4th period that their interviews are due on Thursday. Forget to collect homework and then yell at the classes for not having done any. Tell Malcom. H. that it is unacceptable to play music on the computer and if he isn't doing research that he needs to give the machine to someone else who will. Try not to scream when five more students say "I don't get this" or "what am I supposed to do again?" Try not to spit fire when students try to turn in their index cards at the end of the period despite the three repetitions of "hold on to your index cards for Tuesday. You will need them. Do not lose them." Thank the librarian for her time. Be so glad that the campus has managed to hire a librarian at all and she has a brain. Visit co-teacher S. and thank her for the concord grapes she got for you at the farmer's market, offer to pay her for them realizing you have only a twenty. Buy her a seltzer water instead and give her two dollars later. Try to set a date with Michael M. to help him do his independent reading. forget to tell everyone that their first independent reading books need to be complete by Friday. Realize you are failing terribly at giving out homework assignments that are meaningful and challenging. By 5th period, realize that you have promised to be in three places at the same time and someone will have to lose. When Gary S. asks if you've finished grading his test, tell him no you took the weekend off. Try not to tell him that he is frankly not your priority as he hasn't bothered to come to school for three days and therefore doesn't deserve your extra time. Try,try, try not to say that.
Go downstairs to the teacher's lounge and heat up lunch. Feel horribly embarrassed that your crab cake leftovers are stinking up the entire room and that all of the teachers are staring at you and hate you. Realize you will never find real friends at your job. Return to the horrible AP papers and try to cope with the fact that 7 out of 10 students did not even introduce the book until the 4th page of a 5 page paper. Sigh. Share this insight with a co-worker who is actually a funny and cool guy. Realize that maybe in fact, you could find a friend at your job if you ever had a moment to slow down. Grade these shit hole papers for the next three hours.
Go upstairs and realize that you forgot to do your professional duty. As the department chair, send an email reminding people to do meaningless tasks that you could give two shits about but have to pretend you care. Speak with AP about how to order lunches for your students on Friday even though none of them will eat the lunches anyway. Speak to programmer and co-teacher about switching some kids from the over crowded classroom of 31 to the small classroom of 15 so that the classes are more balanced.
Open your classroom door to discover that it is a fucking mess even though you spent the entire morning in the library. Clean it up. Write on the board for the next morning. Call two students parents to try and warn them that their children are failing and/or behaving badly. Drop off co-worker. Search for parking. Realize that you had an acupuncture appointment at 3:30 and it is now 3:35. Call acupuncture therapist and apologize profusely while noting to self that you just wasted $80. Drive home. Find parking far the fuck away. Return overdue library books. Discover you've forgotten one of the library books at home and now need to return again tomorrow to return the last overdue library book. Run to yoga in desperate hopes that it will save you from imploding. Pay lots of attention to yuor breathing and feel slightly pleased that your stomach is less obtrusive than the last time you managed to take a yoga class. Sigh though because you are still fat and you have disgusting vericose veins and look like you are 35 which you are (nearly).
Return home. Husband informs you that an insurance claim that you'd both believed to be settled is not settled and he owes 700 bucks. The de-stress of yoga now gone, allow shoulders to return to neck. tell him you will pay because you feel guilty about how broke he always says he is and you got him into the damn test anyway and you just want the fucking thing over with and don't want to talk about it or deal with it anymore.
Send email to friends confirning dinner arrangements that you made between bites of smelly crabcakes at lunch earlier. Read emails from various co-workers about nothing. return phone call to long lost friend. Make a quick dinner of leftovers and feed husband and self. Type blog. Ignore five chapters of reading that you've assigned to your AP class for 8 am but have not read yourself. Ignore grades that have not been entered in grade book. Ignore the fact that it's 9 pm and you don't know what you will be wearing tomorrow, you have no lunch prepared, and your gym clothes are dirty and need to be ready to pack before you leave as you won't have time to come home before your running class. Do your homework for your Wednesday night class while thinking that maybe you are overscheduled. Worry that you haven't made all the calls to parents taht you need to. Worry that another day will go by without having finished G.'s test. Feel sad that you are not able to enjoy yourself the way you did when you were not working.
Prepare to go to bed, sleep for a few hours, and start all over again. Try not to cry.

oh yeah. I shouldn't know this but since I do... it is impossible to punish bad teachers. Even teachers who have done terrible thigns such as dismantling computer labs because they felt like switching rooms. Even when said lab had been set up over the summer at hundreds of dollars in per session time. The boss can barely place a complaint letter in the file. Even if he can, the letter cannot be used against him or read for that matter by any one with enough clout to give flying fuck. It is a pathetic system. Yet, I would not work there without it because the administraters will stop at nothing if there is nothing stopping them.

The give and take makes for some interesting theater. Take M, whose professional period (200 minutes of non-teaching slave labor that we are required to do because we are professionals? I've never understood the rationale for this job outside of our job and I never will). She has managed to pull of the job of "fun coordinator"---creating weekend outings and beer bashes on the clock. What media would NOT want to run away with that shit? It's too good to be real. But it's real.

Meanwhile, I cannot be paid for attending the weekly "cabinet" meetings. Navel-gazing fests where the self-rightous bump heads in a "me, me me" race to the finish line. Oh, when the stakes are low, how subterranean we do become. I tried every manipulation conceivable last year to avoid those meething and I was fairly successful--attending only two. This year, unfortunately, my luck runneth dry. I plan to take copious notes for this blog as my saving grace. Beats cafeteria duty or deaning. Beats coordinating the parent newsletter that won't be read. Or pushing-in to a classroom where I'm not wanted.

There have already been several fights in the cafeteria. For the usual reasons. Someone's cousin said something nasty to someone else --something about his pregnant girlfriend and each had to protect his pride by duking it out. Both were suspended. The girl, once an honor roll student, is due shortly and will now, most likely not finish high school despite being a mere two semesters away. Sigh.

As my students this year are tenth graders, I must remind myself that they think paper balls are funny. They find them endlessly entertaining as they are tossed from corner to corner making my efforts at cleanliness futile. It was downright hilarious to them when I'd forgotten to turn off my cell phone and it rang as we were conjugating verbs in the present tense. Yes, tenth grade. They find sexual innendos in places I'd not even venture to look. They think it's unreasonable when I ask them to read 15 pages a night for homework. They complain in tones that illicit faulty starters.

Several boys have already begun to cut my class. One particularly wounded young lady brought in an older sister who is now claiming guardian status to discuss said child's anger problem. The older sister had flame-dye red hair and could have been mistaken as the troubled-ones twin. I felt only slightly ashamed that the entire conference struck me as a waste of time.

To practice notetaking while moving them forward on the research project, I've pulled out all stops. We're watching a really wild animals video narrated by Dudley Moore as an animated planet with the moniker spin. The video is filled to the brim with cheesy music songs (which I enjoy singing outloud as a means of mortifying the students more) and bad jokes. A quiz follows to test their notetaking abilities. They are poor. I will have fun this year.

My boss took me into the book basement belly and let me have at it for my advanced placement class. While doing so, he waxed poetic about his various Yale experiences and memorized passages of great Hispanic writers. His arrogance in full tact, I remembered why I liked to keep out interactions virtual and curt. It's not that he isn't a good guy. He is. At times, even masterful but those are his public moments when as an astute politician he knows the merit of humility. Off stage he is all bravado and brimming. This somehow disappoints me.

My AP students turned in their first five page papers. I can't bring myself to read them and it's Sunday night. I know how horrible they will be and I'm tired of digging deep to find my sense of patience, good will, and empathy. I'm teeming with dismissive incredulity. Intolerance.

The Mickey Mouse Club went out Friday night for drinks. These are the members of the inner circle of first year teachers so deeply loved by the boss that it's destructive for the rest of us and surely for the school itself. Various other members are aloud at brief intervals to enter the Mickey Mouse Club but not without serious sacrifice. I am outraged. Particularly because the female members reduce me to a snivelling high school snot rag not making it to the step team. This is made even more outrageous when in fact, I do opt in to one of their activities and find myself bored snotless. All the aforementioned references to bodily fluid must say something. They listen to cooler music, they wear cooler clothes, they went to more impressive unversities, or so it appears to me that this is the message I am to absorb when around them. Instead, I feel a mild nausea and a desire to eat pancakes.

A guidance counselor sent a pleading email for a trashcan. It appears that someone decided to steal hers. Does it get lower than that?

The students have already taken to removing their uniforms in the hallway. The battle is lost and won. No just lost. The hurly burly will bever be done. In class, they jack the shirts halfway over their torsos insisting that they are in compliance as they are still "wearing them". It's an exhausting battle signifying nothing. Our Dean calls this look the flashdance look. Although I've seen students in his advisory in their street clothes. He confuses me. He is sensitive and doesn't take criticism well yet I suspect he dishes it out with aplomb.

The highlight of the week was meeting the new librarian for all of the small schools who appears to have a functioning cortex. This makes her somewhat of an anomaly in the history of Bushwick librarians. She even set aside books for my students visit next week. I'm giddy. Oh yeah, and the tech guy, Brad, set up the printer in the teacher's lounge. May he be blessed and fruitful.

Many have noted a change in attitude from our Assistant Principal. Several speculate this change is a reaction to the fact that our boss seems to be pruning a fellow co-teacher to become the next AP of our school. Jealousy? Will a cat fight ensue? All I know is that apparently there have been several unhappy exchanges and the woman does look exhausted. Hell, I'll be happy for her when she runs her own school as ours will surely make her looney. I like her. The girl-in-training is sleeping with my least favorite staff member. He is an ego on wheels. He passed students last year who never showed their faces in his classroom. The administration was of course, delighted. He coordinates the internship program and is the butt of numerous jokes. This is because he walks down the hallway with a cell phone attached to his mouth as though he worked in the White House. It's that serious. He appears to have been born with a silver spoon up his ass and hasn't done a lick of work since. He is rude to other staff members and wouldn't know how to apologize if someone were to carve the letters into his forehead. I avoid him at all costs if for no other reason than his b.o. is that of pearl onions mixed with patchouli. He should be the spokesman for Berkenstock. I'm looking for the good in him. I am. He runs a biodiesel club where the kids create corn fuel, I guess that's something. More odors. He used my refridgerator last year and was outraged that I didn't want him interrupting my room to remove his tofu pops. Although I'll admit that I don't mind when anyone else comes in.

I went running on Saturday and logged 13 or so miles. I call it the "sweat out" Bushwick model and it does seem to work remarkably well. Saturday evening I went for a cheap massage and Andrew and I had dinner at Sette in Park Slope. We agree that the lighting is the best part about the place and that there is an abundance of salt, but that somehow it feels worthwhile.

I need to buy a sponge to wash my board with but I can't be bothered.

I put stickers on good homeworks and one boy howled with joy upon receiving his homework. He followed by dancing around the room singing "I feel good." It was adorable.

A student who transferred to another state called me over the weekend and that scared me. She is a psycho and I found it challenging to feign enthusiasm. I made a poor excuse and hung up. I could hear the disgust in her tone as she said goodbye. I fear she will be back soon enough. She made my life hell last year.

Although it will be an easy week, I have my typical Sunday night dreads. They don't seem to diminish no matter what I do. I simply prefer not working to working in Bushwick. I cannot tell a lie.

The first weekend is upon us

But before that we had a fight in the cafeteria--one of our best students sent another boy to the hospital. I asked 15 boys to put on their uniforms before leaving the floor or upon re-entering the floor and longed for a tape recorder. This reminded me of multiple occasions where a tape recorder would come in handy as a teacher. I do spend a remarkable amount of time repeating myself.

My classes are over-crowded. Thus placing the whole "small-school" panacea in doubt. My room is so packed in fact, I fear allowing the students much movement because even the most self-controlled beings would be prone to a brawl in quarters such as mine. It's time to don a rubber-tipped pointer and go back to the chalk and talk method in that room. It's the only choice I can imagine.

My third period class will prove the most challenging. There's self-hating "edny" who cannot help but tick everyone off around him and is terribly lucky not to have a broken jaw. There's raw-mouthed Michelle whose vocabulary consists entirely of explitives and who I believe is 17.

Feeling the twinge of desperation, I fled as soon as the afternoon permitted, and on the train encountered my only white student. He is also seventeen, and of an entirely different economic status than the rest of my students. A total anomaly. A charming, drug-addicted by with unfortunate parents. We know each other a bit from last year but this is the first year he has been in my class. His reading level is remarkable and I feel obligated to push him out of my room. He even shares some cultural awareness of things beyond Jordans and Bling. He doesn't belong at our school and yet, he professed to like it, enough even to return after a fairly tumultuous freshman year. I hope he will stave off the high enough at least, to last a few months in good standing.

That was Friday and now I'm off to enjoy my wedding anniversary and some fine wine.

Day two was nothing but an enormous waste of time. We sat in a packed auditorium to endure endless introductions and self-congratulatory remarks by the various principals of the four "small" high schools that are now the Bushwick "campus". We weren't let into our rooms to begin setting them up until about 2:00. Infuriating.

Day Three brought the children. Quiet at first, unsure of what they would receive or what school would be like. It's one of my favorite days because I put on an invisible mask and carry a pretend broom. I become the wicked witch of the west. I make sure they leave the class trembling.They did. The faces this year, look much like the faces last year, only younger.

Day Four included the library incident as follows; I went to the library to reserve it for my students to do their research paper. However, upon arrival, I learned that the librarian from last year was no longer with us. Instead, there sat an old man, of an age in which he likely remembered colored water fountains, who mumbled something about being a temporary librarian but that all he could do was sit there. So, I went to the Principal who at said self-congratulatory meeting annouced that he was the facilities manager for the building. Except that apparently the library is not included in said facilities, oh no, for that I needed to go to the 3rd floor, find that floor's principal's secretary and fill out a reserve request. They needed two weeks notice even though the students had only arrived yesterday. Oh yeah and the form needed a prinicpal's signature. Sigh.

Day Five was uneventful except that it brought on the first two "hallway talks" with two children who will prove to test my patience to my last, weakened, raw nerve. That and already I feel underslept and uninspired.