testing, testing....

One more marking period to go. One gauntlet of stste-mandated testing in the way. This is going to test my patience with test preparation and what I see as something more worthwhile: actually teaching my students something new, instead of spending what may amount to the rest of the year on review.

They aren't particularly excited about it. I guess I ought to try my best to make it exciting, but who among us really wants to listen to their boring teacher reteach stuff we already learned and learned well?! I could get up on my soapbox and rant and rave about it all, but I know it ain't going away. Only way I can reduce or eliminate testing is to invent a better mousetrap. To a bureaucrat, this testing assault proves everything. To an educator, the testing proves that the bureaucrats know nothing. Maybe I ought to become one someday and shake up their view of the world.

Is it Juneteenth yet?

quoted

i subscribe to a few weekly finance newsletters from various newspapers. the one i enjoy the most is written by michelle singletary of the washington post. last week, she asked for some reader responses to a dear prudence column about being underemployed with a college degree. granted, i'm not underemployed, but i do think from time to time about switching career tracks. i responded anyway. here's the context:

Working It Out
A grocery store clerk was wrestling with customer and colleague questions about why he's bagging groceries with a college degree.

The letter made me wonder if others were employed at jobs that weren't satisfying just so they could maintain an income. Here's what some of you wrote:

M. Johnson of Orinda, Calif., says that like the grocery store clerk, he was passed over for a job because he was overqualified and they were fearful he'd resign for another opportunity.

"But more alarming is why they wouldn't bring me on and then hope to create something for me where I could continue to add significant value to the enterprise far beyond my cost to them. Shortsightedness? In this market? Unfortunately," Orinda wrote.

Teacher Ben J. from Arlington, Va., said he's "content to have a job that I enjoy, even if it feels like it controls my life at times."

One Maryland reader, who asked that her name not be used, said that she can "identify completely with the grocery store clerk." She graduated from a top school and took a fellowship that paid $26,000.

"I loved my job, but I would often skip meals just to make sure I was making my bills," she wrote. "I found work at a high-end retail store in sales and actually make significantly more than before. But I still get asked all the time why I'm not using my degree or what I'm doing there. Sometimes I feel like responding, 'I enjoy eating lunch.'"

Joseph Zairo of Pa., puts it all in perspective: "I get up at 4:30 a.m. and as I am getting ready for work I think about and plan for the day. I try to make things interesting. Work is work."

"at least it's monday..."

a sentence that passes the lips of working stiffs oh-so-rarely. the p.e. teacher said this very sentence today. it got me wondering why. shouldn't we be thankful for each new week? the opportunity to contribute to the good of society? to do something we love?

problem is, no matter how much we love our jobs, the majority of us love our leisure time more. as the bumper sticker goes, a bad day fishing is better than a good day working.

in alachua county, we had early dismissal on wednesdays. those short days broke up the week nicely. here in fairfax, that day is monday. starting off the week with a short monday makes friday afternoon more bearable. i can skimp on prep then, leave on time, and relax on the weekend. the rest of the week still seems to drag as i tend to live for the weekend.

if you are indeed fortunate enough to truly love your job and all the people you work with, consider yourself truly blessed. i need some career advice so that monday is just another day in the sequence instead of the highest number in my perpetual countdown to the weekend...

that's assault, brotha!

no, not me. at least not today. one of the subs at our school was bitten this morning by one of the special ed kids. this little guy is a biter. he's bitten several staff members this year. today, he drew blood--through a sweatshirt. was he sent home? no. does he know it's wrong? they say he does. he's in a self-contained classroom with few kids and many adults. he's getting as much help as is possible.

i've been assaulted twice in five years. in both cases, the assailants in question need more help than is available in a regular classroom. due to the glory of mainstreaming and my "luck"(?) as a male in the school, they were my charges. first case, i'd figured out that the easiest way to calm him when he melted down was to wrap him up. he got a hand loose and frogged me right in the forearm. i had a knot for two days. i think he was sent home that day, but not suspended. in third grade, he was baker acted twice for being a danger to himself and others. he's been in a mental institution for a few years now. most recent one had an alphabet soup of diagnoses. his meltdown quickly deteriorated into shoe throwing, hitting himself, screaming, and scratching me after i removed him from the room. same week, he stomped on another staff member's foot and had a nuclear meltdown damn near every day. sent home? not a chance.

if i had to venture a guess, these are things that my mother never had to deal with as a young teacher starting out, nor were they tolerated by the administration. the defective policy of mainstreaming in all cases hadn't been dreamed up by policy wonks with no basis in the realities of the classroom. in a real classroom, the teacher spends more time and energy on the needs of those few than the rest of the class. sure, some of the neglected will learn in spite of the teacher. the middle majority suffers, while the teacher frets day and night about how to deal with that child and get back to teaching the rest of the class.

workplace safety is something that i never thought i'd have to worry about. i work with kids for God's sake! how far does it have to go before it starts getting better?

new names at a new job

has this ever happened to you?

you start a new job. people introduce themselves to you. they more or less automatically assume that you know their names immediately. as time passes, it becomes more and more awkward to ask, "what's your name again?" you try and try and try to remember this one person's name: overhear it in conversation, wait for one of the kids to say it, steal a glance at their id badge. nothing works. you know if you hear it one time, you'll remember it, but damned if you never do!

yeah, me too. rarely is she ever in the same place as the other teachers and instructional ass'ts, so i can't pick it up there. can't ask one of the students in the room she works in, they're a little less than communicative. tried stealing a glance at her i.d. badge, it's always turned the wrong way. in fact, i'm not so sure that it can be seen. the part that makes me feel the worst is that she greets me by name every morning. we talk several times a week while her 4 little charges play on the playground with my 23 rugrats.

i'm a terrible person!

quick recap

it was brought to my attention that i have not written in a while. this has been quite a busy week. here i lay on the floor at lee's apartment in chattanooga with mostly new gainesvillain climbers that i don't know. quick flight, hilarity on the trip from the ATL with palmer, hanna, and the one and only c.p.

anyhow, back to the task at hand.

tuesday evening was spent in the back of my truck, under a sleeping bag, on my crash pad watching the planes land at reagan. i'm not talking crop dusters. i'm talking about commercial jets, 50 feet or less off the deck, bright landing lights illuminating the world ever-so-briefly. very awesome.

wednesday. work, eh. happy hour after work, better. gym bouldering session, best. now mind you, this is before i even got home. i think the grades are a bit soft in the gym. at least sending 3 V6s and flashing 2 V5s in one night is good for my self esteem. we'll see how it translates in the ever-flaccid grades at LRC tomorrow morning. quiet evening spent at home, laughing at eddie murphy and arsenio hall.

thursday. i have come to the realization that i cannot be complacent at work. ever changing, always 100%. i'm not content to be mediocre. something's gotta give: sacrificing my free time activities, and consequently my sanity; or sacrificing my beliefs about my own work ethic. 9:30 Club is like a 2 story common grounds with a pro sound system. sister hazel played a great set. all the stress dissipated as soon as i walked in the door of the club. i have unplanned-edly wound up going to 2 shows in the district, both for gainesville bands.

and back to the present time. time to hit the...carpet. yeah, i'm crashing on the floor. this is what i do for a vacation. i think there's something wrong with me...

work

i've been kicking around why i'm so dissatisfied with education lately. there are the myriad reasons that i've been venting about for the last 4+ years. you know them well, especially if you live them as a teacher. those are the reasons that i may try to change if i have my way in my future.

here's some more personal reasons that became glaring on my move up to the big city.

1) the lack of men. in college, the joke was, "you're just an education major to meet women." that couldn't have been further from the truth because the majority of the teachers-to-be had no designs on ever dating, much less marrying another teacher. now, i get the standard, "aww! that's so cute," which is not necessarily the best way to make a female a) respect you, or b) date you. i didn't have nearly as big a problem with it in gainesville. i had my own friends outside of work, and the women i worked with were anti-women to some extent. they could talk about football. i never felt overwhelmed by the number of women surrounding me at any time. maybe it's because i got along so well with the men that i used to work with. i find i have little in common with many men who are in teaching or around schools, and it really gets tiring having the same tired conversations with the ones i encounter outside of my school.

2) i don't know if this is a teaching thing per se, but i don't like feeling like i'm married to my job. this might just be a growing up, living in a city thing. there is a much greater expectation up here to be constantly connected to the school and parents up here. i'm already putting in 10 hour days more often than not. (my colleagues rarely talk about lives outside of school. i barely have time for one!) for those kind of hours and that kind of commitment, maybe i should have a few more chips to stack. then again, that's not exactly why i got into teaching...