Friday - August 27, 1999
School has not even started yet, but it already feels like the year has begun. I returned to school for my second year of teaching with a wealth of experience: I was no rookie. As a second year teacher at Shitsville Middle School, to return is a daunting task. Most teachers split after doing 'time' at Shitsville. It is in the middle of one of the worst neighborhoods of Little Rock; Crack houses and projects surround the school. But I am a lifer…at least for now.

It only took about 2 hours for the gossip mill to begin. A new administrator was appointed to handle the Assistant Principal duties. The lady appointed was previously a paraprofessional who had been at the school for over ten years. I had always thought of Betty, the appointee, as a really cool person, but the rumor spread told to me was that she was the principal's current girlfriend. The lady who told me this rumor, does have a hidden agenda however. Last year she was missing about $4,000.00 from some funds which she helped raise for her students. The principal and her definitely did not see eye to eye on this issue, with the principal nearly refusing to reimburse the children for the losses. Either way, Betty is a fine addition as far as I am concerned.

Yesterday, I was treated to lunch by the 8th Grade Administrator. This year, I am a team leader, which means that I have to attend meetings and organize some of the other teachers together. Anyway, the AP who took us to lunch basically ripped into a number of teachers and spoke quite openly about several staff members' abilities and shortcomings. Needless to say, it was quite a lunch.

By the time the afternoon rolled around, they gave out the class lists and rolls - to see which kids are gonna be in my class. I'm teaching mostly 8th Graders, but I have one section of 7th Graders. I showed the list of my 7th Grade kids to a colleague asking him if he knew any of the kids. The response I got was 'Oh…Oh My God…Oh My…No…You've Got to be Kidding Me…They put all of these kids in THE SAME class???' I guess the school year is going to get stranger…

Tuesday August 31
The second day of school has come and gone, and all I can say is that there is only 178 more days of school. The first day was a typical Shitsville day with two twenty minute periods sandwiching a large three plus hour period. Don't the realize that this shit is cruel to both the kids and teachers. Hell… I told my kids to get up and walk around for a bit, 'cause three hours is just too damn long. As usual, Mr. Miller, the principal, didn't come through on his promise to give me a copy code. This administration, and particularly the principal is full of tough talk and a bullshit walk. If the kids need the behavior contracts, then give me the damn copy code.
I asked Mr. Harris, the 8th grade assistant principal, yesterday again to remind Mr. Miller about the copying that needed to be done and his exact words were, "I already told his girlfriend the message yesterday." Damn, I guess the rumor about Betty must be true if he spoke so boldly. Today I asked Miller about the code again and all he told me was that the copier is broken in the media center. I asked him about the copier in the office and he said, "Oh no, no one gets a code for that." Like it really matters where you make the copies. It is the little things like this that really piss me the fuck off.

As usual, the kids are a trip. The kids have been pretty cool with the exception of the horrible class of 7th Graders, which is full of a bunch of assholes. Some of these kids I know already are going to be spending time out of school in the next week or two if they don't shape up.

So far, the only problem has been lunchtime. The school is not designed to hold 1500 kids; its built for like 900 or so. As a result there are 5 lunches. My kids eat earlier than Pre-K children do - at 10:40 AM! The cafeteria doesn't cook food there, they bring it in from other schools, so as a result lunchtime is a fucked up experience. But so is just about everything else at Shitsville. I have some classes with 43 children in them and they keep adding more. When I told Mr. Miller that the class with 43 was a gifted class, and that it might be wise to split the class up, his answer was, "Maybe they all won't show." Prick.

Friday, September 3, 1999
The first week of school is over. Only 35 more to go. I had a better week after Wednesday when I was able to call a bunch of parents from the 7th Graders that I teach. The 7th Graders were visited by two different administrators and still acted like a bunch of clowns. Most parents I spoke to were supportive and promised me that their children would behave in school. This remains to be seen. I spoke to one elderly Grandmother who could barely hear and speak properly on the phone. Her grandson is a really bratty kid named Brian. When I explained her grandchild's poor behavior in school, she asked me, "Do ya'll want me to keep the boy outta school?" I was so tempted to say, "Fuck Yes!," but instead, I just told the woman to speak to her grandson and hung up. No wonder this child has problems. An administrator told me that this child has been taking medication to curb his violent tendencies, but was 'feeling up the 'lil children in the neighborhood' so the medicine was discontinued.

I am feeling a bit of success already with some of my 8th Graders. Getting these kids to learn how to read is a key goal of mine this year, because most of these kids read very poorly - about on a 4th Grade level. Today, during a reading exercise, one of the kids was so inspired that he actually said, 'You are the best teacher.' It really made my day, but now that I think back on it, this is the same child who told me that he had a bomb in his bookbag on the first day of school.

I finally got the copycode that I asked for, but the copy machine is broken. That's Shitsville for ya. Anyway, They play this blaring music on the morning announcements and they constantly speak at top volumes when they come on the air. Sometimes, no…usually they forget to turn off the announcements, so you can hear them banter in the office for about 10 minutes following the announcements. They come on the air and say things like, "On tomorrow…" And that is an administrator. Obviously, grammar is not the strong point.

I looked at the roster today and noted Jenny Lightbourne's name on the roster. She is still in the 8th Grade this year, but hasn't showed up at school yet. It reminded me of last year when her father showed up to school and insisted that he "did not want his child in the 7th Grade again." An administrator told him, "I can guarantee you that won't happen." Last year Jenny was in the 8th Grade. It is a good thing we have strong parents in this community.

Thursday September 9, 1999
This week started off on a sour note. After reflection, I think my expectations were and are much higher this year, so I'm not really enjoying things as much as I did last year. We began at 7:30 AM on Tuesday morning. Personally, I think that's a super shitty time to start a meeting, especially considering it is the day we returned from a long weekend. As usual, I showed up on time, but many others did not including our wonderful department chair, who I think is a total bitch and a lousy administrator. Anyway, we sat in this bullshit infested meeting and then we were asked to give up part of our teacher workday or come in on a Saturday for an organizational meeting to ensure that we are all, within our departments, meeting certain benchmarks. I vigorously protested claiming that informally we all know approximately where we are anyway, and the curriculum mandates we teach certain things anyway. Not to mention that most of these meetings are basically full of shit and go nowhere. So as you can see, I was ready to battle.

After debating this idea for a while, it was shelved and we moved on to other 'bureaucratic bullshit.' I was shocked when I came into 'academia' if one can stretch the truth a bit and call where I work 'academia', for its mostly bureaucratic nature. Most of the problems I find come from the adults in charge. The kids are really not the problem, per se.

The focus this year is on removing this school from the deficient list by doing well on a standardized test. The problem is, according to government officials, an issue of accountability. However, the students at our school will almost always be considered a 'D' or 'F' when it comes to grading them, because of the many disadvantages these children face. They are promoted through elementary school with little parental or community support, and generally speaking come to me with few of the tools most 8th graders take for granted. So now, I'm supposed to shit in my pants and worry about these children being given vouchers and sent to private schools and losing my job. I ask you: Even with the voucher money, can these children afford a private school? What school would accept these kids. Doesn't this violate the wall of separation between church and state when we publicly subsidized parochial education by handing out free money. Moreover, Is this test really the answer. Most in the trenches will yell out a hearty 'FUCK NO.' But we are stuck with this shitty test.

Now the focus is entirely on this FCAT test that most of my 8th Graders can barely read. The school thought it would be a great idea to give out practice tests to each student every 4 weeks to measure progress. Unfortunately, the each teacher must now grade these tests and chart individual progress. The issue on this day (Tuesday AM) was how to adminster and grade the test. However, nothing was said about precisely how to grade the test. The grader was supposed to determine whether or not a student had 'mastered' a concept, but the concepts were not grouped together on the test requiring the grader to search the test for each item, a painstaking task. In addition, it was unclear as to whether or not if a student had less than a perfect score on the essay section this would qualify the student as having mastered the concept. Moreover, exams were incorrectly given out, i.e., Math tests were given out to teachers instead of Reading tests, and no official announcement was made to begin the test, as had been done in the past. But this is Shitsville and we do things back-asswards!

On top of it all, my 7th Graders started acting up again today. I had to write three referrals to students who blatantly were disruptive. These children had already had parental contact from me by phone or in person. However, the new 7th Grade principal gave me back the referrals indicating parental contact needed to be made. She didn't even bother to read the fucking referrals, but if she had, she would have noted that I indicated that contact had previously been made. Then she stated to me that she 'hadn't eaten her lunch and couldn't really talk now.' Her lack of lunch is not my problem, and neither will be her unwillingness to contact parents in her administrative capacity after they have violated her recently christened 'zero tolerance' policy of not standing for any misconduct in school. Fuck her and the fucking attitude she rode in on.