Tuesday, April 18, 2000
This week is going by painfully slow. I came to school around 7 this morning for an early morning faculty meeting. I think it is stupid as shit to have a meeting at 7 in the morning, but hey, that's why they don't pay me the big bucks.

The meeting begins with me having a major headache and the principal getting up and saying, 'if you don't want to be at Shitsville, then put in a transfer request.' What a fucking asshole! Why the sudden change in philosophy? He sure dragged his feet signing my transfer the first time around, so why bullshit us? He then says that 'Shitsville is not the building, but the people in it, so don't badmouth our school to other people.' Yeah, right. We should sidestep any inappropriate comments about this shitty dump of a place. That way people won't really know what goes on here.

The media tech guy came to my room finally today with two new computers. They were supposed to be installed 5 months ago at the time the school was wired for the internet. However, the computers that were in the room at the time could not be hooked up because they did not have ethernet cards inside. The school thus paid like 10k to wire the facility. It took over a year to do and still we are not hooked up to the net. Shitsville really reeks. We will see how long it takes to run the cables to the computers now they are in the room. I wonder if the computers will even be there in a few weeks. Some computers were ordered, but without monitors. That is like the library ordering books about States of the US, but only getting 23 out of the 50 State Books. So kids, you can do research on North Dakota, but not South Dakota…

My headache grew and grew until I could no longer handle it. I went to the office and told the principal I had a migraine and I was going to leave immediately. He tells me that I will have to wait an hour and a half, even though they have substitutes sitting in the office doing nothing. I nod my head, knowing there is no fucking way I'm going to stay that long. He refers me to the AP of Curriculum who tells me that I have to track down a sub in a room on the other side of campus and I will have to hand deliver to him my lesson plans. When I tell her the plans are on my desk AND written on the board, she tells me, 'that's not enough, this guy is not too bright and may not be able to give your lesson plans.' I guess the lesson here is that he is good enough to be a sub because he breathes, but not smart enough to deliver a lesson. I wonder where the fuck they even get the balls to dig these people up from. Exasperated, I left for the day and told her to figure it out - after all, she is responsible for coordinating subs. Not me. I nearly barfed on my way out the door and slept all afternoon.

Wednesday, April 19, 2000
It was a little rocky going back to school today. I was feeling like I really couldn't stand being there, and I was unable to control my emotional response to the same old crap all over again.

The media tech guy came to my room to view the work done on the new computers. He tells me that the computers have been at the school for 2 years locked up in a closet and never taken out of the box until yesterday. 2 fucking years! The computers are nicely placed on the desks in the back of the room, but are missing 3 main things. No cables running to the wall to be plugged into the net, no mouse and no keyboard. I ask him when this is going to be remedied, and he tells me that the principal has a 'master plan.' I can't wait to hear this one…

He tells me that the principal has set it up so that when you want to use the computer, you have to check out a keyboard from the library and sign it out in order to use it, AND… that all approvals have to be made by him personally. I couldn't stand it any longer.

I begin yelling and blasting the media tech guy and tell him in not so many words that the idea is one of the dumbest I've ever heard of. I ask him if he questioned this 'master plan' and he tells me that he can't question the wisdom of the principal. I tell him that if he says nothing, the principal thinks that this is a great idea and that it is incumbent upon him to tell the poor prick to put the fucking crack pipe down and get back to reality. I yell out, 'why doesn't he just keep the fucking computers down in the library too, so we can just cart the whole motherfucker up at one time…that way he can still have control over the whole fucked up thing.' It falls on deaf ears. The tech guy doesn't know what to say.

Later, I am escorting several students to the library during lunch. Although over 98% of our kids are eligible for a free lunch, over half don't even bother to eat the lunch. Usually they go to this area called 'spill out' which is really like a mini prison camp. Some kids just wander around the school. As I walk the kids to the library, Mr. Dickless principal himself asks me where I am taking these kids. I explain to him that they are going to do research in the library. He asks me, 'Are you going to be in there with them?' I tell him no, and he repsonds by telling me that they can't be in the library then. I ask him, 'since when do students have to have a chaperone with them in the library?' He answers, 'Today, from now on, during lunchtime.' So I turn to my kids and in a loud voice I tell them, 'I guess you will just have to come some other time to complete your schoolwork.' I walk away totally disgusted by Shitsville's head Doodie.

In the meantime, I haven't heard from the new high school so I am a little tense and upset. Why can't people just return a simple fucking phone call. I hate that shit.

The only positive aspect of the day was that a number of my kids came up to me and asked me how I was feeling today. They remarked that they had missed me yesterday. Even the janitor bitched about the fact that I was absent because at the end of the day, my room looked like a bomb hit it. He bitched to the principal that he had to clean up the room more than usual. I try to help this guy out and hold my kids after most days to sweep and clean up, but I guess a sub doesn't really give a shit. Or maybe the kids don't know how to clean up without their regular teacher asking them to.

Several parents of the worst kids showed up today and asked the eternal question: 'How my baby be doin?'
Well lady, your kid has no grades, skips class, and shows no effort.
'So he be passin then?'
No ma'am, he won't be passing…
'So you sayin that a lil' mo' effort and he be good to go?'
Whatever…

Thursday, April 20, 2000
There ain't nothing like a totally fucked up day to head into a teacher workday. I'm really glad tomorrow is a workday, because this place is driving me nuts.

To start off, the morning comes and the One Eyed Newt Herself, happens to see me in the hallway. She approaches and casually mentions that there are auditors in the building. She says that she realized she was supposed to notify me in writing that my lesson plans and grade book would be audited, but 'now I'm letting you know.' She rolls her one eye at me and scoots off.

Sure enough, the auditors came. Their visit was brief and luckily I had all of the proper documentation they needed. I think. Anyway, they left after about five minutes of intense scrutiny.

Then, an hour later, the principal walks in and asks to see my lesson plans. He has never done this before and the only assumption that I can make is that he just got fucked by the auditors and is now trying to cover up his ass for not watching what he is supposed to. After a quick conference with another teacher, I find that the principal did the same thing to him too.

But in retrospect, I am kind of pissed off. If these fuckers in the office had done things right in the first place, the teachers would feel a bit more prepared for this kind of thing. No one digs an audit.

A teacher related to me two very tragic stories about his kids today that really paints the picture of misery and suffering that our kids go through. First, Freddie was a student who was on an out of town field trip just begging the sponsors of the trip to stop so he could see his father whom he had not seen in 3 years. The child was nervous and finally stopped at a payphone to call his father to tell him he was nearby. The father relayed to the child that his truck was broken and there was no way he could make it to see his child. Freddie is now totally heartbroken and is angry at everyone on the trip. Freddie is experiencing firsthand how much frustration is going to be in his life as long as he wants his father to be a part of it.

The second story is more tragic. A girl approached my colleague to tell him that she had been out of school for a while because her mother was in jail. During this time she had been placed in a foster home with 8 other young girls. She relayed to the teacher that the man in the foster home had touched her breasts and stuck his finger up her ass. She then asked the teacher, 'if I lived with you, you wouldn't do that to me, would you?' The teacher quickly assured the child that he would not and tried to move the child out of the foster home. The department of social services claimed that the best thing to do was to keep the child in the home, so as not to disturb what they considered to be a 'reliable foster situation.' The teacher then tells me that the girl also told him that there are 'tons of pictures of naked teenage girls around the house holding the male in the household.' Why doesn't social services investigate this shit??? And what is more amazing, is that the child believes that this behavior is normative.

Shitsville is a place that Alice in Wonderland might call normal.