Wednesday, November 6, 2002
It always seems like a lot transpires between writings. I have intentions of writing, but life always seems to get in the way.

In the last few weeks I have seen the kid's conduct deteriorate substantially. A major fight broke in out my room the other day over one kid calling another kid 'soft.' What started as punching ended up with the students rolling over the tops of desks and students running to each side of the room like the parting of the sea in the Ten Commandments. One kid admitted, in front of the principal, that he started it. He was suspended. Then the parent of this kid confronts me in the lot the next day and wants to know why her son was suspended.

Our psycho AP who assaulted a police officer is back in full force. Today he told me 'in confidence' that 'the school is run by racists and they are out to get him cause he is white.' And all this time I was thinking that they were out to get him cause he is a total nut job.

Each day when I walk down the hall I notice two things about the security guards. They eat constantly and sleep short naps afterwards. One of our security guards is named 'Chips' because of her fondness of potato chips. After engorging on a bag or three of hot fries, she takes naps right in front of the office. Another security guard always has a plate of food under his chair. He sits all day because he hurt his knee. He wears dark sunglasses and often it is impossible to tell if he is awake or even alive. Every once in a while he tells the kids to get out of the halls.

The county's AP pool opened up this week. I've been waiting for 5 months to get my certification in the mail. It arrived a day before the deadline to submit my paperwork for the pool. I took my papers downtown to the office and an extremely pleasant woman took my application, put it in a folder and said 'if you have everything, we may call you a day before the interviews, but I can't be sure…but if you don't have everything complete, we will send you a memo a few months from now.

Thanks, Bitch! I wouldn't expect anything less from the district.

The teacher's union is now celebrating their successful negotiation campaign to limit the choice to only one healthcare provider with an 85% premium increase. Fucking assholes.

There is a teacher at our school who bitches each time you get a paper from the printer in her room. She acts like she owns the damn thing. She yelled at me yesterday in front of the kids and told me I was being totally disrespectful for picking up paper out of the printer. I replied that if it was a problem, then perhaps the printer should be placed in a warmer environment. She flipped out.

The department head yelled at me in a meeting last week for laughing. Can you imagine being yelled at for fucking laughing? It was a head on collision two years in the running. Everyone turned to look at me. I slowly looked up and told her that everyone in the room was tired of being talked 'at' rather than 'with' and that she should learn how to lead by consulting rather than ordering. Her entire tone changed after my retort.

In some ways, I am totally sick of the adults that surround the educational environment. They totally pollute the atmosphere with their nasty attitudes. It is hard to remember sometimes that all that peripheral stuff doesn't matter. It is all about the kids.