Friday, February 4

It was a long week filled with lots of wonderful teaching moments. I especially enjoyed breaking up 2 fights, having a student come into my room and call me a 'bitch whore,' and sending several kids home for a few days for general rudeness and poor conduct. All in all, it was a beautiful week.
I only had three brief encounters with the Monster from Hell this week. She asked me to speak to her in her office about a scheduled event that was cancelled the week prior. When she asked me if it would be rescheduled, I told her that it would not. This is primarily because I just can't fucking stand her and hope that maggots chew on her brain in her sleep. Thus, if the event is cancelled, I don't have to deal with the little brain inside her little pathetic head.

The second encounter was over suspending a student. For the first offense, the student got 3 days in-school suspension. For the next offense, which was the same offense, she got 1 day of in-school suspension… so much for the escalation of consequences.

When I examine this pattern of not really acting on referrals or disciplining children, it makes me feel like the future is going to be very hard around this place. For example, next year, when most of these kids are in the 8th grade, they are going to feel like they can get away with murder because of the lax treatment for their past transgressions simply because the AP is incompetent and can't do her work.

The third encounter was merely an extension of the stupid mindset that this person has. She left a note in my box to call a parent and inform them of their child's progress. However, I had never even seen nor met this child, so I told her that on the return note. She responds by asking me to call anyway and tell the parent that 'I have no idea who this child is and cannot inform them of their child's progress.' Exasperated, I picked up the phone and told the parent that the reason why I was calling was because the AP asked me to call and tell them that 'I have no idea who their child is and cannot inform them of their child's progress.' Fucking a waste of time!

However, the week did have some touching moments. The principal visited my room nearly each day to monitor progress on his new FCAT Only agenda. He thought it would be a good idea to assign another English teacher to my room so that we could both cram the FCAT down our kids' throats. My kids grew suspicious and told me that they would do their work because, as one kid put it, 'We don't want the principal to fire you or get you in trouble because we aren't doing our best.' I love it when the kids are overprotective of their beloved teacher. Apparently some kids were so into the work that there were at least 4 kids who had never turned in an assignment this year who suddenly started to work a bit. I was surprised. Several students also came to a tutoring session to get help on their homework. Either mama threatened to take away the sega or nintendo, or someone had a come to jesus realization about the importance of not getting an F in school. Either way, it made me feel good.

On the other hand, I had a parent - teacher conference with someone who just came in and started yelling about how poor the school was. Even though I agreed with the woman, I couldn't really help her since I don't have her son as a student. She was just sent to the wrong room and thought it was bitching time. Shitsville rocks.
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Wednesday, February 09, 2000
The week has started off on a great note. Yesterday about 2 P.M., an announcement was made that 'Ten cars in the parking lot had their lights on.' This is the code that there is an intruder on campus and that rooms should be in a lockdown status. I was in the hallway at this time, preparing to meet some kids in the library for a tutoring session. I kept on thinking that after Columbine, the library was the worst place to be. I ran to my room, because I had a key to the door and got inside. The teacher inside the room was relieved that I was there, because she was genuinely frightened. I immediately told the kids to be quiet, but they just would not shut up. It got so bad that the teacher in the room told the kids if they were not quiet, she would leave them outside for bait for the intruder. To me, this was some heavy statement to lay on a bunch of kids at a time like this. Then, she decides to give the kids an assignment to 'normalize' the situation. The title of the reading passage, ironically was called 'The Deadly Trip.' Several kids were openly outraged at this point calling out to the teacher that she was truly fucking with their heads at the wrong time. Thankfully, the situation was over in minutes. A person who had been running from the cops after an accident had raced through the school to lose the police.

Yesterday, I'm in the library and I tell a child to read George Orwell's Animal Farm for extra credit. The kid asked me what it was about and I told him that it was about animals that talked and took over a farm. His reaction; "Is it a true story?" I could barely restrain myself.

As I left the room yesterday to tell the class next door that I was going to have a tutoring session, a fight broke out in my room. A young boy and girl were slugging it out and punching the shit out of each other. I felt terrible that I wasn't there to stop it, but these kids had a fight brewing between them for some time and I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later.

Today, I had to discipline several kids because they were trying to start fights with other students. Some of the best phrases I heard today were, 'I'll punch you in your mouth, motherfucker,' and 'I wasn't cursing at the teacher, I just called the girl a whore and a bitch.' The best one of the day was when I asked the girl to remove her beeper because it was going off in class after I had asked her not to bring it back to class about a month ago. Her response was, 'This is a different beeper, so I followed your instructions.' Kind of reminds me of myself when I was 14…
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Wednesday, February 16, 2000
We began administering the FCAT exam yesterday, supposedly the true measuring stick of academic achievement. My students did terrible. Instead of answering the questions, they wrote essays on their own topics. Some just bubbled in circles for the hell of it and went to sleep. What a total waste of time…

Safety of the testing materials was a major concern, so they forced us to count the materials prior to getting them on Tuesday. However, today, they just told us to take the materials and they would just get us to sign out for them prior to handing the materials out. The testing was supposed to begin at 9:30, but they didn't come around to my room to get my signature until 9:40. Since they made such a big deal out of handing out the materials prior to signing, I waited till I signed and then began the test around 9:50. Later, the AP came to my room and wanted to know why we weren't finished testing. When I told her why, she still could not understand that it was her instructions which prohibited us from handing out the material until we signed for them. So they decided to let all kids around the school take a bathroom break while our room and other rooms were still testing. This is considering that this is supposedly some all important test and they just let the floodgates open to let screaming kids run down the hall and yell stuff like, 'Fuck the FCAT test.' On top of it all, they scheduled 4 hours of testing with a 10 minute break in the middle. This was obviously done to maximize efficiency of the student's scores.

In other news, I sat down with the principal on Monday to discuss a policy question that had piqued my interest from a recent news article on education. The principal actually told me that, 'Going to an integrated school was one of the worst experiences of my life.' Moreover, he told me that 'Due to integration, schools had crumbled beyond despair' I found it hard to believe that this person was an educator in an integrated school.

The week would not be complete without some run in with Madame Head in her Ass. She has this policy where you must call a parent prior to writing a referral. This was a slam dunk case where a student had a long history of being disruptive, rude, disrespectful, and downright nasty. So I called the parent and made contact for like the sixth time this year. I turn in the referral to the Asshole and she calls me into her office and insists that the alleged incident may have been fabricated by me to get the girl into trouble. At this point, I am just so over her that I wait as she calls the parent. Why am I waiting, I wonder? So she calls the parent and makes me wait for 15 minutes in her office until the school bell rings signifying the end of the day. She is still on the phone and I tell her I am going to leave, because my workday is over and I really can't see the point of sitting in her office anymore - especially after I had already called the parent and told them the situation. The little bitch turns to me and tells me that my behavior is inappropriate and asks me to wait 3 more minutes. I look at the clock and tell her that in 3 minutes I will walk out of the door. She snarls and gets back on the phone and tells the parent that she would like to 'encourage them to dispute the allegations in writing and to meet with the principal to discuss her concerns.' Three minutes are up and I tell her to have a nice day, but what I'm really thinking is to tell her to fuck off. I can't wait till the end of the year.
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Thursday, February 17, 2000
Today is a day of reflection. As I think about the diversity in our school, the only thought I have is that there is lots of it. We have a librarian who yells at the kids constantly to get out of the library because they are trying to check out books they will never return. There is a teacher who has yelled at me during a fire drill to get in line, and there is a teacher who when kicked by a student today in the knee asked the student in a loud voice, "Are you fucking crazy dude?" Upon reflection, the teacher who yelled at me during a fire drill is pretty darned wacko. A student told her she was gay and she yelled back, 'you wish I was gay so you could have sex with me.' Diversity is truly everywhere at Shitsville.

Today, some students were trying to get another student to say things in Spanish. Unfortunately for this non-Spanish speaker, he uttered some forbidden words in class and actually told me to shut my fucking mouth in Spanish. His claim was that 'they told me to say these words.' …and did they also tell you to stick your head up your ass prior to speaking or was that your own idea?

Another student today insisted that most of the class was, 'jacking off.' Others sensitive to this vibe corrected him and told me that there were some students who were not jacking off but, 'beating their meat.' Puberty rocks.