Idealistic
Yeah, I’ll change the world-
put power as knowledge into each boy and girl.
Hurdles are nothin’
we’ll soar above them,
roaring we will beat our
enemies—we’ll out race them.
Slay all the dragons
of poverty and racism.
We’ll win, World --you bring it on.
I’m armed with enough love to charm
any single demon that walks in
will be unarmed.
Classroom of misfits,
ain’t what I see,
We’re a band of heroes,
Olympian family
I’ll get ‘em all
motivated to grow
no excuses, high expectations
and we won’t plateau.
Shadows of others
won’t bring me down
deaf to the naysayers
whose rainbows have turned brown.
Realistic
Damn, this job is hard
the hippie’s retreated
a warrior’s in charge
still full of love, job’s full of reward
but the bounce in her step’s
been replaced with a sword.
If something’s not working,
I guess I’ll work harder,
these kids still need me,
and I can’t feed ‘em fodder.
They still deserve the best
that I can offer,
lessons from Midas
served on a gold platter.
Still, I’m starting to feel like
I can’t do enough to matter
Want to adopt all these sons and daughters.
Pessimistic
Remember the days I thought I
could do it all,
stormed into the schoolyard head high, walking tall.
But the world has chewed up my
babies and spit them out.
Drugs and pregnancy,
jail time and doubt.
They don’t believe what they did
just a year before, and they’ve got no one
to open up a door—
No assets, just asses leading them in the
wrong direction, and I couldn’t be there
to protect them.
And those in my room, graffiti and steal.
Call me a bitch,
don’t care how I feel.
Reeling, the tears glisten as they tell me
matter-of-factly
they don’t have to listen.
Still, I work harder through sobs,
as my boss tells me I’m not doing my job.
Five years now, and I’m the best teacher
yet, but feel wounded and poisoned
like a Vietnam vet.
But he must be right—so few call me mom.
They’d rather brawl in the hallways
and sound the alarms, spray paint
the bathroom and call to arms.
Throw up drunk in my room,
call me a cunt as tell me to
"Get back in my room.
Bitch, don’t you have some teaching to do?"
Excitement’s lost, stomach’s knotted
why am I trying when I can’t
accomplish?
Want to reach all, but teach to a few
the strong and aware,
Those who still see I love, and
how much I care.
For them, I walk tall and plan for each day
putting on a fake smile that’s
withered away.
Don’t want to admit it, am on the defense
but the naysayers now are starting
to make sense.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Support
Teaching has got to be one of the hardest jobs on the planet. I don't care what you say-- to be a good one, you have to be as smart as a doctor, as creative as an artist, as calmly argumentative as a lawyer, plus being insanely analytical, organized, flexible and a good communicator. You take a beating every day, and you only survive it if there is support.
If you're a surgeon, you have some pretty intense days. A lot rests in your hands, and I'm sure the pressure can be overwhelming. Yet, your environment is usually calm. The people you're helping are sedated. And when you ask for something, it is in your hand immediately. Your team is there to assist you, no questions asked and often times, there is more than one surgeon in the room. You have to be a well-oiled machine because a life is on the line. People treat you with high regard and assume you are good at your job, you are a professional. You have status. And money. Long days, always on call,probably constantly tired, and have to sometimes tell loved ones a person has passed. But you have support for all of those things.
In a classroom, it isn't just one life that's on the line. Its every single one. But because it can be a slow decay, we don't think of it as a life and death scenario. Yet, we could never blame the medical institution for thousands of people ending up in jail each year. Not so of education.
The people you're helping? Some are great-- brilliant lightning bolts of people. Yet, some don't want to be there, and can be apathetic or see you as the enemy instead of someone who wants to help them. When you ask for something, there may not be anything to give you. There is no money to get what you need. There aren't the resources. There is not time to collaborate and plan with your team. Your administrators are too busy to solve every problem on campus. You do not feel like a priority. You are an island on your own because every man is for himself, treading water, bleeding, surrounded by sharks, just trying to survive as the work gets piled, piled, piled on. And when you can't do everything alone, you're assumed to be either incompetent or insubordinate instead of what you probably are-- overwhelmed, exhausted, frantic, overworked and doing the best you can with what you have.
Some people in the community thank you, and take you in. Some people treat you as members of their family. Some people look at you like you're a saint for what you do for the money you receive, but even they have no idea what you deal with on a day to day basis. Others are shocked to find a "teacher who actually cares." Others think you're nuts for doing your job. Others assume you're probably not very smart, that you lecture all hour, that you're a glorified babysitter, that you're the reason this country is going down the drain. The lack of respect you get from just about everyone. The hours and hours and hours of work you put in after school hours are invisible, and people just tell you how lucky you are to have the summers off.
Yet, for all this, I know I want to stay in teaching. I am good at my job. Hell. I am great at my job. But, I am tired of being an island. People have told me over the last week that education sucks out a soul, that every school does this, but I don't believe it. I can't. I still have this tiny pinpoint of hope that says that somewhere there must be people who work together, are given time, are respected, are treated right, are paid right. Are taken care of.
I need to feel taken care of. Because right now, I am just falling apart.
If you're a surgeon, you have some pretty intense days. A lot rests in your hands, and I'm sure the pressure can be overwhelming. Yet, your environment is usually calm. The people you're helping are sedated. And when you ask for something, it is in your hand immediately. Your team is there to assist you, no questions asked and often times, there is more than one surgeon in the room. You have to be a well-oiled machine because a life is on the line. People treat you with high regard and assume you are good at your job, you are a professional. You have status. And money. Long days, always on call,probably constantly tired, and have to sometimes tell loved ones a person has passed. But you have support for all of those things.
In a classroom, it isn't just one life that's on the line. Its every single one. But because it can be a slow decay, we don't think of it as a life and death scenario. Yet, we could never blame the medical institution for thousands of people ending up in jail each year. Not so of education.
The people you're helping? Some are great-- brilliant lightning bolts of people. Yet, some don't want to be there, and can be apathetic or see you as the enemy instead of someone who wants to help them. When you ask for something, there may not be anything to give you. There is no money to get what you need. There aren't the resources. There is not time to collaborate and plan with your team. Your administrators are too busy to solve every problem on campus. You do not feel like a priority. You are an island on your own because every man is for himself, treading water, bleeding, surrounded by sharks, just trying to survive as the work gets piled, piled, piled on. And when you can't do everything alone, you're assumed to be either incompetent or insubordinate instead of what you probably are-- overwhelmed, exhausted, frantic, overworked and doing the best you can with what you have.
Some people in the community thank you, and take you in. Some people treat you as members of their family. Some people look at you like you're a saint for what you do for the money you receive, but even they have no idea what you deal with on a day to day basis. Others are shocked to find a "teacher who actually cares." Others think you're nuts for doing your job. Others assume you're probably not very smart, that you lecture all hour, that you're a glorified babysitter, that you're the reason this country is going down the drain. The lack of respect you get from just about everyone. The hours and hours and hours of work you put in after school hours are invisible, and people just tell you how lucky you are to have the summers off.
Yet, for all this, I know I want to stay in teaching. I am good at my job. Hell. I am great at my job. But, I am tired of being an island. People have told me over the last week that education sucks out a soul, that every school does this, but I don't believe it. I can't. I still have this tiny pinpoint of hope that says that somewhere there must be people who work together, are given time, are respected, are treated right, are paid right. Are taken care of.
I need to feel taken care of. Because right now, I am just falling apart.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Crushed
I'm starting to lose it.
I don't know what it is about this year, but the kids are tearing me down, bit by bit. The year started off just fine-- I liked all of my classes. Now I dread coming to school. I get sick to my stomach, and the stress of it all has caused my cold to stick around for over three weeks. My stomach has a constant pang and I'm starting to think I'm developing another pre-ulcer like I had when my parents got divorced a few years ago. I'm disgusted. Furious. Exhausted. I'm so stressed out I can't sleep, can't focus, can't even write the way I used to be able to.
One of my kids said the other day "Miss J, you NEVER get mad." I laughed because by the end of almost every day, I'm outraged. I've just gotten so good at hiding it, at keeping everything I'm feeling behind a concrete wall so that all they see is a blank expression or a forced smile when I want to scream and pull out all my hair. Take a deep breath and go help the kid who just laughed in my face and interrupted me 10 times in the last two minutes.
And a few of these kids just won't stop-- they swear at me. They tell me they don't have to listen to a fucking thing I say. They disrupt the class every. single. day. Every couple of minutes, there's something.
And if I ask them to move to a different spot in the classroom, or go to a different classroom until they're ready to learn, they take 10 minutes to get out-- creating a circus the whole time while swearing at me some more. They instigate. They start fights. They bully each other, and I don't mean the gimme-your-lunch-money bullying. No. They bring it online and smear each other's names, call each other whores and sluts and make up stories about who's slept with who. And then they come back to school and beat the crap out of each other because of the stories they created. 8th grade girls, screaming at each other as they're coming back from gym, calling each other bitches and telling each other to keep "their fucking legs closed."
So many of them don't care. Don't try. Just sit there. Absolutely no effort. No motivation, and all the incentives and reprimands in the world aren't doing anything. While I bust my butt every single day to give them something that's broken down to their level, and try to make it interesting if I can, with the resources I have....they crap all over it.
I asked a kid to rejoin my class-- he was wandering the halls, and he should have been at lunch. He starts swearing at me, muttering and cursing and acting like I just told him he was a worthless piece of... I'm sorry. Am I being unreasonable? Is it wrong of me to ask you to eat lunch with the rest of the class? To follow the same rules?
I've always been able to find something about each kid that I liked or that I respected. Maybe they weren't academically gifted, but made me laugh, could draw really well, were really helpful, had an athletic gift....something. I've always been able to find something so that no matter what, I could come back and be happy.
I'm having a really, really hard time doing that right now.
I don't know what it is about this year, but the kids are tearing me down, bit by bit. The year started off just fine-- I liked all of my classes. Now I dread coming to school. I get sick to my stomach, and the stress of it all has caused my cold to stick around for over three weeks. My stomach has a constant pang and I'm starting to think I'm developing another pre-ulcer like I had when my parents got divorced a few years ago. I'm disgusted. Furious. Exhausted. I'm so stressed out I can't sleep, can't focus, can't even write the way I used to be able to.
One of my kids said the other day "Miss J, you NEVER get mad." I laughed because by the end of almost every day, I'm outraged. I've just gotten so good at hiding it, at keeping everything I'm feeling behind a concrete wall so that all they see is a blank expression or a forced smile when I want to scream and pull out all my hair. Take a deep breath and go help the kid who just laughed in my face and interrupted me 10 times in the last two minutes.
And a few of these kids just won't stop-- they swear at me. They tell me they don't have to listen to a fucking thing I say. They disrupt the class every. single. day. Every couple of minutes, there's something.
And if I ask them to move to a different spot in the classroom, or go to a different classroom until they're ready to learn, they take 10 minutes to get out-- creating a circus the whole time while swearing at me some more. They instigate. They start fights. They bully each other, and I don't mean the gimme-your-lunch-money bullying. No. They bring it online and smear each other's names, call each other whores and sluts and make up stories about who's slept with who. And then they come back to school and beat the crap out of each other because of the stories they created. 8th grade girls, screaming at each other as they're coming back from gym, calling each other bitches and telling each other to keep "their fucking legs closed."
So many of them don't care. Don't try. Just sit there. Absolutely no effort. No motivation, and all the incentives and reprimands in the world aren't doing anything. While I bust my butt every single day to give them something that's broken down to their level, and try to make it interesting if I can, with the resources I have....they crap all over it.
I asked a kid to rejoin my class-- he was wandering the halls, and he should have been at lunch. He starts swearing at me, muttering and cursing and acting like I just told him he was a worthless piece of... I'm sorry. Am I being unreasonable? Is it wrong of me to ask you to eat lunch with the rest of the class? To follow the same rules?
I've always been able to find something about each kid that I liked or that I respected. Maybe they weren't academically gifted, but made me laugh, could draw really well, were really helpful, had an athletic gift....something. I've always been able to find something so that no matter what, I could come back and be happy.
I'm having a really, really hard time doing that right now.
Sunday, February 06, 2011
And I didn't even TEACH them anatomy!
I opened up a chem book to help a student understand one of the patterns on the periodic table. On the top, written in pen it said:
"Miss J has a coochie."
And then there was a drawing of a vagina.
Splayed open like ham in a grocery advertisement.
Not a penis. Not my ass. Thanks for drawing something new, kids. Three cheers for you.
"Miss J has a coochie."
And then there was a drawing of a vagina.
Splayed open like ham in a grocery advertisement.
Not a penis. Not my ass. Thanks for drawing something new, kids. Three cheers for you.
Dear Grad School
Dear Grad School,
This is no love poem, no ode or sonnet.
You are. Sucking out my soul. Like some demon vampire (but without sparkly skin or everlasting love), you ask more and more of me and leave me a withered shell, a wandering zombie, with puce crescents under puffy eyes and ulcers waiting menacingly in the shadows with acronyms aplenty. BICS, CALP, SEI, LEP, SIOP-- your dastardly thugs, all tattooed across my consciousness. You consume me until I can only blather on about pedagogy; Vygotsky haunts me, Piaget j-walks across my brain.
Ahh,I was a fool to think that by year five, I would have it all! That I would be ready to conquer you with my Medusa-like glare and Amazon precision. Even more foolish-- that I could do it in a year! Ha! I hear your laugh-- that mustache twirls as you tie me to the dual train tracks, the crossroads of higher pay and higher education. But at a price!
But-- what is that I see? A light, so far away, beckoning. Three and ten more weeks, and I will have you. In my clutches. You, nothing but a piece of paper which could smolder under my gaze and flutter like peppered moths into a blackened sky.
You will be mine.
This is no love poem, no ode or sonnet.
You are. Sucking out my soul. Like some demon vampire (but without sparkly skin or everlasting love), you ask more and more of me and leave me a withered shell, a wandering zombie, with puce crescents under puffy eyes and ulcers waiting menacingly in the shadows with acronyms aplenty. BICS, CALP, SEI, LEP, SIOP-- your dastardly thugs, all tattooed across my consciousness. You consume me until I can only blather on about pedagogy; Vygotsky haunts me, Piaget j-walks across my brain.
Ahh,I was a fool to think that by year five, I would have it all! That I would be ready to conquer you with my Medusa-like glare and Amazon precision. Even more foolish-- that I could do it in a year! Ha! I hear your laugh-- that mustache twirls as you tie me to the dual train tracks, the crossroads of higher pay and higher education. But at a price!
But-- what is that I see? A light, so far away, beckoning. Three and ten more weeks, and I will have you. In my clutches. You, nothing but a piece of paper which could smolder under my gaze and flutter like peppered moths into a blackened sky.
You will be mine.
Friday, February 04, 2011
Desensitized
So, apparently around 7:30 this morning there was an attempted kidnapping in the school parking lot.
A woman got out of her car, was forced back in it, possibly at knife point, but we're not sure. The guy maybe drove off? And she called 911 and managed to get out?
The details are a big foggy. But our school did make the news.
There were cop cars in the parking lot all afternoon and we had to send a letter home to the kids before they left to let them know it wasn't a random kidnapping, and that they were safe. The investigation is still going on, so we don't have a lot of details. We do know that the woman was "associated with our school but not hired by the district." Student teacher? Parent volunteer?
The strangest thing? Now that I'm home, thinking about it....We all kind of just took it in stride. Ahh, yes, someone was trying to kidnap people at school. Okay. Carry on.
Just another day.
Teaching here certainly changes your perspective.
A woman got out of her car, was forced back in it, possibly at knife point, but we're not sure. The guy maybe drove off? And she called 911 and managed to get out?
The details are a big foggy. But our school did make the news.
There were cop cars in the parking lot all afternoon and we had to send a letter home to the kids before they left to let them know it wasn't a random kidnapping, and that they were safe. The investigation is still going on, so we don't have a lot of details. We do know that the woman was "associated with our school but not hired by the district." Student teacher? Parent volunteer?
The strangest thing? Now that I'm home, thinking about it....We all kind of just took it in stride. Ahh, yes, someone was trying to kidnap people at school. Okay. Carry on.
Just another day.
Teaching here certainly changes your perspective.
Must be one ugly dog.
A: I have a dog, too.
Me: Yeah? What is it?
A: It's part poodle part shih tzu.
Me:....
Me: You.... have a poo-shi--??
A: MISS J!!!
Me: What?
Me: Yeah? What is it?
A: It's part poodle part shih tzu.
Me:....
Me: You.... have a poo-shi--??
A: MISS J!!!
Me: What?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)