Freeeeeeedommmmmm. . . . .
Mamacita says: I posted this in 2006, but I’ve been thinking about this same thing all day so here it is again.
My blog, my rules. What up, dawggggg?
I admit it: too much Scrubs.
Here’s the post:
Is anyone else out there lucky enough to have a job that makes you so happy that all you have to do is walk into the building and you feel the positive vibes? My days seem so short now; most days I feel as though I’ve just begun, and bingo, it’s time to go to bed again.
I get tired, yes. I am exhausted, usually, by the end of the day. But even so, I love this teaching gig with a passion I didn’t even know I was still capable of after enduring the slings and arrows of outrageous public school dealings for so long.
I think that after so long in the school systems of our country, the teachers who stay evolve a mindset that is almost enslavement. We endure schedules and treatment that no other professional would dream of enduring. We allow ourselves to be used and misused and overworked, all in the name of love for our students. What other professionals have a clientele that pretty much expects to be supported, fed, dressed, taught, and catered to in every possible way, without showing the least bit of gratitude?
We get so used to it, we don’t even realize that there is another world out there, where people show each other respect.
We really do love the students, don’t get me wrong. But year after year in a public school kind of makes a teacher numb to any other possibility that might be out there for a person with these talents. Every year it gets worse and worse, even while we are thinking and saying things like “Next year it will be better.”
But it never is.
Next year, the classrooms are more overcrowded, there are fewer books, there are more dysfunctional families who seem to be in charge of the system, there are more duties, there are more responsibilities, there are more problems, there are more “incidents,” and there is less and less support. There is no respite. There is no discipline. The teacher’s union here stands idly by and allows a principal to schedule a teacher to the point that there isn’t even time in the course of the day to blow her nose. I am not exaggerating, either. The contract guarantees some prep time daily? We’ll count walking down the hall to fetch yet another class as break-time. We’ll count your driving time, from building to building, as your lunch. Ask any music teacher if I’m stretching the truth.
Yes, every year it’s worse. And a teacher doesn’t really know how bad it is, until that teacher walks out and tries something new.
Me, for instance.
And now, I teach every day in a building full of wonderful hardworking students and smiling administrators and friendly janitors and awesome bosses who TALK TO US AS THOUGH WE WERE EQUALS (instead of slaves) and the building resounds with humor and happiness and dedication.
Heck, even the restrooms here are superior. And there is ALWAYS toilet paper!!!!! The halls and classrooms are clean and well-maintained. Everyone behaves properly.
The sad and odd thing is, I did not know how bad it actually was until I left the public schools. While I was there, I was the most loyal and hardworking and dedicated person in the building. Sure, the days seems awfully long, and sometimes the despair and frustration were so thick one could cut it with a knife, but it was my obsession, to somehow be a positive force in this not-very-positive place. I came to school at 7:00; I got home around 6:00. I was determined to make a difference, a positive difference.
But, but, there was no appreciation. There was only the expectation that if I could do that, I should be doing even more.
I couldn’t keep on.
But now? I feel positive every day. I love coming to school. All I have to do is walk into this building and I am instantly wide-awake and happy.
Sure, there are some, um, “interesting” students here, but MOST of them are pure quality.
I still work the long hours. But I am appreciated, and treated like the professional I’d forgotten I was, all those years.
And now, I truly believe I am helping to make a positive difference. I can see it. I can hear it.
Scheisse, I love my job.
The really ironic thing is that in spite of all the negative things about the public schools, I still believe that this nation’s schools are the hope of our future. There is such potential in every classroom, such stories to be told, such wondrous talent and creativity and sensitivity and music concealed behind the t-shirts and the grubby jeans and exposed underwear and defiant raising of the eyebrows and the punky hair and the chips-on-the-shoulders and the trendy slang and the stubborn glares. . . . there is poetry behind the obscenities, and magnificent scientific discoveries behind the unwillingness to conform.
It’s too bad teachers are no longer allowed to cultivate it.
Why can’t we be allowed to step back and bask in the glow of unbridled enthusiasm, and throw ourselves into helping students learn and discover and grow, grow, grow, both physically and mentally and socially and culturally and scientifically. . . . .
What happened to us as a people, as a culture, as a nation, that our idea of ‘school’ has sunk to the level of equating success with a number on a piece of paper?
I do tend to rant, don’t I. My apologies.
I miss what my former job might have been, in a perfect world.
But oh golly, I do love my job now!!!!
Making the Grade. . . .
Mamacita says: I hate to admit this, but this was my attitude about my kids’ grades, kind of. . . .
Factor in individuality, talent, brains, work habits, etc, and you can’t help but have a set of expectations, and expectations should be met.
I know that there are exceptions to this and most other things, but I honestly believe that every kid should do his/her best, because NOT to do so just isn’t good enough, no-allowance-today-boy.
Of course, I also believe that a good parent knows what’s going on in his/her kids’ classrooms, too. That is, we should be aware that our kids, this grading period, are studying about the Revolutionary War, reading “The Giver,” writing little newspapers about things that happened in 1774, making recipe books with directions for preparing foods that the Founding Fathers (and Mothers) might have eaten, researching which Nation was already here and where they were forced to relocate and how do you feel about that, studying 50 words and their unique rules and exceptions to those rules, learning all about Peer Gynt and how to at least hum a few of the more popular melodies, and how to deal with fractions in everyday life (see recipe book assignment, above.)
And now I wish I were back in the fourth grade, doing just such things. Sigh.
Of course, nowadays there isn’t much time for creative assignments because the teachers are forced to use the time they might have utilized for such, to review and prepare for the almighty standardized test.
Personally? I believe that tests are sometimes necessary and occasionally important, but I also believe that the questions should pertain to “things every fourth-grader should know based on the available books and the creativity of the teachers,” not “things that are being pounded into every fourth-grader’s head starting three weeks before the Test because some old guys in the State Department who were influenced by a book salesman said so.” In other words, give each child a test based on standard fourth-grade curriculum. It would better benefit the child, and it would also better tell which children were at grade level, not that grade level is even the real goal.
As a child, I was always six or seven grade levels above the rest in anything regarding reading, writing, spelling, grammar, history, etc, but down in the depths of second grade remediation in math.
Guess what. I didn’t care then and I don’t care now.
In ten years, whatever your child scores on that test won’t mean anything, either.
What are those tests, anyway? They are tests put together by people who haven’t been in a classroom for years, if ever. It’s a test that is embraced by textbook publishers and salesmen, in hopes that the inevitable low scores will inspire schools to purchase THEIR books, because the new books all have individual State Standards written right in them and golly gee whiz, if the school buys OUR books, the students will do much better on those tests.
Eh, I’m rambling again. I really despise a school system that puts such emphasis on one test score that it ignores or neglects the really important part of a child’s education, to wit, the learning of things that will enable the child to better take care of himself/herself and others as an adult, to appreciate and love the writings and pictures and history of those who came before, to understand and appreciate music and art, and to be a part of a little community in which every child has an important role. Our students these days don’t understand how one vote can make or break an entire government. Some students don’t even know anyone who votes.
For some of our students, the teachers are the only adults they know who work for a living.
Many homeschoolers are turning out children with superior educations and abilities, and many are simply teaching their children that isolation from ‘other’ people is better and that it’s nobody’s business if you are fifteen and still don’t want to try to learn to read yet but be careful because if you raise the curtains, big government will SEE what we’re doing, or not doing, and try to interfere and make you LEARN to read so you can be JUST LIKE ALL THE OTHER CLONES.
Sometimes it seems like a losing battle, and yet, these are our children, the hope of our nation, and we have to keep trying.
After a certain age, I do not believe that blaming one’s shortcomings on one’s background or family is a viable argument. Ultimately, each person must stand on his/her own feet and walk out into the sunshine and shadow of life and do it all alone. We must not send our children out there unprepared, and yet, what do we do when the families support their children in their desire to NOT work at it?
I keep saying this but here it is again: There are certain skills that intelligent persons simply must have, at certain ages. When one becomes a self-sustaining adult, (which status of course many ‘adults’ never attain because their families and they themselves allowed them to go through school without doing or learning anything!!!) (My SELF ESTEEM!!!!!!) a decent person will be armed with skills, marketable skills, with which to earn one’s own living.
To allow any person to leave any kind of school without these skills is a crime. And a high school diploma given to any person without these skills is a joke.
If your child is 27 and still isn’t interested in learning to read and is still playing video games all day and still hasn’t learned to write and doesn’t know how to spell or reason. . . . well, I guess you all know my opinion of your child. And of you. And yes, it does become my business after a certain point because my tax dollars will be supporting your bum kid.
I worry about us as a society, I really do.
Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.
Mamacita says: Regarding any educator at any level, in any capacity, and in any kind of economic region, who is not making an effort to be extremely computer-savvy. . . . shame on you.
I know first-hand what kind of travesties can occur when an administrator doesn’t know anything about a computer, and I think it’s disgraceful to be in this business and not know what the students have known for years, even the tiny ones. It would be difficult to respect an “educator” who was, himself/herself, not educated in the very necessary “today” and “tomorrow” skill of simple computer literacy. Holy scheisse, what are some of these people THINKING?
They’re NOT thinking; they’re quite content to keep on doing what they’ve always done, in the way they’ve always done it. That’s the problem. The world has changed and they have not.
“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” –Alvin Toffler
“It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.” –Albert Einstein
“Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow there, firm as weeds among rocks.” –Charlotte Bronte
“In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” –Eric Hoffer
“There is no greater crime than to stand between a man and his development; to take any law or institution and put it around him like a collar, and fasten it there, so that as he grows and enlarges, he presses against it till he suffocates and dies.” –Henry Ward Beecher
“Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war.” –Maria Montessori
“Too often we give our children answers to remember rather than problems to solve.” –Roger Lewin
“The joy of learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is in running. Where it is lacking there are no real students, but only poor caricatures of apprentices who, at the end of their apprenticeship, will not even have a trade.” –Simone Weil
Oh, and by the way, don’t try to use the excuse that you’re “too old to learn new tricks.” If that is really true, get out of our schools NOW. You are no longer needed there.
