That was the B-Side to Changes. Not many people know that. Basically, I stole Stephanie's joke sort of.
Well, I had a pretty good transition story about some current situations in the English department here at good ole U of H, but then I though "Uh oh. What if the people in question read this blog?" They probably don't, since basically most of our readers are Jane's blog's readers. And people searching for ways to get condoms out of their eyes. But I'm playing it safe.
So my transition story is about the one time I graduated college and then realized at the last minute "Hey, I need a job or something. This school thing is over." So, having a million options with a BA in English (and a minor in Asian history, for some reason), I decided to apply to a lot of middle school or high school teaching positions. You used to be able to do that in Florida if you weren't certified, as long as your degree was in the subject you were teaching. Well, at the last minute, just when I hoped, I mean, worried that I was not going to be hired by anybody, I was hired by a great little school by the name of Kissimmee Middle School. Oh, maybe I should disguise that name in case parents are looking for great schools for their kids and decide against that one. (Disclaimer: I taught there five years ago. I'm sure it's a way awesome school now.)
Anyway, when I was hired, the principal told me that he didn't want to hire me, and that I would probably be a bad teacher, but that he was going to give me a shot anyway. It turns out he was right, and I was a bad teacher, but I'd like to think it was the fault of the bureaucracy and other teachers. And I guess my fault for being so mean, too. But because I've told stories of how bad it was to teach there before, here's the abridged list version.
- When I told the administration that I felt that around 30 of my students needed to be held back because they could barely read, they told me they couldn't afford to fail them, and would just pass any students I failed anyway. The more students a school fails, the less money they receive. But the more students a school fails, they more money they need because they will have more students. So of the 30 students I actually turned in Fs for, the school failed 2.
- Our school was a "C" school by Florida standards. In Florida, schools are assigned money by how high a grade they get. A schools get more money, F schools get the least. Our school was a "C" school, but not because of grades. In fact, I was told our students would never get higher grades on standardized tests or general academics. It was just the demographics. So to maintain a "C" grade, the school bought hundreds of computers, because technology level was used in calculating the grade. Now, most of these computers were not hooked up, and there was nobody to teach the students how to use them, but because there were computers physically located at the school, our letter grade was maintained.
- The geography teacher on my team really hated me. She told the students not to listen to anything I said, and that I did not know what I was talking about. I'm not sure where this hatred originated. But she did have a hand in getting the science teacher fired. Now, when the kids were taught sex ed they split them up into boys and girls. The science teacher got the boys, and the geography teacher got the girls. (Thank fucking god I did not have to teach sex ed.) Anyway, they decided they needed to be "hip" with the kids. The science teacher decided to tell dirty jokes. Which was a bad idea and he got fired for it after the geography teacher told some students what to tell the principal. However, the geography teacher decided that to be hip she should tell the girls how much she loves blowjobs, and how she loves giving her husband blowjobs first thing in the morning, and that the girls should give their boyfriends oral sex to avoid pregnancy. For some reason, that seems a lot worse to me than dirty jokes. But this was the same teacher who told the students that Hitler was gay, and that's what caused the holocaust, and also one day when a football player (13) took off his shirt in her class she came to me afterwards saying "He did not look 13, let me tell you." Gross.
Anyway, that's not really a transition story. I guess it was the transition from school to the real world, and it was miserable. But on the other hand, I got real paid.
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16 comments:
I've spent the last several months in Maine learning how to teach, and this experience has brought me to the realization that I never want to teach public school, and I especially never want to teach it in the states. There's a math teacher from Iran at the high school here, and the motherfucker knows enough about math to be teaching at the university level. But the students just make fun of his accent and don't listen to a word he says. The American public school system reminds me of the corpse of a porcupine smeared over ten feet of highway with crows standing around picking at the coils of intestine. The liberals blame No Child Left Behind. The conservatives blame the liberals. I think they fucking deserve each other.
You da man, Mista!
That geography teacher should get hella fired. Sounds like, at the rate she's going, we'll be hearing about her on the news soon enough.
Teaching public school has its ups and downs, to be sure. I don't think any means of being "hip" with students will ever be taken seriously. There are some teachers who have gotten into some serious trouble at the school where I teach, because they have gotten to be too close of friends with students. It's fine to be friendly, but a teacher should not be a friend. A line must be drawn when teachers have teenagers over to their house to watch American Pie, hang out in the hot tub, and talk about MILFs and the like. Not cool. It's because of fucktard teachers like this that I have actually found myself feeling less inclined to be friendly, which isn't cool either. Teachers have to walk a fine line.
I have heard these stories before, Glenn, but somehow seeing them all written down in one place is ten times worse.
I feel like such an old geezer when I start to say things like, "Well, when I was in school..." And I feel ten times worse when I realize I mean it.
Also, "ten times worse" is the default phrase for mega ultra awful.
I have weekly crises in which I try to decide what to do with my life. Every now and then I think --"Hey, I bet they'd let me teach high school with just my masters degree in psychology and not teaching certificate. I could quit grad school right now! How cool would that be? Only the smart kids would sign up for psychology! It would be so much fun."
Then I usually think of how horrible your experience teaching was and drag my ass to class.
Melissa
Um, I don't think you ever told me about the teacher and her blowjob stories to the kids - I probably would have encouraged you to quit a lot more than I did.
At least you're not there anymore - that would be a lot more pathetic than getting a masters in poetry. (Just kidding - getting a masters in poetry is way more pathetic)
I can't really comment on teaching middle or high (or elementary school, for that matter), because I've never taught anything before I got to grad school. I can only commend for your bravery, soldier. I know even teaching undergrads to appreciate literature--especially when they don't really read literature or when some of the cannonized texts that are put on the syllabus are pretty dry even to me--can be a somewhat harrowing experience. I couldn't image teaching middle school or high school.
What I can relate to is the seediness that went on between teachers and students in my high school (not middle school, as far as I know). We had some seediness/weirdness there, which included the math teacher being sent to jail for statutory rape and a principal who got fired (a year before my class came) for starting a religious cult in the high school. We also had a fair amount of people die (in my class during senior year) from drunk driving accidents, so the flags were at a constant state half mass for a while. Sorry. I'm not sure how that relates to teacher-student relationships. Anyway, there was a fair amount of seediness, and this was a Grade A/New American High School/5 star awarded high school. Well, at least, the teachers were eventually expelled from the school in one way or another. Obiviously, not soon enough, though.
Oh yeah, one main teaching factoid. I will be making my own syllabus starting this summer, because I won't be TAing anymore. That means, I'll get to put on texts that aren't so dry--to me anyway. Oh wait. There's the required Longman text. Damn it. Boo. Okay, well, there will be one dry text. Of course, my students may end up having a different story. I don't know. We shall see.
Jacqui
So, Cthulhu, what's your solution?
First, I would just like to mention that Glenn is serious; someone did find this site by Googling how to take a condom out of my eye.
Glenn - I can't believe that the guy was stupid enough to think that telling dirty jokes was a good idea. lthough even worse, I can't believe that the geography teacher didn't get fired too. I wonder if she even bothered to mention that there are STDs which can be transmitted via blowjobs??
Also, that whole thing with the school getting funding because they have computers which are going unused makes me sick to the stomach. And only partly because my computer just died. That kind of bureaucratic bullshit needs to stop.
I also think that denying funding to a school which has an F grade is only going to make problems WORSE. Shouldn't struggling schools receive MORE funding???
What's my solution? If only that were an easy question to answer. You're right, though. No one likes a rugose, squamous squid critic from another dimension who shoots his tentacled mouth off but doesnt' say anything constructive. But it's complicated. Teachers need to be better paid and better educated (master's degrees, with some focus on content rather than just pedagogy couched in an endless parade of acronyms and psychobabble). The school needs to be reconceived in terms of a learning community. This is thrown around a lot right now, but usually only as one more buzzword vaguely meaning that everyone needs to "get together." I would use it specifically to mean a growth hierarchy (contrasted with domination hierarchy or flat, equal no-hierarchy) in which the logical relationship between rights and responsibilities are more or less clear for all its members. Teachers and other adults are older and know better. They are moral models, and they need to act like it. All the time (for example, at silent reading time, everyone reads. The teachers, the principal, the janitor, the busdrivers. Everyone). Students need to feel like they have a stake in the learning community (growth hierarchy is distinguished by feedback, esp. bottom up feedback), but they also need to understand that this means they owe their fellow members something. Like effort and contribution. Also, kids who are at risk need to be kept in the school community and given the opportunity to learn from their mistakes, rather than being turfed out by "zero tolerance" policies the first time they smash a chair on the floor or call someone a hurtful name.
I'm not just using "community" and "morality" as conservative buzzwords, but more in the existential or prepolitical sense like Vaclav Havel or Amitai Etzoni would. Civil society. If people know how to behave like decent, civilized human beings, then what's on the ballot shouldn't turn everything on its ear every four to ten years. And decency isn't a "contested site." It's not a totallitarian, metaphysical concept that infringes on the rich mosaic of cultural values in pluralist America. It's something that we ought to understand by now, as social animals with 120,000 years of human evolution under our belts.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, but maybe the comments section of Glenn's blog isn't the place for a 1500 word exposition of the topic. But I'm not dodging anything. If anyone wants to call me out on any of this, feel free.
Also, I should say here that public schools in Canada are just as bad, in their own way. But our funding for schools and our salaries for teachers are a little better, so they don't vary quite as wildly in quality from neighborhood to neighborhood as American schools do. And there's about 90% fewer of us, and we're somehow united in our insufferable smugness.
Oops. I always say "blog" when I mean "post." I know Blog Supergroup is a team effort, and a fine one at that.
Did I ever tell you that when I first moved to America for 8th grade I made straight 100s on my report card? In Canada, I thought that anything above an 80 was good. I remember in 7th grade (and you probably had to do this through 12th grade, Johnathan), we had Mid year exams and end year exams, and for both I had to study in my room for like a week straight. I mean, really study. And still I only barely got above an 80 percent on some of those exams. Those of you who are familiar with my study habits now know that I pretty much don't study at all for anything, and haven't in years. I was so relieved when I was in American 8th grade and there were no exams at all, and I realized I could slide by without ever really picking up a book.
I don't know if this really says anything at all about the difference between Canadian and American schools. Also, my Canadian school's computer lab had then-top-of-the-line macs, and my American middle school let us play Oregon Trail on Apple IIe's.
Mac Classic, motherfucker. The gameboy of desktop PC's. Mr. Kehoe was all about those things. He had more hair sprouting out of the top of his nose than I have on my body from my neck to my knees.
If I end up living in the states, I'm gonna work my ass off to send my kids to private school. My sister went to Westminister in New Hampshire on a hockey scholarship and she was studying shit in grade 10 that I didn't learn 'til first or second year uni. On the other hand, she was also probably doing coke off the dashboard of her friend's BMW and going clubbing in NY with a fake ID, so maybe I'll just keep my offspring north of the border.
In Ontario I didn't have midterms but we had real bona fide final exams; getting above 92 or 93 was usually impossible.
And I went to a Catholic school, so we had Commodore 64s until I went to high school: 1993. Comma eight comma one.
Meanwhile, here in Korea, children have essentially NO LIFE outside of studying. We have middle school classes at our after-school English academy where students stay until after 10pm, so they can bust their asses in order to get into a good high school. High schools here often run on 12hr/day schedules. The three best universities in Korea are known as the "big three" (also SKY: Seoul University, Korea University, Yonsei University), and there's a rule of thumb: three hours of sleep per night if you want to get into the big three.
Ha! Some English grad student--guess who spelled "obvious" wrong? Me! It's "obvious" Jacqui, not "obivious." Why is it I can't spell once I get on the computer?
Do I get points for creative spelling? Yes? No? No. Didn't think so.
Jacqui
Good answer, Cthulhu- I am especially impressed (being sincere here) with your reference to Vaclav Havel.
In life, I blame my parents for some of the things that I find wrong with my adult life, you know, in the sense that I was not prepared for much in the real world etc. I think most people look to their parents, but I think that public school in this country bears a large burden of guilt for the fucking-up of kids.
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