MadameBastet-Firing-Neurons

The Young and the Restless

Nope, not talking about the soap opera. Talking about the little munchkins that have taken over my life these past two weeks. I'm almost halfway into my third week into my credential program and in my second week at L. elementary where the shock has warn off, only to be replaced by hideous disbelief at the two lousy teachers I've been placed with. First I get Ms. M, who made Cruella de Vil (sp?) look like a saint. This witch is the meanest, nastiest, coldest 1st grade teacher I've ever seen. She pounded so hard on those kids it broke my heart. I truly, truly believe she should NOT be in the classroom - or anywhere near children. She's bitter, angry, short-tempered, mean and I am going to have to specifically request that I NOT student teach with her if I pick first grade as my student teaching grade. I HATE HER. Not just because of her style, but because of the things she said to the students. She belittled them. She made them feel less than and they already have such hard lives. I've never seen anything like it in any school in my life. I was literally stunned.

Monday I was moved to a third grade class right across from my 1st grade class. I've been seeing my first graders all week - they come up and say "Hi Ms. D!" and yell it across the playground. The saddest moment is when they asked me why I wasn't coming back to their class. You know, it's not that I'm so great, it's that they are desperate to be around someone who's not going to verbally tear them apart. Yesterday a little girl named Jessica ran across the playground and just hugged me - while I was on my cell phone! They are fearless and full of love at that age. What happens? People like Ms. M happen to them. Sad.

Anyway, now I am in a third grade class that would make Ringling Bros. weep with envy. I mean, all we're missing are the freakin' three rings. This teacher, another Mrs. M, is older and I believe has taught longer. She knows what she's teaching - but she has NO CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT skills. Or she just chooses to let her students act like screaming howler monkeys. It's not the kids. Almost all the kids are just being kids. Except one kid in the back who kept mumbling things to himself and looking at me strangely; him I worry about. But seriously - without classroom management, nothing gets done. Instruction time is lost. No one learns anything. To give you an idea of what was going on in the class, picture the following: 20 students at their desks, all doing something different at one time while the idiot teacher alternately reads from a story and barks at the students. We had

- one student lying on the floor
-one boy who kept falling out of his chair
-one boy who insisted on switching chairs every ten seconds
-one girl who got up every three minutes for a Kleenex
-one boy who kept moving his entire desk back until it hit the wall
-one girl talking to another girl
-one boy who yes, put his pencil up his nose
-one boy who continually YELLED OUT at every opportunity, and no he doesn't have ADD or Tourette's to my knowledge
-one boy who kept sticking his pencil in another girl's armpit
-one girl wandering the class for no reason

The rest of the students were either sleeping, playing with a friend, yawning, staring at the walls, ceiling, their pencils or talking. It was SO LOUD I thought I was going to have a stroke. I debated whether or not to look in my bag for any kind of pill that would dull my senses. I am only half-kidding. This sad classroom is due to a horrible, boring, scripted reading curriculum called Open Court Reading that the school district implemented because of NCLB and it's due to the teacher's inability to control her students. Some of my fellow cohorts got to see some really good teachers in action. I am angry I didn't. Why did I have to see such lousy teachers? I mean, BOTH my teachers suck and suck hard. Sure, it shows me exactly what NOT to do....that's a lesson I suppose. But I never would've talked to those kids like dogs in the first place and I will not allow 5 warnings in the class before you get in trouble. You get one warning with me, then you'd better start praying to God because you may never see recess again.

We had our ESL class today. Half these classes are what we call 'alphabet soup' classes. ESL, ELD, EO, RIFL, LEP, LRE, MDC, SST - I'm not kidding - all of these acronyms mean something. I'll tell you now - if English is your native language then you are EO - English Only. We were being taught how to administer the CELDT exam - which is an assessment of where a student is in terms of speaking and understanding English. At the middle school we are at, almost 1000 of the 2000 students need to take it. If you are a student who doesn't speak English well, and you never make it out of the ESL classes, you are hugely likely to drop out of school and never do well academically. Parents, even if you don't speak English - make sure your kids do, somehow, someway. You come to this country, your kids are going to either learn English and thrive or fall into an educational black hole. Sadly, culturally many of these people don't value education. There's no importance placed on it. I hope that will change.

When kids are struggling academically in school, they learn to hate it, and you, the teacher. Statistics show by middle school they've made the decision to drop out. That's 6th, 7th and 8th grade. It's shocking and sad and if things don't change, it's the future of this country.

So today after class I went to the bookstore to buy a 'multicultural' book for my students to 'welcome' them to school and make them feel warm and fuzzy. Honestly, I couldn't really find a 'multicultural' book if using that term means having people of different ethnicities in it. But I did find a really cute book about the first day of school. The teacher is a flamingo and every one of her students is a different animal. It's so cute. It scares me how much I like to sit in the children's book section in the bookstore. And it'd be even better - if there weren't children there. LOL!

Since I was back in richie rich WASPville, I encountered two screaming young boys. One was literally ordering his mother to do something and she said, "Jason, don't be so commanding." He was! He sounded like a drill sargeant. A spoiled drill sargeant. I can't spell that word. This teacher is too lazy to look it up now. Ha. Now I know, I'm not a parent, but if little Jason ever spoke to me that way, we'd be out of the bookstore and on our way home for a long talk, and an even longer time out. However, my favourite moment of the day had to come with the Screaming Mom and Son team.

This woman walked through the bookstore literally (I am not exaggerating) YELLING at the top of her lungs for her kid. "MATTHEW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! MATTHEW WHERE ARE YOU!" It wasn't that he was lost per se, she was just annoyed. And she let the ENTIRE bookstore know it. "MATTHEW I AM GOING TO GO NOW! ARE YOU COMING!" I stood there, my jaw on the floor. Did this woman not have a shred of dignity? Was she not the tiniest bit embarrassed to be acting like this?

And then we hear little Matthew, who isn't that little, YELL right back, "I HAVE TO GO POO POO!" And mom says, equally loudly, "Well you don't have to advertise it to everyone!!!"

Too.fucking.late. That reminds me. In the 3rd grade classroom, they have a list of rules on the wall. (Why I don't know as you can see no one follows them). But the one that really shocked me is "No swearing." NO SWEARING! These kids are 8 or 9 years old! Even I, the motherfucking sailor/truckdriver swearing queen didn't start swearing until high school or maybe even college!!! I couldn't even imagine a "No Swearing" sign at my elementary school. Probably because that was 30 years ago and we were at a much higher socio-economic place. Sad, but true.

Have I told you all lately how happy I am to have cats? BTW, Fletcher is cone free, as free as the cone goes...a few mornings ago I woke up and she finally managed to take the cone off. She's good. No more bruising and her incision has healed nicely. And when she has to poop, she doesn't even tell me. It's bliss I tell you, bliss.

I'm actually finding other teachers who don't have kids, which is kind of nice, because I've already had some people look at me like I'm nuts because I don't have my own rugrats but am willing to teach other people's kids. Yeah, that's the point. At the end of the day, I get to go home to PEACE and QUIET. I'm still going to be considered a biological freak by many, but so be it.

So that's the report from the trenches this week. I'm hoping to blog soon about something other than school, but it really has taken over my life. When I read a magazine or watch a TV show I actually feel guilty - like I'm wasting time and I should be doing homework. Homework is still manageable but I can see it's gonna get ugly. When it does, this blog will probably go black for a long, long time.