TWIT
9/10/10
Welcome to Opening Day 2010, ladies and gentleman. It’s a fine day for teaching with clear skies, a slight breeze from the east, and only a hint of ominous storm clouds in the distance.
As you made your way into Penn Wood Middle School Park, you may have noticed some changes. The grass isn’t as green as it used to be (we had to let some workers go), some machinery doesn’t work, there’s no soap in some restrooms while in others the sink doesn’t work (which you usually figure out after you have a healthy glob of soap in your hand which you wave with furious futility in front of the sensor) and there are a number of odd, confusing, and ultimately worthless new rules and regulations put in place by our overzealous, misguided owners. Though for the record, they’re doing a fantastic job.
But Opening Day must go on. And though you’ll see the team take the field in a manner less professional than you’d expect – the centerfielder doesn’t have a glove, and the third baseman had to buy his own uniform – the show goes on.
Some gems from the first two weeks of school, in no particular order of absurdity.
– Teaching, by its nature, is a highly creative, individualized vocation. A teacher is sequestered in his own room with twenty to thirty children for nearly the entire day. A teacher becomes something of a ringmaster, molding the show to fit his own tastes, talents, and ethos. Despite this, administrators are needed to coral the multiple talents and personalities in a school building into some kind of collective whole. The school as an entity needs an organized purpose, to which each teacher more or less sticks to. But we’ve entered the Dark Ages of American education. The equivalent of the oppressors of the Dark Ages who kept the masses ignorant and therefore controlled have manifested themselves once again in the guise of principals, superintendents, state and federal government education officials, and politicians. In my eight years of teaching, I have yet to meet a leader who understands how to walk the delicate line between teacher autonomy and a school’s authority (and it’s not for lack of numbers of principals that I haven’t seen a quality leader. I can’t remember all the principals, vice-principals, and assistant principals, not to mention superintendents, that I’ve served under in such a short time. And that statement is no exaggeration). Since NCLB, I’ve seen heavy-handedness and micromanaging become the norm, while failures at macromanaging grow more and more egregious. However, with the downturn in the economy (which frankly pisses me off. I don’t believe a country as strong as ours should be suffering like this. This had the potential to be a mild downturn, something an economically robust country like ours could have weathered easily, but the same type of motherfuckers in charge of education, who have no idea what the inside of a classroom looks like, are in charge of our country’s fiscal policies. To me, this was no natural downturn that often happens in an economy. This was sabotage by incompetence. The same kind of sinister destruction at work in our public schools.) this heavy-handedness has grown exponentially to the point where it’s become a laughing matter when someone talks about educating our kids. If this is education, then we as a country, a leading society in the world, should prepare to sit in the basement of our division, so to speak, like the lowly Washington Nationals. Case in point: on multiple occasions, our principal declared his goal this year to create “cookie cutter” classrooms. We’re not talking about classroom decorations here either. What we’re talking about here is the a lack of proper leadership. There are weaknesses on our faculty. Any faculty will have those teachers who just aren’t doing what they should: providing quality education. But a competent leader will target those that need help, and leave those doing their job well alone. Punishing the lot with excessive nitpicking will only alienate the troops, causing them to seek their own way and preventing them from buying into the school’s agenda. The opposite of the intended becomes the reality. And the claim that the need for cookie-cutter classrooms is a response to the need for students in the same grade across the building to be learning the same fundamental skills and knowledge, while valid on its own, rings hollow when the cloak used to disguise its true intentions is so transparent. Poverty, lack of parental involvement, crime, drugs, and ghetto culture should no longer be our main fears. The boogeyman is leadership, and he’s as real as the large number of uneducated students we spit out of our education system.
– We had no working copiers in our building to start the school year. Students arrived without us being able to give them a printed copy of our supply list, among other important documents needed to start off the school year. So rather than presenting a professional, competent front establishing our authority in the classroom and building in general, we looked like a bunch of scab replacements during a strike. Our students smell out weakness like a shark smells blood in the water. Not having copiers in the first week could very well have repercussions throughout the entire year. Oh, and I spent $65 at Staples making copies to get me through the first week.
– A number of school necessities are organized by those other than teachers such as the principals, the guidance department, etc. Two of these things are ID cards for the kids, ID/swipe cards for the teachers (which we use to unlock our classroom doors), and lockers for the kids. The only thing we should have to do for these three things is take the kids to wherever the photos for the IDs are being taken, pick up our swipes unless we want a new picture, and simply assign a student a locker. Well, things didn’t turn out exactly like that. Week one ended with no IDs for the kids (which could be a serious safety issue. How do we know who the kids are that are wandering about the halls?), our swipes were in our mailboxes on the first day of school, which meant that all the doors that are usually locked, including the main back door, were open (and of course some teachers’ swipes didn’t work, thus preventing them from locking their doors when they left their room), and the lockers and lock numbers on my list didn’t match, turning a fifteen minute activity into something that lasted nearly an hour. Precious instructional time vanishing like a fart in the wind.
– Our English coach, who is in charge of the entire English department and who we rely on for instructional materials, among other things, left for a new job. God bless her for doing what we would all like to do. But the school hasn’t hired anyone yet. I suppose one could argue no one is to blame for this, since it usually takes some time to hire people, especially an important one like this. However, with all that has happened – or not happened – this year, I’m handing out the benefit of the doubt like Scrooge gave out Christmas turkeys. We are supposed to use two notebooks in our class, a Reader’s and a Writer’s Notebook, for which we use marble copybooks. We still don’t have them. Another first or second week activity postponed. And we can’t really start any reading or writing without these books. Of course we could, just like we manage to do other things without the proper materials, support, or motivation. But starting something that will become a routine in a different way than the routine to be established will play chaos with classroom management and quality of student work (that means student learning will suffer. Sorry, sometimes I feel the need to translate for our administrators out there). There are a number of other things we’re on our own to do, things I don’t feel like rehashing less I listen to my heart, quit teaching, and live life on the road.
– There are a number of teachers without enough desks. Enough said.
– A number of teachers wanted to enter the building to get a head start before our official day back to work. First, I must say these teachers are nuts. I understand the desire to start the school year extra prepared because time during the school year vanishes quicker than a roach after a light is turned on. But if your work is telling you can’t work, thank God for His lovingkindness and go get drunk or something. Regardless, the maintenance and janitorial staff were still readying the building. The worst part came when we officially returned to work. We were given half of the day for each of the three days we were back to work before the kids showed up. I, and many other teachers, wanted to stay late at least one day. Setting up a classroom and preparing one’s mind for the school year after the summer takes time. We were told each day that we had to leave the building by a certain time. Again we were told we couldn’t work. While that made me fundamentally happy, I still wanted to stay because there just wasn’t enough time to get everything done that needed to get done. I prepared as much as I could, but I did start the school year feeling like a rookie teacher. The first few weeks of school are the most important because they set the tone for the rest of the year. Any success we have in March, April, and May should be credited to the selflessness, work ethic, and skill of the teachers in the building. No one above the teachers can take any credit.
That’s it for this week, folks. It’s Monday, and the adventure continues. Stay tuned.
Bellicose Blatherings 
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