Not a racist!

I have one particularly obstinent student (surprising actually, how now I view “badly behaved” students on a huge sliding scale of severity that I barely ever see, much less have to consider) who drives me nuts. I give him a chance, he comes halfway. I give him another chance, he gets halfway, nearly almost done. He’s had several “chances”, based on my giving him the benefit of the doubt because I’ve only ever talked to the kid over the phone.

Today I get an oral presentation.

“It’s me, interviewed by the President of the United States,” he laughs.

Enter your boring job interview questions here, with wind noises (evidently he is standing in the wind on the side of a busy highway or something) for about two or three minutes.

“Thank you Mr. Barack for your time. Oh yeah, I hope  you, like,  get assassinated!”

This was followed by awful stoner shrieks of laughter. I swear to god, if being a racist is a new adolescent fad,  I will start …something contreversial…you better believe me, I tell you whut. Goddamnit. Nothing like ending the day on a highly annoying note. What’s worse, is his facilitator tries to apologise for him, begging me not to give him a zero for a high-mark assignment. Why not wipe his  18 year old ass  too?

\\: pwned.

Well, I think I’m going to try and get back into the swing of blogging again. I mean it this time, honestly. I’ve realized with all the teaching and such, the same thing I realized when I started college all those years ago: I need to be able to write to sort out things. Additionally, I have this nasty habit of not achieving much personal growth if I don’t reflect regularly…and first year teachers, we’re supposed to be lean mean reflective machines.

 I am having a “question my profession” day today. This isn’t a PD day no, it’s a crisis actually. It happens at least once every two weeks or so, where I sort of sit through my prep and do nothing but think, “why? Why did I choose to do this again?” or, even worse, “what the fuck am I doing? I have no idea.”  To give you an idea, I have two preps in a day because I work half-time, so this is on any given “question my profession” day, about 160 minutes of me feeling like I’m going to scream for the sake of feeling like a misfit miscreant in my workplace.

Ms.  Misfit Miscreant: Doesn’t act like a teacher that much. Doesn’t look like a teacher that much (hair, dress, Converses with hole in toe, no makeup). Is super fucking smart and knows what she’s talking about (unless she doesn’t care at all), gets along with students great and teaches them more than just the subject, such as valuable life lessons and how to tell a good story,  only achieves ultimate teacherly enthusiasm levels every second or third day for short bursts, (is sarcastic, vaguely humourous and cynical for the rest of the time), does not necessarily have good relationship forged with any staff members, just tenuous alliances, students love her class because it is unorthodox all the time, is capable of getting the job done in an effective (though constantly self doubting manner) manner, although perpetually unorganized and last minute, is a little half-assed, sometimes throws small things at students, not very authoritative (when she is, she sounds like a Dictator, kids respond to that and listen, she feels awful for tone of voice for rest of day, apologizes next day),  unsure of position, unsure of quality of work perpetually, uses overheads too much, strays from the plan too much, doesn’t listen to Student Services enough, knows she is constantly being manipulated, sees when it happens, lets it slide more often than not, even if it creates more work for her in the long run, tired all the time, never has enough time, exasperated when a carefully planned lesson plan goes awry, personally insulted by people who treat her class like a waste of time (even if she feels that half of what she has to teach is a waste of time).

Why? Why is it ok for me to be in a place that is so obviously still an institution pretending not to be one? Why did I think this was an ok thing to choose as a profession? I don’t fit in this job. Instead of getting discouraged though, I think I’ve just realized more acutely that where I need to be is still about a year away, which is going back to school to do my masters.

I realize that it smacks of me wanting to return to the warm comfortable womb of University life, but this isn’t the case. Have you ever been standing in front of the expanse that is the ocean, and been told, “you can only go up to your knees” ? With the stuff that I have to teach here, I’m quite restricted as to what words I use, what concepts I bring up, what kind of activities I propose, etc. When I was teaching I.B. I felt like I was allowed to “go there”, past my knees, and while I can use many of the same techniques and ideas in both of my classes, there’s very much a brain tax limit– what kills me about it, is that it is affecting me that so many teachers that had them previous, didn’t know what the fuck they were supposed to teach these kids. It’s like, they all used all the millions of shallow stupid guides out there to “get them through it” and didn’t attach any sort of significance to it. Here’s a hint: if it’s not significant, they ain’t gonna retain it. The levels of comprehension and grammar use (ok, again, I’m not a grammar hero, but there’s a level I’m at that I’m good with until grade 15 if such a thing were possible), and spelling, and sentence structure junk that they should be at mere months before they start grade 12, are heinously terrible. Like, “you fail at life” terrible. And now, I feel like it’s all on me to turn around and fix, and the prospect just slays me. Where do I even start? The logical place to start is horribly condescending–> the condescending bit would be the only part apparent to an eleventh grader–> spelling tests.

God. Damn. It.