Sunday, March 20, 2005
Back To Square One
Well, they changed my schedule after all. Kuntstein is still out with her phantom injury, and the change is for some other, random reason, so at least it wasn’t because of her. There’s a moral victory, I guess.
I’m losing both my favorite class and my nightmare class, which sounds like an even trade, except for that we’re a third of the way through the semester, and I had been feeling reasonably confident and successful in the classroom for the first time in these two long years, staying organized and on top of my planning and grading, and even sometimes proceeding with the semblance of a plan. I’m going to have to start from scratch with two new classes and lots of new kids, and all the progress I’d made and relationships I had begun to forge with my current kids will come to an abrupt halt.
Of course, I’ll miss my small, respectful, hard-working class. I’ve been having lots of fun down in the basement with them drawing on the dry-erase board, far superior to the traditional chalk in all my other classes. In fact I had just spent a good chunk of Teacher’s Choice money on a 30 pack of dry-erase markers – I’ve got colors you couldn’t even name – and was going totally nuts with the myth illustrations when the fateful knock on the door came. In protest I quit teaching, and obliged my students’ somewhat inexplicable requests (if they were attempting to flatter my frustrated artist’s ego in order to get me off-topic, it worked) for me to draw “Big Mac and french fries!” I should have lectured them on heart disease and obesity and corporo-fascist brainwashing, but they were so cute that I just shook my head and laughed as they pretended to be desperate with hunger and clapped and cheered and sang “I’m lovin’ it.”
I’m sure, most days, I’ll be glad to not have to deal with the Class from Hell, but I’ll even miss them a little bit too. The few students in there who do act halfway decently from time to time are really cool kids, and I’d even made a little progress in reprogramming both Santiago and one of the Devil girls. That class was a challenge (in much the same way that standing up under torture in Abu Ghraib is a challenge,) but part of me relishes such adversity, or at least wants to see if and how I survived it.
The big rusty gears of Shitty administrative incompetence lurched forward another notch, and once again it was my sleeve snagged, my hand crushed and mangled by the big, unfeeling machine.
Well, they changed my schedule after all. Kuntstein is still out with her phantom injury, and the change is for some other, random reason, so at least it wasn’t because of her. There’s a moral victory, I guess.
I’m losing both my favorite class and my nightmare class, which sounds like an even trade, except for that we’re a third of the way through the semester, and I had been feeling reasonably confident and successful in the classroom for the first time in these two long years, staying organized and on top of my planning and grading, and even sometimes proceeding with the semblance of a plan. I’m going to have to start from scratch with two new classes and lots of new kids, and all the progress I’d made and relationships I had begun to forge with my current kids will come to an abrupt halt.
Of course, I’ll miss my small, respectful, hard-working class. I’ve been having lots of fun down in the basement with them drawing on the dry-erase board, far superior to the traditional chalk in all my other classes. In fact I had just spent a good chunk of Teacher’s Choice money on a 30 pack of dry-erase markers – I’ve got colors you couldn’t even name – and was going totally nuts with the myth illustrations when the fateful knock on the door came. In protest I quit teaching, and obliged my students’ somewhat inexplicable requests (if they were attempting to flatter my frustrated artist’s ego in order to get me off-topic, it worked) for me to draw “Big Mac and french fries!” I should have lectured them on heart disease and obesity and corporo-fascist brainwashing, but they were so cute that I just shook my head and laughed as they pretended to be desperate with hunger and clapped and cheered and sang “I’m lovin’ it.”
I’m sure, most days, I’ll be glad to not have to deal with the Class from Hell, but I’ll even miss them a little bit too. The few students in there who do act halfway decently from time to time are really cool kids, and I’d even made a little progress in reprogramming both Santiago and one of the Devil girls. That class was a challenge (in much the same way that standing up under torture in Abu Ghraib is a challenge,) but part of me relishes such adversity, or at least wants to see if and how I survived it.
The big rusty gears of Shitty administrative incompetence lurched forward another notch, and once again it was my sleeve snagged, my hand crushed and mangled by the big, unfeeling machine.
