After four (read: almost six) years of college, I'm seriously re-thinking what I went to school for.
The school that I teach at is still considered a "suburban" school ... but is actually more of an "inner-city" school. Think Freedom Writers without the eventual respect and love coming from the students and you've got my every day life!
Seriously, I was actually told a couple of days in "This is like Freedom Writers, except we're going to tear that White Bitch up." Awesome.
Can you imagine how this is sucking the idealistic life force right out of my very soul?
Here's a couple of phrases that I hope YOU never hear at your job:
- You should be teaching somewhere in The Woodlands. (Me:) What is that supposed to me? (Student:) You don't belong here, Miss.
- I hope your baby dies
- Shut the *@(& up, I don't care what the *@(& you think.
- (Fingers in ears) NAH NAH NAH ... I'm not listening to you ... (Yeah, that's right ... I teach a bunch of babies posing as ninth graders)
- My mom can kick your ass.
Needless to say, my stress level is through the roof. I keep getting told that my next year will be so much easier. I know it will be ... but it doesn't make this year all that much fun.
Luckily, I'm on Christmas break right now. I'm still enjoying one more week of vacation before I go back. During this time ... I'm supposed to write this huge report about each of my 32 possible failures for the semester. Apparently, the English department is only allowed to have a 15% fail rate. So, we have to completely justify all of our failures. I don't know how many times I'm going to have to write "Sits and stares at me with contemptuous looks while not turning anything in" on the form.
How am I supposed to pass someone that doesn't turn anything in? How am I supposed to justify that they've learned something ... when they can't show me anything that they've done that proves that they've learned it?
I keep getting told "Well, if you fail them ... they are just going to end up dropping out because they are going to get frustrated." Hm, maybe if they turned some work in (some EASY work, mind you) then they wouldn't get frustrated. Some of the students can't even read very well ... and here they are in the ninth grade, because other teachers have just been passing them along. Lovely.
So, there goes all of my faith in the public school system. I'm seriously considering home-schooling Liam with this cool program that they have up here. It's classical education at it's finest ... and I've always said that Liam sounds like an intellects name.
