INSANE or NUMB? (please report)
A couple of weeks ago someone posted a comment I think you should read. Jessica Knapp wrote about what teaching can do to people. Her words struck an arrow through my heart. I would very much like for you to add your thoughts and stories.
Here’s what she said:
I taught KG for 6 years in an inner city school where 94% of the student body qualified for free lunch. In my first year at age 25 I was older than most of my students’ parents. Many students arrived in my classroom not knowing their last name nor how to hold a pencil or a book. Like all the teachers at the school, I was expected (threatened with losing my certificate) to bring these students up to grade level. Twenty-three 5-year-old kids in a class, always at least 5 with no English language skills, 3 or 4 with severe behavior issues, a classroom aide assigned to my room for 45 minutes a day (the only time I was able to use the restroom) who more often than not was pulled to sub another class so the school didn’t have to pay someone from outside.….
I would never stop writing if I listed all of the challenges.
Here’s the thing. After a while I noticed something. The teachers who had been in that environment for over 7 years or so fell into two distinct camps.
1. Completely numb. There is only so long that you can pour your heart and soul into making a difference in the lives of children that start with nothing, only to be called into meetings once a week which itemize all the ways you are failing. Eventually you shut down.
2. Completely insane. For the same reasons as above. Just depends which kind of personality you’re more prone to develop. I’d see these people walking down the hallway and do a 180 because I knew a whole lot of crazy was about to be coming out of their mouths…
Have you ever had so much work that you could never hope to finish it? At some point I just shut down and was unable to do any of it. No matter what I did someone thought it was the wrong thing — so why do any of it? I realized I was on the path to being one of the numb ones — so I quit.
Those “bad teachers” who are “part of the problem” most likely didn’t start that way. They are worn out and either numb, or nuts. The teachers who feel like they can do something else…ANYTHING ELSE.…get out. The ones whose self esteem is low, and/or student loan debt for their education degree is high, are the ones STUCK in the classroom, with no hope, no help, and no energy.
This was written by Jessica Knapp about her teaching experiences in Tampa. She is now happily not teaching in Greenwich, CT. It was originally a comment in a discussion following Part II of my review of the awful movie Waiting for Superman.
I would desperately like to know what you think about this. Either comment here or write me directly at mr.teachbad@gmail.com. And tell us where you’re from. (I won’t attribute anything to you without your permission.)
Thanks,
Mr. Teachbad
Announcements:
1) Don’t forget the first installment of Mr. Teachbad’s Official Teachbad Book Club Eventacular Discussion Series coming up in the second week of March. We are reading Why Great Teachers Quit and How We Might Stop the Exodus by Katy Farber.
2) I just watched the Jon Stewart interview with Arne Duncan again. If you haven’t seen it, you really should. Or watch it again. Pass it around and sign up at the Dump Duncan Facebook Headquarters today! (Not affiliated with Teachbad Industries.)
3) Incidentally, today is my birthday. What I would like is for you to write me anything you have to say about the insanity-numbness spectrum. And also I would like a bottle of Scotch.
4) Related to #3, my astrological sign is Pisces, the fish. Here’s what they say about us: We are compassionate, adaptable, accepting, devoted, imaginative, oversensitive, indecisive, self-pitying, lazy, and escapist. Plus we are motivated sexually by feet.
In closing, I’m sorry about what you are going through and I’ll help you in any way you want. You’re fine just the way you are and I’ll be right here by your side forever. I have a lot of ideas about how we can think about this, but if you criticize any of them I’ll fall apart. So I go back and forth, but I can’t decide if I’m going to tell you any of my ideas or not. You’ll probably think they’re stupid just like everybody else does. Screw it. I’m just going to sit on the couch, pour myself a tall one and watch that scene from The Big Lebowski where she’s painting her toes over and over again.
So, we’re done here. Right? Happy Day.
Mr. Teachbad
After 16 years in NYC Public Schools, I am a combination of both these. I am Insanely Numb. I am always “in the wrong” and must do and re-do the same work over and over again. I have been called “lazy” and a “waste of funds” to my face, by my principal. YET, when the big shots in suits appear, guess whose classroom they are in? You see, I am still too professional to purposely look bad in front of the superintendent. I wish I could quit. I would do it in a minute.
Thanks to a good combination of numbness and insanity, I’ve become a lot like my students:
- I say “fuck” a lot (ok – not when the kids are around)
- I have a bad attitude
- I do the least amount of paperwork possible. Last year I realized that the crap they make us put in our Data Binders will never be looked at.
- I’m angry and occasionally sullen
- I disrespect authority (like the clowns who do our district’s walk-throughs)
- I question the value of boring, irrelevant lessons (aka Professional Development)
- I do things my way because I know in my heart it’s best for me and those I care about (students)
- I live for the weekend and being out with my friends
- I know eventually I’ll get caught but ya know, it feels good to be bad.
- School cannot be over with soon enough. Retirement is only … how far away?
I teach in Philly too and I feel like I could have written your comment. I feel exactly the same way. It appears you are a classroom teacher and I am a specialist. 1000 kids in an empowerment school. I 2nd your comment! Today I had a meltdown on 33 7th graders destroying my room and all the supplies. Tomorrow, I’ll go back and do my best now that I got that out of my system. I’ll get through because its Friday
Wow – You sound just like my team. You would fit right in.
Come join me and T in Hawaii!
At least its warm
This is my second year teaching — I came into it in my 40′s, so I considered myself fairly world savvy. I noticed immediately that the teachers in my district were exactly as described above and it didn’t take me long to get there, too.
I have a meeting on Monday in which they will tell me they are not renewing my contract. Why? Well, as one principal put it, “The way you wrote the assignment assured that your students would succeed.” Yep. Not joking. I was also accused of using cross-curricular lessons. My biggest fault is that I don’t write proper lesson plans — I only use the district prescribed format.
I know that I have nothing to be ashamed of but it is so hard to go to work each morning — the only thing that gets me through the day is the hugs and smiles from my students.
I will find another job (although it probably won’t be teaching.) I will find a way to insure my family. What frustrates me is that the principal who didn’t know what text to self connections were or what the grades on his report card meant (and subsequently bawled out a high performing first grader because of it)will be promoted.
I taught SPEC ED in a NYC H.S. for 30 yrs and very thankfully. I am retired; I retired the second I could. I was definitely one of the numb ones. They, meaning Mayor Doomberg and all other suits, clipboards and Tweeds (they work out of the old Boss Tweed bldg), are closing 33 schools including the one in which I worked.Why? Because we can’t teach! Datadrivendiva-love your name and, do we know each other? Maybe. We are The Stepford Teachers. How teachers are treated is absolutely despicable.
i think i fall in the latter category. maybe not in the cat-lady crazy category, or the negative nelly category. i fall into the emotional roller-coaster crazy category. somedays i’m flying high and loving teaching, but those times are short lived. i spend more time in swirling anxiety and anger. *sigh*
this is my 7th year teaching middle school math. i taught in lancaster, pa for 5 years and now in louisville, ky. believe it or not, lancaster has a very tiny city, which is where i taught and i LOVED my school and students and coworkers, but HATED the stupidity of our admin, and the demands, etc. when i got married and we moved to ky i thought, “it can’t get any worse than where i was.” wrong!
i’m at a very difficult point, now. i can say that i honestly love planning my lessons/units and i love teaching my students. but i really am tired of their apathy, their low level abuse, their excuses. and i’m tired of being scolded by the admin. for everything. i’m tired of the demands on my time that take me away from planning better lessons or grading w/ informative feedback. i’m tired of kids doing drugs at school and not being punished. i’m tired of it all.
and how can that be? this is the career i was meant to be in! i dreamed of! my passion! and i hate it now? i feel like i’m watching part of myself die and no one understands. even my closest friends who are teachers don’t seem to get it — or won’t admit that they get it.
all i can think of is rudyard kiplings “if,” as quoted by the band Brand New in their song ‘sowing season.” “Is it in you now to watch the things you gave your life to broken, to stoop and build them up with worn out tools?”
I know how you feel, and I am so so so sorry you feel that way! You are not alone. I consider teaching my calling, but it is getting harder and harder to do. I am experiencing the system from both sides- parent and teacher- and every day I am infuriated by the stupidity of admins who have no clue what they’re talking about. I am very sad about my realization that I will probably NEVER work for a principal who inspires me, or work with a group of like-minded people who get and love kids. I’m too old to start over, don’t want to be a principal, and am not yet old enough to retire. I’m in northern Virginia, where the schools are supposed to be good… but we have a former PE teacher for a superintendent and a bunch of mean girls on the school board, so lthe schools are not nearly as good as they could be. Hang in there- you are NOT alone!!!
thanks for the encouragement, patty!
I am not sure where on this spectrum I fall, but I do know I just took a job at Subway making sandwiches so I could feed my kids. It is my second job.
I’m numb, yet slip sliding straight into insanity. I find myself walking the halls and muttering – usually about the children and how they are behaving as if they were raised by wolves. I teach juniors and seniors and I have to stop myself from calling them assholes daily. Everyday I ask for assignments and I hear at least 20 “Miss, don’t worry, I got you!” I want to fling the decorative rocks adorning my lucky bamboo at their faces.
I don’t do my administrative duty anymore after a student threatened to “fuck me up” and she was never suspended, given a detention, washed a chalkboard…not nothing.
I am wishing my life away waiting for weekends, vacations, and summers.
I taught in an inner-city charter school in Chicago. One night during parent-teacher conferences a student stole my cell phone, which I had placed in a drawer in my desk IN THE BACK under a bunch of papers without being seen by anyone. So this kid had to have gone through my entire desk looking for anything to steal. He was caught (ratted out by another student) and the cell returned but – and here’s the kicker – EVERYONE blamed me! It was clearly MY fault he stole the phone because I had not locked it up. He not only was not punished but I was required to apologize to him for tempting him! This is absolutely true!
I quit the next day.
I’m in my 9th year teaching history in NYC public high schools, and reading the other comments only confirms my sense that the biggest factor in teacher sanity is very, very often the administration. My experiences:
School A: Big school, some great kids, also a cachement school so it got ev-e-ry-body (just off the boat, just out of prison, etc.). It got crazy pretty often; the school was regularly mentioned in the crime blog of a local paper. But I stayed mostly sane, primarily due to the understanding, nurturing department AP, who gave both spot-on criticism and suggestions for improvement, and who protected us from the principal.
School B: new-ish small school, similar range of students, good AP, but a problematic principal. Spent a very stressful year there, one night went home and had a freak-out meltdown. Was going insane.
School C: Where I am now. Slightly better kids (low-level of screening), but the biggest difference is a principal who I feel respects teachers, is approachable, whom I sat next to the other night at a Diane Ravitch lecture . . . and I am still overworked, and there are moments, but I feel sane.
Leaders have enormous influence on organizational culture. I blame and credit administrators for how I’ve felt teaching at different schools. Tip: don’t talk about the importance of administrative influence in a job interview; I did once, and I don’t think it helped.
I’ve been in a Title 1 school, teaching third grade, for 5 years. Teaching is my passion. I have never had another career, and while I do work 2 jobs (are there teachers who don’t?), my other job is teaching dance – clearly, teaching is my thing. My students, over the years, have gotten more and more apathetic toward anything school related. My principal is very demanding, but also very appreciative of the work we do. It is, however, a situation where you are either ON the boat 100% or you are thrown overboard into the waiting jaws of the HR sharks. Our school won multiple awards for achievement about 2 years ago, and since then, the entire population surrounding us has attempted to get into our district. We are a 400 student school that is now serving 475 students. Nearly all low income, nearly all single parent, nearly all with a sense of entitlement so large it blows my mind.
I definitely feel like I fall into both categories. When I’m in my classroom, with my students, I’m numb. Completely. No feeling whatsoever. I have 3 students who actually care and work hard, and even they have stopped making me feel excited about going to work. I have one student who refuses to do anything asked of her, at any time, for any reason, and will not respond to any form of positive or negative discipline. Another who is so immature he requires constant attention lest he do increasingly ridiculous things to get EVERYONE’S attention in the entire room. And another who I’m pretty sure is bipolar. Hyper and manic one minute, bawling his eyes out the next. Because ALL of my time is devoted to these 3 students, my others (besides the three who actually give a crap) have completely stopped caring. They know they won’t get the attention or rewards they deserve because I’ll be dealing with one of those three at all times. I’ve become numb to everything because I know nothing I do is going to make a difference in anything. I have tried everything I know to motivate these students. I’ve even gotten to the point of asking my academic coach to come in and observe to see what advice she can give.
On the other hand, when I’m with other teachers, we are all insane. We have scheduled collaboration every Wednesday and Thursday during our planning, and it has become, without fail, two days of complete bitch-fest, and zero collaboration. We are a small, close staff, and basically all the narcs have been promoted to admin jobs, so we are safe to be insane around each other. We eat and drink A LOT, and nearly any time we spend together outside of school consists of those two things. If it were not for each other, I’m pretty sure we would all walk out en masse.
I had a kid intentionally wait on the other side of my door today until I started to shut it, so he could intentionally attempt to kick the door into my face. Then, he told me “I deserved it for evidently knowingly closing the door on him coming to my class [15 minutes late].”
I can rest in peace knowing my time off will be spent helping my father recover from open-heart surgery, studying Anatomy and Physiology, cleaning up appreciative, feeble old people and generally not being intentionally kicked in the face with a solid wood and steel door.
Sadly, I believe I fall in the insane camp.
After years of doing a bang up job, with evidence that my students (72% free and reduced) where meeting state standards test by a consistant 80% + EVERY year, I got “broken” by being hounded and verbally harrased by a NEW VP who was angry I was smarter that his acronyms and could prove it. He was in my classroom constantly typing up disipline forms against me that I refused to sign. I was told that Admin, staff, and the rest of the teachers didn’t like me and didn’t want to work with me because I am arrogant and disrespectful. I said, “So, you’re arrogant and disrespectful too.” At which point he threatened me that I “better not make any trouble” at that days union/admin meeting. When I turned in my resignation letter to the Principal later that day, he refused to accept it and told me to “hang on”. The VP got fired 2 weeks later for having an affair, ON CAMPUS, with the stupidest, sluttiest excuse for a teacher ever hired, by HIM no less. I am now stuck with this loser ho in my Dept, (I am dept head with all the attending BullSH!t) while he is off doing some other teacher harm I am sure.
I am actively seeking other employment, trying desperately to get the state to give me a firm answer on how much longer I need to work to qualify for retirement benefits later in life as I can’t just flush 18 years without backup.
I HATE my life now. I HATE going there. I HATE everything there, except my students and my team.
1. Your team loves you too.
2. You are an AMAZING teacher.
3. He was a smarmy, two-faced hypocrite.
4. She is totally a useless slutbag.
5. You are a little bit arrogant and disrespectful but only to those who bring it upon themselves with their fucktardedness.
Supportive replies, in any form, from my team keep me going. Thank you T.
ps. and…thanks for not pouncing me for the misspell on where for were – LOL!
I have returned to teaching four times in the past 15 years (mostly high school English), each time to teach for a year or two and then quit. Each time, this is followed by a year of “recovery” involving antidepressants, therapy, and remnants of the insanity that I started to develop while teaching.
I am now back in the classroom, but on the community college level. I’ve made it a year and a half this time. I’ve been up since 3:00 this morning, and there is no way that I will get everything done for my 9:00 class. (And I’m actually quite good at being efficient, except when I see blog posts like this that I feel compelled to respond to.)
Even so, I would not trade this for even a week of teaching junior high or high school. Insanity (where you really do start having hallucinations and shit, along with panic attacks and unexplainable fits of rage) is not a fun ride.
i’m in my first year of full-time public school teaching in nyc.
1. i love working with high school students – i always have (i believe this automatically puts me on the far side of the crazy spectrum).
2. i am shopping around for a permanent school position where i can at least respect the administrative team.
3. i’m not yet convinced that #2 exists in reality.
4. i don’t ever want to leave the classroom. ever. while it’s my first foray in public education, i’ve been teaching for over a decade in a variety of capacities.
5. that being said, the crazier part of my brain wonders (sometimes) if i could help stop the demonization of teachers and the profession as a whole… and then spends hours thinking about what i’d do if i were in charge.
6. i spend an inordinate amount of time worrying that i will wake up one day and find out that i no longer have a job, no matter how good i am at it.
I’m a retired attorney, not a teacher but have always actively supported our public schools.
Reading Jessica’s and the posters’ comments, one wonders exactly what the problems are and how can we solve the problems? Was teaching always this frustrating/stressful? is teaching this frustrating/stressful in the affluent suburbs or are the problems mostly in the inner-city and working-class neighborhoods?
My anecdotal experiences speaking to veteran teachers around the country suggests that teaching has gotten much worse over the past 40 years and that the problems are much worse in the inner-city than in the affluent suburbs.
The teachers I’ve spoken with usually cite student behavior issues — particularly minor but endemic classroom misconduct that constantly disrupts instruction and forces teachers to spend way to much time/effort on discipline — as the main stressor. Secondary school teachers also frequently cite the problem of students reading far below grade level as making academic instruction virtually impossible. (Of course, most of these conversations pre-dated the current high-stakes-testing/teacher-discharge reforms; possible that today these teachers would cite that reform as an important problem.)
Amazingly, to me at least, when I follow school reform debates in the media and on these ed blogs, I see complaints but little/no discussion regarding the problems identified by these veteran teachers — that is, student behavior and reading far below grade level — and I see literally no discussion regarding how school reform should/can focus on solving these problems.
Instead, the school reform debates focus on high-stakes-testing/teacher-discharge, eliminating tenure, charters, curriculm reform, and vouchers.
It seems obvious that none of these reforms hold out any hope for improving the stressors that are driving our teachers numb/insane.
On the other hand, it seems equally obvious that reforms focused on improving student behavior and reading levels would go a long way towards recuding the stressors.
Why the disconnect between the debate and what teachers are experiencing? Where are the national teacher unions on these issues? Where are the local school board leaders?
Teachers usually have no say in the curriculum or anything else so it takes a lot to change policy and given the current circumstances most of us dont have the time to fight for change. I am currently in the process of emailing the ga state superintendent and we will see where that goes.
By the way, i teach at an affluent suburban high school. Most of the kids are pretty good but it only takes a few to wreck a class.
I’m not a teacher either, but I do have a son in KG, and so I follow some of these ed blogs too.
I agree with LaborLawyer, how hard can this be? Isn’t there anything we can learn from Finland? I just received the book Finnish Lessons from Amazon, and I’m really looking forward to reading it and finding out what they do right.
Right now, my son is in a private school because this stuff scares the shit out of me!!
Don’t get too comfortable, this shit is creeping its way into the private schools too. Why? Because headmasters and assistant headmasters are generally required to have “educational leadership” degrees. And private schools generally want to have accreditation from organizations that sponsor this anti-educational disease.
The only sure way of getting your child a proper education is to home school.
The reason you are not seeing any discussion of substantial educational reform is The Cult of the Child(TM).
The Cult of the Child(TM) is the belief that children can do no wrong. Ever. Children do not lie, children are not lazy, children are never rude, and, most pernicious of all, CHILDREN ARE NEVER, EVER RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR OWN BEHAVIOR.
The Cult of the Child(TM) is a pervasive religion in the Education Establishment. This means in the last 40 years, teachers working in the trenches have been prohibited from disciplining their students. Actions no longer have any substantial consequences, just sit through some boring lecture and mumble so promise to never do it again. Then the Angelic Child can go back to doing anything s/he wants.
Until we as a society wake up to the fact children are human beings, and capable of every type of human behavior including all the bad ones, education is doomed.
As far as the reading problem goes, go check out Core Knowledge. They are the only people in the wilderness addressing the reading comprehension problem in this country. And, because they make sense and have science on their side, they are widely ignored.
Friday speaks the truth. The is part of the Great Social Capitulation. Children and parents are off the hook. It’s official.
Miss Friday — Agree that many/most administrators/teachers are reluctant to establish/enforce reasonable behavior standards. Not sure what’s causing this counterproductive and irrational approach.
Probably several factors at work:
1. Less respect for authority in society in general (probably a mixed blessing overall) resulting in increased student misbehavior.
2. Court decisions in the 1960s/1970s that many school administrators, teachers, parents, and even some lawyers view (largely incorrectly) as limiting school officials’ right to establish/enforce reasonable behavior standards. This, plus the increasingly litigous nature of society generally, has made school administrators and school boards overly fearful of student/parental lawsuits challenging disciplinary actions.
3. The misbehaver-as-victim attitude — an unfortunate over-reaction to overly-conservative/sometimes racist views of the 1940s-1960s. If the teacher/administrator views misbehaving Johnny as a victim (i.e., family poverty, racial discrimination, single-parent family), the teacher/administrator then often jumps to the erroneous conclusion that it would be morally wrong to discipline Johnny for the misbehavior and indeed might become furious with fellow teachers/administrators who argue that Johnny’s longterm self-interest is served by requiring Johnny to behave appropriately.
4. The special-needs-student-as-victim attitude (a subset of the misbehaver-as-victim attitude) and an over-reaction to legislation/court decisions requiring schools to accommodate special-needs students. Teachers/administrators wrongly conclude that they should not/cannot require special-needs students to behave appropriately. Also, administrators are overly fearful that discipline of special-needs children will trigger lawsuits.
5. Teacher training programs largely ignore the critical issue of classroom management — that is, how to most effectively respond to minor student misconduct.
6. Administrators — due to a combination of laziness, ignorance, or fear of parental complaints — rarely establish affirmative school-wide behavior/discipline policies and instead leave behavior/discipline to the individual teacher. Then, when teacher efforts to establish/enforce reasonable behavior standards result in insubordinate students being referred to the office and/or parental complaints, these administrators often reprimand the teacher, undermine the teacher’s efforts, and cave to parental pressure.
It seems that most of these causes/factors of increased student misbehavior could be effectively neutralized by affirmative programs adopted by ed schools, school boards, and principals focussing on improving student behavior. Probably not rocket science. And probably not expensive.
I agree with your analysis completely. Although I have no idea, outside starting my own school, how to reverse course. I do want to add a couple points:
1) The victim attitude you described is also tied into the self-esteem movement. A teacher who makes a child feel bad (and supposedly lowering s/he self-esteem), even for 10 seconds, is considered “mean” and “intimidating”.
2) Even administrators with school-wide discipline policies are fearful of parents and throw their employees under the bus. One of these admins actually wanted me to send kids to the office rather than keep problems in class. Why? Because in class there were actual consequences (which were always commensurate with the student’s action), whereas in the office they gave the “never do it again” lecture and returned the kid to class.
3) You are right, an effort to fix student behavior would be cheap monetarily. But it would require a lot of people to have the courage to stand by their convictions, endure ridicule/threats, and be backed up by their superiors all the way up the chain of command. Now there’s an educational fantasy.
Miss Friday and Anonymous –
Agree that meaningful reforms re student behavior would have to start at the top. But — why are senior school system officials, public officials, and the media so reluctant to go after misbehaving students? Few, if any, politically powerful groups would defend misbehaving students.
By contrast, although teachers have long been one of the most beloved (if underpaid) groups in America, school officials, public officials, and the media are eagerly going after teachers.
And, in many states at least, teachers are a relatively well organized interest group with at least some political clout — certainly more political clout than misbehaving students have.
Why give misbehaving students a pass while going after teachers? It just doesn’t make sense.
My guess is that many/most policy-makers’ personal school experience was in private schools or affluent suburban public schools. Therefore, when these folk recall their school experiences, they have vivid memories of a few mediocre teachers but few/no memories of classes being significantly disrupted by misbehaving students.
Miss Friday and Anonymous are one and the same. She forgot to type her name before posting!
Why is student behavior unaddressed? Your original analysis basically answered the question. If you are a “victim” (or have that mentality), our culture states that you should not/cannot be held responsible for your behavior. Therefore all is forgiven.
Leaders in the Educational Establishment basically believe that misbehaving children are victims of their circumstances (or else are just children “testing” their boundaries and should be left alone) and therefore should not be blamed for anything they do. But someone must still be blamed, thus teachers are put squarely in the cross hairs leading to tales like the one below of the stolen cellphone.
[I've been thinking about writing a book satirizing the Educational Establishment. Perhaps I should model it after "Alice in Wonderland"]
Look up “Indigo Child.” It was some of the scariest crap I ever read. Evidently every time your child acts like a disrespectful noncompliant rude egomaniac, it means “they are an Indigo Child questioning adult boundaries with their infinite intelligence and supernatural wisdom.”
Its Friday and i am about to down a beer. Spent the last period trying to explain ellipse equations and i think i was only talking to myself. You can learn alot by talking to yourself. Yep i am insane.
If I were not in my mid-40s, I would get the heck out of teaching.
I have my own teens, so the teaching schedule still helps me out.
That fact and my concern that I could not get a job at my age in a new field are the only things that keep me teaching.
I’m excellent. My state test scores are excellent (I teach in an urban school district).
I love most of the kids.
But I am FED UP with the insanity around me.
Agendas for a meeting consisting of 3 teachers? Are you freaking kidding me?
So I typed up 4. I copied them and I rotate them when I turn them in.
My lesson plans?
Same thing.
And no one has noticed!
I think my admins don’t notice on purpose. I give them bs for their binders AND I give them good scores.
But still: that it HAS to even be this way. I send my own kids to private. They love school, the atmosphere–hell, even the lunches–is wonderful. No testing. Cheerful teachers.
It’s a shame that only affluent kids this experience (my husband has a high salary).
And I should add that my husband, with his much higher salary, works less than I do.
And he has a secretary, a window office, a view of the city, unlimited time for lunch, etc.
I know that hurts.
My husband’s secretary (h.s. diploma) makes more than I do.
I’m doing just fine.
I turned into the public school version of Colonel Kurtz years ago.
Waiting for the day until the HR department sends someone upriver to put me out of my misery.
Hello. I wrote in a week or so ago — Lost A Reader. I checked today and saw you actually responded to my comment, which I appreciate. I think I understand your position better now. But your characterization of Black people – kids, parents, teachers – has been repeatedly negative/negatively stereotypical, and that still bothers me. (If you want specific examples, reply to this message and I will send an email). But it’s debatable if the attitude that implies is really racist. ‘Racist’ is such an inflammatory word, and I regret using it. Thank you for taking the time to reply.
I think what’s needed in education today are social services resources the school could require parents use to address the bad behavior of the kids. It’s not fair to the other kids or the teacher to have the bad behavior of one disrupt class for everyone. Someone above said children should be treated like human beings, not angels (paraphrasing). Yes and no. Children are human beings, but they are stupid human beings. What I mean is at age 6, after a lot of thought, I made the decision that it would be great to ride my bike down the stairs. It was not.
Children need guidance, support and consequences. Not just punishment alone. But I do agree that expecting teachers to provide the level of guidance, support and consequences many students need is ridiculous.
Thanks for writing back. I’m glad I didn’t lose you completely. Let me just say two things:
1) I don’t think I have ever, in probably 200,000 words on this blog, said anything bad about a teacher. Much less so singled out a teacher because of his or her race;
2) I observe. I write. In my entire teaching career I have never once had a white student. Maybe poor white students are difficult, too. I wouldn’t say I grew up poor, but we were white trash and I know I wasn’t a treat for my teachers in school. For my first two years of teaching I was the only white person in the whole building. This is my neighborhood school. Lots of messed up kids and parents.
Three days ago outside my house I saw the father of one of four kids from my old school. I asked about the kids. He said one was locked up, one had a baby and dropped out, and one had been accepted to the Tech magnet school. (No report on the fourth.) The very next day the girl who I taught in second grade, from the class still hanging on my fridge, and who was going to the tech school came over to my house. I gave her the biggest hug I could.
I observe. I write. This is all complicated and we’re all clumsy.
I’d love to buy you a coffee or a beer sometime if you are in the DC area. Let me know.
Poor white kids are very similar. Scarily so. I just found out that one of my kids may be pregnant in her freshman year. Sigh.
I have freshman girls that have 2 year old children. Be even more scared.
Lar-
re this from your post –”I think what’s needed in education today are social services resources the school could require parents use to address the bad behavior of the kids.”–
Although schools certainly can legally REQUIRE parents to do some things, I have NEVER (in a 38 year career) seen district office administrators use the due process channels to hold the parents accountable for a child’s behavior. And if, by some g-l-a-c-i-a-l-l-y slow process, a case actually makes it to a due process hearing, the inevitable result is to back off the parent and accommodate them, so as not to further draw negative attention. District officials return the problem–unsolved–to the home school.
Gilda – I definitely know that that is not what happens today! I just think that in advocating for change, that the focus should be applied there. My proposal is not so much to try to make parents work harder than they want to (I don’t think that is realistic) but to identify children with behavior problems of which parents have been notified and are unable or unwilling to address. Then the process being along the lines of the child being assigned a social worker/team that can analyze and determine what that child needs (counseling? missed learning disability? supervised detention?) as well as offer willing parents parenting classes and support. Not all parents will be willing. And to an extent, this lets parents off the hook from raising their kids. But many aren’t doing that anyway – whether due to time/financial constraints, lack of knowledge or indifference. And our current method of letting kids essentially raise themselves along with some help from teachers is not working.
This doesn’t exist yet. But more to the point, education policy seems to be variations of different standardized testing measures. Teachers have been very vocal about why testing measures are inaccurate, don’t achieve the stated goals and are unfair. But beyond saying teachers should be more involved in the process to produce curriculum and determine how to measure teachers and students, I haven’t seen much actually articulating WHAT exactly should be done. And that answer can’t just be reducing or eliminating standardized testing, because even before NCLB, the US public system had high drop out rates, etc.
So this is my idea.
You’ve got an idea here, but there is one glaring question: What do you (or anyone implementing your scheme) do with the children (and parents) who do not respond to their social services team? Do they get to stay in the classroom and infect everyone else? Are they segregated and warehoused? Are they kicked out permanently?
Miss Friday,
I would be interested to know your thoughts on the proposals by James Heckman:
http://www.nber.org/papers/w11142
I think I was crazy to begin with, so all I can do is become numb, which hasn’t happened yet because I am still subject to fits of anger directed towards central office and administrators that do not support their staff and are only capable of providing directives that they never followup on, except when they want to get rid of someone….
for the first time in 9 years, I have an Assistant Principal that is supportive…I also a great “team” that doesn’t suck up to our principal to achieve recognition (even though other teams at our campus have these little spies amongst them, so one must tread lightly in other areas of the campus)…
I will say that my bartending career has been the best prep for teaching and that 6th graders are high in entertainment value just by their awkwardness…I am also lucky to have been assigned a subject/ grade level that is not state-tested, but believe me, I earned it during my previous 8 years! Also, the trade-off for this is that there is no curriculum, due to change in state standards in 2010 and our instructional materials approved by the board STILL haven’t been provided (but no one cares since the subject in my grade level is NOT tested), so I am basically curriculum writing everyday until dark because I refuse to take any work home…
I still feel I make a difference and am passionate about trying providing these title I minority students with the same level of education as the private school I live across the street from…that alone probably qualifies me as crazy…
In reading Jessica’s note, I thought perhaps she worked at my school; eerily many similarities. Seven years ago, at the age of 30 something, I entered into the teaching world. I have always wanted to be a teacher. My first career was nursing and albeit I loved that job, the desire to teach, propelled me forward into my new career. When I entered into the field, the only places hiring were charter schools or private schools. When I received calls to interview for teaching positions at different charter schools, I thought I was “lucky”…seven years later and I think “what the hell am I doing”. I’ve thought about leaving the charter school that I’m at, but now I think things are just about as crazy in PS as they are in charter schools.
I have found that as long as my students produce great NWEA test scores, my principal/deans LOVE me, but if those scores go down…I must be doing something wrong. We are observed weekly (regardless of how many years you’ve been there and regardless of your test scores). We then have to meet with our grade level dean, who then runs her finger down a list of what you didn’t do and what you should have done. Exp:
your I can statements need to be written in bigger letters and straight across…
When I came in 15-20-30 minutes late, you did’t stop and restart your lessons. You need to start from the beginning, regardless of where you are, so that I can check these items off the list.
You had a child sleeping while you were teaching…oh his mom told you that he went to bed at 2 a.m…well he still needs to be engaged in the lesson
Why are you allowing those kids to eat breakfast after school has started?…what? They are hungry? You need to call the parent and tell them to feed their child and get them here on time…
Where’s your 10 page lesson plan?
I only observed 3 forms of formative assessment. Yes, I know that was in a 30 minutes span, one concept…but you should have at least 10. How do you know if they really know what you are teaching?
By doing all these hands on interactive group, partner activities, how do you prove they know what you are teaching..Worksheets are a hardcopy of their knowledge
I’m not making this stuff up…it’s crazy! The list could go on, but you get where I’m coming from. It’s about results. If at the end of the year my kids make their # goal on the test, I am golden and all negative comments regarding my teaching ability are tossed aside and my final evaluation comes out perfect.
So after ALL of that, where do I fall? NUMB…I nod my head, smile, try to give my all and best to my kids and Pray! PRAY like hell that i don’t snap…I’ve not even made it to the 10 year mark and I’m to this point. Kuddos to those who have been here 10, 20, 30…years.
I have taught for 35 years and am neither numb or insane. I am a good teacher who loves her job. I look forward to it every day and plan to teach another 8 or 9 years. I will be very sad to leave it when the day comes. Teaching has been good to me and good for me and the pay and benefits are decent.
I need to start by saying something about the use of phrases like, “inner-city,” and “free-and-reduced,” to describe schools. While most of us agree that the latter is an indication of low S.E.S, the former conjurs up all kinds of pictures in our heads. I’m going to try to develop a more apt reference for schools that have an incredibly large population of low S.E.S students. How about cylce of poverty school or (COP) school if you like? This becomes important because I teach at a school in a town in Kansas with a population of approx. 17,000 people in it. Now I’m sure that this does not conjur up the same pictures in your mind that “inner-city” does, so let me explain. Our school has a population of “free-and-reduced” that holds pretty steady at 90% from year to year. We have about a 2 to 3 split from white to Hispanic/Latino. But the telling stat at our school is that 3/4 of our students are living in generational poverty -a phrase coined by Ruby Payne. In some instances students that I taught have sons and daughters enrolled at our school, and I haven’t been teaching more than 10 years! So please, let’s all agree to refer to these types of schools as something other than “inner-city.” Poverty and its effects knows no geographical boundaries so let’s don’t make the mistake of thinking that it only exists in large populated areas.
Love the site,
Numb: I really don’t care. I care just enough to get off my chair and dance around anytime I hear the principal, curriculum specialist, asst principals, deans, data specialist, head teacher, or any other suit walking down the hall.
I’ve got to the point where it really doesn’t matter anymore. The kids don’t want to learn, don’t have to learn, don’t have to behave. I “teach”, but they just do whatever they want to do, so most days I don’t think anyone actually listens. I give them their worksheet, for what good that does, and I walk around like I’m supposed to, while they belittle me, swear, listen to their Ipods, text, sleep, throw things, eat food, etc.
Can’t discipline them, we must be “welcoming” If you do anything remotly “contrarian”, you’re in for a poopfest in the office where they threaten your job etc etc.
I usually just walk around in a daze.
NUTS; I actually hum to myself all through class. I’ve caught myself doing this, scares me. I’m like an autistic, humming some mantra to keep me sane in the insanity all around.
I hate my job, I hate sunday nights, hell, I hate sunday afternoons. I sleep 5 hours at best, I”m a big crab…
I am looking in from the outside. I did substitute teaching for 6 yrs. 5 days a week.
You guys are great. No question on that. I would not do your job. God bless.