I Can't Do This Anymore

When I became a teacher, I went into the job hoping to help students learn. I envisioned a class where I would share ideas, where I would help students build their skills and develop their own dreams. I was young. I was naive, but inside any good teacher is that kernel of altruism that resonates in ways I can't explain.

I can't do this anymore. For every student I have who really wants to learn, ten others (and their parents) are using intimidation and bogus special needs demands to game the system. I'm not talking about students who legitimately need assistance-that a whole different ball game. I'm talking about parents who make claims in order to get their kid more time on tests, more help on work, fewer questions, less homework. It would be one thing if they were in regular classes, but now we are encountering them in AP courses.

I teach an AP course. It is not easy because the test itself is one of the most difficult non-math tests AP offers. As such I have to teach 25,000 of art, teach students how to categorize and define artworks in terms of other artworks. We delve into every culture from Assyria to modern Africa and beyond. I spend around two hours a night making presentations. I post these presentations online for students to review. I spent three solid weeks eliminating unnecessary reading in the very intimidating AP Art History text. I spend evenings and weekends grading or writing assessments. I try to throw in things that are fun like Kahoot reviews and activities that can help students to internalize their learning.

But what do you do when a student lets a parent schedule appointments during a part of the exam and then refuses to show up during Block the next day to make it up? I waited all during lunch. I waited after school on the half day which is the end of the semester. The student didn't show up. The student tried to show up while I was conducting portfolio reviews with my studio class. I told the student to return after school was out but never showed up. What is galling is that another student-who is texting buddies with this one-is now claiming I didn't give additional time although he turned in his work well before the end of class and was given a chance the next day to do a different prompt-but left after ten minutes. I knew I should never look at my emails on the weekend.

I am so sick of this and what is more I HAVE NO OPTIONS. Thanks to the dreadful Obama induced economy and the additional burden of a husband who despite countless resumes and interviews cannot find a job I am really at the end of my rope. I hate this election. I hate this economy. It wasn't supposed to be like this. I'm working myself to death and then get snippy emails from young AP's who seem to do nothing to help teachers and always take the students and parents side. I can't do this anymore.

I just can't.

I Am Not a Teacher/I Am a Person Who Teaches

This is an important step. I must move away from being a "Teacher" as an identity. For too long I have put my job before my health, my sanity, my talents and even my family. This is the way the system is set up. It used to be that there was a clear division between one's work life and home life. Education, as practiced today, isn't like that anymore.

Oh sure, you'll have those trolls who chortle "but you have summers off." Define "off." In the past five summers I have attended five AP Summer Institutes, written curriculum twice, attended twenty "trade days"(which are a special torture I will explain later...), taken repetitive and often meaningless professional development (Bring your best lesson plan ad infinitum) which all are spaced just far enough apart to make taking a college course, a vacation or even getting my house clean an impossibility. I don't know of a single teacher who thinks of summer as "off" time. It's catch up on cleaning, fix the bathroom, paint the baby's room or even mow the lawn time. It's time when we get to do or have to do all the things normal people do on weekends during the school year while we're frantically grading into the wee hours hoping to make the gradebook deadline.

I have to learn to be a Person first. I can't just keep being a Teacher Creature who exists on test data, IEP's and has so little time to be an individual that I have no hobbies and few friends. This has to end. I cannot continue on this path. Please don't get me wrong, it's not that I dislike teaching, but like some sort of aggressive mold, teaching has taken over my life sucking out any time from reading or painting or drawing or just taking a walk in the park. I have stories that make me smile. Like the girl who showed up today from U of Arkansas who told me that she was a Graphic Design major. We laughed because she was a mess when she was in my painting class. I celebrate that there are kids out there, some that I may never know about, who chose art and design as a career. But for every story like that there are so many others with kids who don't care, parents who live to crush the spirit of teachers and administrators far more interested in data than people.

I don't know how anyone does this for thirty years. I honestly don't know how I have done it for seventeen years. I didn't plan on staying so long. And unfortunately because of my age, I find I have to stay a few more years just to have some sort of money rolling in during what is laughably called retirement. I've seen retirement. Oh sure there are those who travel to exotic lands, sampling life by the wine glass. But far more often, especially with teachers pensions, I've seen the type of retirement where 80 year old retirees feel compelled to sub three days a week. I don't want to be doing that at 80 or 70 or even 65. I'll work as a Walmart Greeter before I do that.

It would be nice to think that teaching was some sort of shadowy modern version of "Good Bye Mr. Chips", but instead it seems to be a world that is trapped in meaningless trends hinging on test scores and special populations. In the workroom, we older teachers spend some time worrying about the future. We also discuss the past. I have watered down my lessons three different times. As more special populations are parachuted into general education classes, the regular students suffer from neglect and I fear the backlash will be horrible to behold. I look at my five year old grandson, so eager to read and do math and then I look at the tortuous methods they've concocted to teach these concepts which I fear will mess him up as New Math did me fifty years ago. What are we doing? When did teaching become facilitation rather than caring? When did scripting replace common sense? When did administrators become so wobbly that they fear even the most idiotic demands from parents?

This can't end well. But it will end. Education is a very trend conscious endeavor. I've lived through New Math, Open Classroom, Self Contained, Departmentalized, Whole Language and more fashion statements all with their own little zippy promises of higher test scores. In reality, like it or not, some things are better learned by rote.  The alphabet, the multiplication tables, the names of states and such can be learned by heart and probably should be. But the current trend is that rote learning is bad and that it is better for a student to stumble through a hundred other possible solutions before finding an answer. I've never liked estimates. I never believed them. Any contractor who gave me an estimate always ended up costing twice as much. Between this unstable method of answering questions and the electronic distractions of tablets and phones, I fear the next generation will grow up illiterate. And where will that leave us?

I suppose that's why I still teach. Someone has to care about things like deadlines and absolutes and quality. I don't like the philosophy that complete is good enough. I hate it that people, including adults, think all limits and deadlines are more like suggestions than requirements. Sometimes you have to do what you're told to do when you're told to do it. That we currently have a nation where that's not the case for everyone explains why schools are in such disarray. And that is why I must become a person who teaches instead of a teacher.

About Teaching

A friend sent me this story:
Teaching Is Like an Abusive Relationship

I read it.
Then I read it again
It's not from an American source, it's from the UK. And teachers there are seeing the same behavior or worse than we are experiencing here. Just this week the head of Special Ed at my school, who runs the BIC or behavior intervention room for seriously mentally ill students (she has three at the most at any one time) publicly complained about having to teach my subject, high school art, in her contained setting. "It's hard." She said. "I don't know how to handle things," she whined. She ignores that quite often she orders seriously disabled and quite disruptive students into our classes of 30 or more. Furthermore she wants to bring her class down to one of my teachers and drop them off for art ignoring that this teacher already has a full class of 30 students many of whom come to her with paperwork. But because she has the ear of the administration and a doctorate in Special Education, I'm sure they will listen to her first and ask us later. I keep telling my husband I can't do this anymore. We're going to be heading for a new schedule next year. Instead of 90 students a semester I will see 180. That means twice as many students will paperwork. Inclusion is not working and although it makes the parents feel good, it causes a great deal of resentment by the other students who often wait a couple of years to get in a class and then have it constantly disrupted by special needs students who have no ability or interest in the class.

This is why our education system is failing. When we place the needs of a small group who will never work outside a sheltered environment over those of the kids we will depend on to keep this nation on its feet, we are investing in a losing cause.

God help us.

*sigh*

I can't do this anymore.
I didn't get into teaching for fame or fortune.
I didn't even get in there to be Teacher of the Year. I always considered those types far more interested in their own welfare than the welfare of those they teach. As hokey as it sounds, I got into teaching because I like kids. And I teach art because in a world that is so often ugly and unfair and art isn't like that. You don't have to be rich to be creative. You don't have to be popular to be good. And I guess I had hoped at some point that teaching art would make the world a little bit better place. I hoped that kids would learn to appreciate what they have and seek to make better those things that are broken.

Yes, I was an optimist.

After today, I simply don't know anymore. I've endured the countless cases of the most disabled kids being parachuted into my most advanced classes and although I've complained, I've survived. I have kids with criminal histories, deviant behavior and even a kid so violent he had to be walked to and from class because he was so delusional that he would believe the very walls were attacking him. But today was the last straw.

I've worked very hard to build an AP program that was both flexible and rigorous. I gave the students projects in much the same way a client hires a graphic designer. They are free to do what they want. The projects are designed to build up their portfolio Breadth. I'm not clueless-many of these project have gotten my students into schools like School of Visual Arts, Kansas City Art Institute, Ringling and Rhode Island School of Design. Yet today an AP student-one who bailed on AP portfolio and our state competition last year, leaving the department stuck paying the fees, accused me of having a class that was holding her back. It seems she wants some sort of "open portfolio" class where all they do is whatever work they feel like doing. My experience with that is you get two kinds of artwork: Utter crap and Nothing. This one page rant went on and one.

My take, after discussing this with other department teachers, the girl's counselor and her AP is to let her go into another class, which is fine by me. In a way I think this may be calling her bluff. She expects me to back down and let her do whatever she wants. Instead I'm essentially of the mind not to kick her out, but to let her go. I understand the only class open that period is Personal PE. I hope she enjoys that.

But on a larger scale, this is a problem that is growing. I don't know if this is a problem with me, the kids , the school or all of the above. From the overweaning burden of testing to the sophomoric level of favoritism (by the faculty no less!) teaching just isn't much fun anymore. It's become a job where status is real, income is nebulous and based on how much you brown nose and the daily grind has become literal. I come to school each day with hope, only more often than not to see it dashed on the rocks. We live in an age when gratitude is a rare commodity. I'm not sitting here waiting with my hands out, but a thank you would be nice now and again.

Appropriate....

This makes sense. And if you don't understand then you've never had to try to speak over the texting, movie watching and instagramming of today's youths.

I Do My Job-Why Can't Other People Do Theirs?

A valid question.
I'm a high school teacher with all the job responsibility and paperwork that entails. I make lesson plans,  grade projects, call parents, go to meetings, make arrangements for competitions, collect permission slips, and on and on and on. I do this year in and year out.

We got a coordinator that we share with theater and dance.
She's handsomely paid.
For what I am not sure.
I call and she's never in her office. She allows her pet teacher to run meetings which means every event is designed to fit nicely with that teacher's schedule and not necessarily ours. This year, because this teacher wanted to win all the top places in our district show, they had the once a year, district, high school art show in late January. Never mind that we just got a new crop of classes and kids. Ignore that our regional show is coming up shorting. Forget that we have GRADES due-and all of that in the same week.

Fast forward to now. Teacher in question did win all top prizes-I'm not sure how when my kids got first in painting and first in drawing, but whatever. And Monday is Open House and Eighth Grade Roundup where we talk kids into taking art-and our "art coordinator" decided it would be a good thing for us to take down the show in the 90 minutes between school getting out and the event. We physically cannot do it. It takes 30 minutes just to drive over there and another hour or so to take down the art then 30 minutes to get back. That means no break from 7:30 am until 9:00 pm.

I already have high blood pressure. I simply cannot continue doing this kind of thrill kill schedule.

Why Teachers Quit.

My district, under some truly delusional actions by the state of Texas, has implemented a program known as total inclusion. No pull outs, no special classes, no content mastery or small group teaching for the kids who struggle to function. Instead general ed teachers are supposed to magically develop the skills to intuitively know how to address multiple IEP mandates for multiple children within a regular classroom setting. To some, this may sound like insanity, but to many this is the endgame for special education wherein teachers are simply observers and record keepers. The sad thing is, I'm a good teacher. I find kids who have talent and I get them to where they need to be. I write recommendation letter, I find college sponsors, I push them, I reward them-which last time I heard is what a teacher is supposed to do. But the New Regime, a rather aggressive and arrogant movement led by Special Ed teachers who see general ed teachers as The Enemy, seem intent on making our lives more complex than it should be.

First, there is the placement itself. A student with mild challenges can be easily incorporated into a regular class with support. That means that the general ed teacher is informed-FULLY-and that care is taken to place the student into a class where his or her numbers won't tip the apple cart. But what is happening is that because of scheduling special core classes for these groups, a full third of some classes hold severely disabled students in a regular classroom. That in itself creates a situation where the teacher must pay due to the special ed student first leaving the regular students to their own devices. Then you have 504's, BIP's and other special designations. We have to file no less than five and sometimes as many as nine pieces of paper every single week PER STUDENT, which with ten students results in 90 pieces of paper be handled. Today the head of Special Ed celebrated all the necessary data we are generating. What she ignores is that in order to do this, many teachers are dumbing down programs, ignoring advanced students and diluting rigor in programs.

Second, there is the issue of classroom management. I am one of those teachers who rarely if ever sends students to the principal. Generally speaking, special ed students aren't referred for behavioral problems. But when you have a situation where you have autistic spectrum kids who can be set off by too bright a light, or a word or an emotionally disturbed student who likes to openly rant over ways to attack people it makes it hard to encourage students to stay in an elective program. when they view it as a holding area for kids who cannot do anything else.I spent half an hour on Friday trying to convince an amazingly talented sophomore to stay in art after she was verbally assaulted by an emotionally disturbed student. My fear is that the talented students will leave and my classes truly will little more than a place to put every problem, every kid who fights, every kid with issues.

I have five years until I can retire. Five years. That's 900 days of teaching. What's sad is I am good at what I do. I had more kids get 5's on their AP portfolios that the rest of the district combined. I have more kids taking AP than any other school. I have more kids in elite art schools or in art programs in major universities than any other teacher in the district. That is what I have always thought I was supposed to do-make kids successful. And while I am good at finding those kids who never realized they had talent, the stark reality is that someone who can't move their arms, cannot read, cannot write, cannot talk, is probably not destined for anything beyond a very limited life. I want to make their lives pleasant, but not at the cost of everyone else. After today, I feel broken. I feel that all my work is simply not worth it. I believe that everything I have done to build up the program has been nothing more than a joke.

I wish I felt differently. I wish I could feel more hopeful. But this is what the feelgood policies of the current crop of educational elites and the politicians of the Left has done to the once noble idea of a free public education. I hope my children will be able to afford decent private schools for their kids. It's over.

A TAKS Upon Us

** High Priority **

There will be a staff roster for you sign off on acknowledging you have read and are aware of the following security guidelines.

Severe Weather TAKS Testing Protocol

1. Should a severe weather situation occur during testing, please remain calm. To display any kind of anxiety would be a testing irregularity and must be reported.

2. Please do not look out the window to watch for approaching tornadoes. You must monitor the students at all times. To do otherwise would be a testing irregularity and must be reported.

3. Should students notice an approaching tornado and begin to cry, please make every effort to protect their testing materials from the flow of tears and sinus drainage.

4. Should a flying object come through your window during testing, please make every effort to ensure that it does not land on a testing booklet or an answer sheet. Please make sure to soften the landing of the flying object so that it will not disturb the students while testing.

5. Should shards of glass from a broken window come flying into the room, have the students use their bodies to shield their testing materials so that they will not be damaged. Have plenty of gauze on hand to ensure that no one accidentally bleeds on the answer documents. Damaged answer sheets will not scan properly.

6. Should gale force winds ensue, please have everyone stuff their test booklets and answer sheets into their shirts...being very careful not to bend them because bent answer documents will not scan properly.

7. If any student gets sucked into the vortex of the funnel cloud, please make sure they mark at least one answer before departing...and of course make sure they leave their answer sheets and test booklets behind. You will have to account for those.

8. Should a funnel cloud pick you, the test administrator, up and take you flying over the rainbow, you will still be required to account for all of your testing materials when you land so please take extra precautions. Remember, once you have checked them out, they should never leave your hands.

9. When rescue workers arrive to dig you out of the rubble, please make sure that they do not, at any time, look at or handle the testing materials. Once you have been treated for your injuries, you will still be responsible for checking your materials back in. Search dogs will not be allowed to sift through the rubble for lost tests...unless of course they have been through standardized test training.

10. Please do not pray should a severe weather situation arise. Your priority is to actively monitor the test and a student might mark in the wrong section if you are praying instead of monitoring. I'm sure God will put war, world hunger, crime, and the presidential primaries on hold until after testing is over. He knows how important this test is.

Okay, just kidding, but honestly, sometimes the Texas Education Agency missives are just about this silly. Trust me, they are, but if i divulge what is actually going on, I would probably have to kill you, or risk losing my job. It's really become just that strange down here.

Through The Cracks

A friend of mine's husband teaches fifth grade math in an urban school. He got this note last week:
"Dear Mr.-----
My step-daughter is repeating fifth grade this year. She started school in Mexico and for two years just basically had play time. Since then, she has been in eleven schools. Her mother can't help much because she doesn't speak English. I have six kids to care for so I don't have time to help. What I want to know is what you are going to do to make sure she doesn't fall through the cracks?

Signed (Concerned Step-Father)"

This kid has the deck stacked against her, but I don't see that it's the fault of the school. Her own mother hasn't bothered in at least nine years to try to learn English. She has moved her daughter to eleven different schools in three years meaning that the child has changed textbooks, teachers, classmates and procedures around every three months. The step-father is too busy, too unconcerned, too overworked to do anything,
YET
It's the problem that the schools must solve.

Does anyone else get the idea that there is something wrong with this picture?
I could speculate that this child has parents who skip out on leases and buy and drop cell phone numbers by the month. They probably rely on the schools for meals, for health referrals, for daycare, for ESL, for early childhood education and countless other costly measures that the schools have been legally mandated to provide. And for the most part, the schools will try to fulfill these goals. But every night this child will go home to the same family that sees the schools as the Big Nanny that will keep the kid busy while the parents do whatever it is that they do during the day. Bad grades won't matter. Bad test scores that can impact entire faculties, won't matter. Because all many people see when they send their kid to school is something they get for free-something other people pay for-soemthing that many other nations only provide for the wealthy.

Is Teaching a Genetic Flaw?

I ask this because of my three children, two are going to end up in the classroom. Luckily one of them is smart enough to also be a Coach and will be ensured of a job for life or as long as his teams are successful. I noticed that many of the teachers in my school have family members or children that also teach. I know that traditionally in the Middle Ages trades and professions were handed down from generation to generation, but that doesn't seem to be the norm in the past fifty years. So why then are so many teachers coming from families that are in education? Is it just a comfortable fit? Do they like working with kids? Do they see this as a means to get more free time? (An obvious mistake since there hasn't been a break, weekend or vacation that I haven't been grading something, planning something or attending a class) I wouls just be curious if it's a type of hero worship or just based on the modeling done by teacher parents that inspire teacher offspring. I am sure some geneticist could get in the works to design the perfect teacher. I would just wonder who is going to have input on the final model. I shudder to think of the difference between what parents would want, what administrators would want and what students would want. Parents would want someone exciting and forgiving and tireless in their work ethic. Adminstrators would want endurance, blind adherence to policy and unquestioning loyalty. Students would want Bozo the Clown or Pamela Anderson. (actually we have had a couple of the latter, and needless to say, in the end-they didn't work out...discretion permits only a few reference words-cheerleader, students, inappropriate behavior..you fill in the blanks.)
It's something that rather scares me in the long run.

Anxiety

I have always been a somewhat nervous person. I tend to dwell on details and rework them in my head. It's probably what makes me a good teacher and a borderline neurotic. One of the biggest hurdles I have to deal with is returning to the classroom after time off. It's not that I can't teach, or that I feel inadequate, it's simply that after time to decompress from the rushing and paperwork and stress of daily classroom life, I find myself seriously wondering if I want to return. What would happen if I didn't? Would it be the end of the world? I guess I am especially nervous because the day before Thanksgiving break, I was out of class at a teachers' convention. So I have this dread of returning to a classroom in shreds or to a class report that the sub didn't do what I wrote in the lesson plan and I will have to deal with this tidal wave aftermath of whining kids and angry parents. You see, there's this project due. We worked on it in class from the first day of the term. Students recieved a list of requirements and have been allotted time in class to work. But, as so often happens, they procrastinate, they argue, they goof around and do anything but work. The project is due on Wednesday. I have babysat them through the writing and the production of the piece, but HONESTLY, I weep for their incompetence when I see seniors in high school that don't know how to cite a resource or that can't format a page to specifications. It's like pulling teeth to get them to work. And since my class doesn't count toward the GPA, they only need the credit, they give me schlock and expect to pass. Then there are the parents who like to argue over every grade their kiddo doesn't ace. I have a kid who is making an A, but who gave me a half-baked assignment for which I gave him a generous 80. His dad calls me up with a rambling, rumbling monologue of "Why didn't he make an A? He always makes an A. He's playing international soccer. He's on a special accellerrated plan....blahblahblah"...and so on. I have 25-30% of my classes FAILING. I don't have time to argue over a 96 vs. a 97 average. Maybe that's why I dread returning. Yet I need this job. Next year I will have THREE kids in college. And as a nonethnically diverse, middle class, two parent family, the powers that be who give out scholarships and grants think we merit exactly NOTHING. Talk about being between a rock and a hard place. I wish I could just pluck out this fear and push it under the bed where it belongs. I wonder how many other teachers go through the same thing the night before classes begin. Or am I the only one?