Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Disgruntled

I'm in my fourth year of teaching, and someone once told me that teachers burn out at their fifth year. I didn't believe him, and I said I can't burn out doing something I love.

As a department chairperson, I believe I'm hitting that burnout period now. I'm seeing and learning new things as a department leader. It's like a "behind the scenes" look--not even a look, but more like a peek--of administration. I'm not impressed with what I see at administration or at the district level. There is so much mismanagement and inefficiency that I begin to believe that what I do is futile. No matter how much I want to fight for what is right for students and for teachers, I'm also understanding what is going on at the management level that makes my job that much harder. I feel like I am not supported when I make a decision.

The students are dysfunctional. How can I teach when they lack the basic social skills that is needed to function in society? Manners are the fabric that keep social order, but the students I have in the morning are disrespectful, arrogant, uncaring--the complete physical embodiment of hedonism. They disregard the environment they are in and the people who interact with them. Why does bribery have to be the impetus to get them to do anything? Why do I even have to consider it when I tell students they have to take a test? Whatever happened to doing things just because you have to?

Yet with all these problems that teachers face in the schools everyday, people--even parents-- think that schools will cure society's ills. Society gives us their problems--drug dealers, gangsters, illiterate immigrants, homeless students, runaways, apathetic troublemakers, potential whores, truant hoodlums, and even criminals--and expects them to be socialized into productive members. They want a miracle. Many teachers, myself included, are tired of fixing other people's problems.

People up in their ivory tower are forgetting what schools are about: they are a place of education, not a rehabilitation center. Although we can work at making schools safe, it's no longer a learning environment when we are asked to feed all the poor students, or to counsel pregnant teens, or to study data of why our students are not passing statewide tests. They ask teachers to reflect on their practice and ask ourselves what will make our kids succeed? That's a backhanded way of saying teachers are the problems.

That whole "it takes a village to raise a child" is complete nonsense. Society doesn't want to help raise the child; they dumped the child into our schools and hope that the teachers will raise them--and pass tests. They give us rotten tomatoes and then ask for lemonade.

Sometimes I forget my actual job description.

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Reliving My Fanaticism



Early Christmas present to myself.
I bought three DVDs.
Hey, if I'm going to spoil myself, I'm going all out.