Wow! Six or seven people have actually stopped by to read. That makes me very self-concious about the fact that I haven't posted an original thought in quite some time.
Well, here's a good story about the dumbest damn thing I ever did as a teacher (so far):
Once upon a time I was stupid enough to agree to organize the field trip to the local amusement park.
Mistake number one.
Part of the funzies of that job was hiring buses to transport the kids to the park. I did this.
Then the school district got all hinky about "frivolous" field trips (I'm of the opinion that there's no such thing, but I've got a husband who claims that pretty much every field trip EVER is frivolous, so there are clearly Views on this subject) and said they couldn't be scheduled after a certain point in time.
This point in time was before when I had set up our trip. So I had to reschedule. My original choice of dates had been based on the fact that the preferred bus service was unavailable on any earlier dates.
So I set up transportation with a different carrier two weeks earlier.
And then there was all the fun of collecting money and forms and distributing information and threatening children with their very LIVES if they did not ACT RIGHT (oh wait, that was this afternoon at the grocery store, hang on, let me regain focus...) and all the other fiddly nightmares that all teachers know come with setting up a field trip.
Then the day came and we all went and sunburns and overindulgence and sicking up on the Borg Assimilator and whatever went down and it was generally agreed to be a fantastic trip.
And then we came back and went on with our lives. Two weeks went by.
One morning we are all baffled by the presence of four charter buses sitting in the front driveway. Why are there four charter buses in our driveway, we all wondered. There are no more field trips scheduled.
Guess who forgot to cancel the original buses? Guess how much chartering four buses
costs.
If you can out-dumb
that, I wanna hear about it.
This is a very interesting article:
Self-Discipline May Beat Smarts as Key to SuccessTo which I say: YA THINK?
What I love about this little story is that the teacher isn't getting bitch-slapped for being a drooling moron. They must have good unions in Ohio.
"Ohio High School Porn Homework Canceled."
I'm afraid the riveting narrative has bogged down momentarily, because a) the Sedgefield Years had a lot going on and b) I currently have the focus of a gnat.
Still, this is the blog annex where the Education Stuff is going on, so I thought I'd share this: if teaching writing or ESL kids is of interest to you, then
I Am a Pencil by
Sam Swope is an excellent read.
Meanwhile, I'm going to go futz around in the sidebar and make links to some posts on the original
Mean Teacher that were actually about teaching.
Let me tell you a little something about selling shoes: you think teachers don't get respect? If we'll all hark back to the early days of the Fox sitcom, shoe salesmen
really don't get respect.
I worked at an Easy Spirit store at the hoity toity mall where all the rich cows with foot problems shopped. Two things about Easy Spirit: their shoes are designed for comfort, not fashion, so one gets real bored with the merchandise real quick, and people with SERIOUS FOOT ISSUES love to shop there. When the big August sale rolled around, the store would fill up with these evil old bats stocking up on walking shoes and screaming at you because you were out of 9AAA in pewter. I felt desperately compelled to work my alma mater into the conversation at any opportunity, just to regain some of my dignity. Upon reflection, I imagine the net effect of this was to cause the evil old bats to pity my folks that I wasted such a valuable education on such a pathetic career.
I had re-submitted applications around the area school districts, and even wandered into a job fair, but I wasn't holding my breath. Then, the week before school began I came down with strep throat. I was already barely getting by (or rather, getting by with generous support and angelic tolerance on Anna's part) and losing a week's worth of wages was a terrifying prospect, but one that had to be borne, as I couldn't even get out of bed. Anna's patience was further tried by the presence of my phenomenally useless boyfriend, who "took care" of me during my illness by ensconcing himself on our couch with a liter of Jim Beam and demanding that Anna cook him something.
In a moment eerily reminiscent of my first career breakthrough with Gaston County, my mom was again the one who got the call. A middle school in Charlotte needed an English as a second language teacher very, very badly, and the fact that I had, on a total whim, checked that I'd be interested in teaching that subject apparently had fully qualified me. I called the principal in a feverish fug, managed not to make a complete ass of myself, and got the job.
In Gastonia, I had begun the year completely at sea. I had hated student teaching and had serious doubts about becoming a teacher. I hated Gastonia, I hated my roommate. All of my college friends had gone away and those who remained were a rock'n'roll dope-smokin' too-cool-for-school bunch with whom I had less and less in common each day. Anna turned out to be the one bright spot in the whole mess.
The first night I went out with her, a group of us had dinner at a Chinese restaurant. At the end of the meal I cracked open my cardboard cookie and read the slip of paper. Even in the moment I realized I had a genuine fortune in my hands -- I taped it in the upper left-hand corner of my windshield to help me remember, as I shuttled between Gaston County schools, headed off to the mall for another day of fun at the shoe store, then pulled into the parking lot of Sedgefield Middle School to begin my career as a teacher of English as a second language, that things were going to come together, and they were going to be okay. This is what my fortune said:
You are headed in the right direction.
