Out of Order

Typically, I try to end the year’s entry with one that sounds like some sort of yearbook signing, like “Have a nice summer!” or “See you next year!” But this year, I’m just not feeling it.

The traffic light a block away from school has been out of order for three weeks. That is not an exaggeration. I’ve been counting. To be precise; we’re at Day 23. It just gets me thinking: Does anyone care? I mean, we are talking about public safety and near a school, no less. I thought children’s safety was the bread and butter of our society. At least that’s the tune to which our past and current leaders (on the promise of change) blow their horns.

Really, with that red-eyed bastard winking at me as I come to, adjourn from, and revisit this school for going on twenty-four days now, that question has mutated from a civic concern to one needed to be asked to keep this world in check. Does anyone care an abundant amount of criminals, bigots and just general all around jack-a-ninnies graduated high schools around this country this past year?

Does anyone care that I failed to get through to these kids? Sure, I guess I’ve had some “success” stories. But when I go back and reexamine those little gems nestled in the thousands of candidates who wouldn’t think twice about referring to me as “dick” or “fag” or the ever so creative “fag-dick,” I just conclude that I really didn’t have an impact on those success stories after all. What am I saying? Being a called a “fag-dick” is being a bit too optimistic. Why would they acknowledge me at all?

And that’s really my point. Any future gifted artists or brilliant scientists or loving mothers of three I happen to have in my third period aren’t going to become those things just because they had me for second period. Fair is fair. I mean my interaction with any of these turds who will go on to incorporate rufies into his social life or sleep with her best friend’s boyfriend as a form of revenge is not the catalyst for such behavior. If it is, then I need to thoroughly reevaluate my teaching style! Nope: If I can’t take credit for that, then how can I take credit for the decent ones? They were going to be decent anyway.

So I’m not Dead Poetsing things up. I can’t get any one of these kids to stop obsessing over being right (whatever that means, but they can’t seem to be able to focus on anything else) and start feeling empowered with learning. So what am I left with to hang my hat on? When I try to expose them to critical thinking, we might as well be discussing Jesus wrestling a unicorn on the moon. The mere thought of rewriting (heck, writing alone) leaves them reacting like I just vomited all over them. So what is there?

Paperwork, I guess. I do a lot of that. We have to document everything and I’m starting to think we do it so that we can say in an authoritative voice, “There isn’t any way I could have failed with this child. Why look at all this paperwork. It’s impossible that failure has occurred when this much paperwork is involved,” when we fail.

So morale is low—and I don’t think I’m the only teacher here at SLHS who feels this way. I even think Pécan picks up on it. How else would you explain his one final insane attempt to bolster spirits before we leave for the summer? Oh, haven’t you heard? Faculty dodge ball tournament in an hour!

Hey, popping some of these guys in the noggin’ does sound tempting. We have some real fag-dicks around here, but can’t I just turn in my paperwork and then slump back to my hole of a home so I can stop thinking about this place for a while? I can recharge my batteries. I’m sure that’s all I need is some time to recoup. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, right? At the very least it makes the memory go fuzzy.

Exit Strategy

Today is the last day of school. Well, it’s the last day for the students at least. We still have that dreaded last day for the teachers tomorrow. Anyway, this last day will be conducted differently than past last days for the kids. On the final bell of the today we are instructed to perform—a fire drill.

That’s right. When that bell rings, we are to line up the kids and lead them out the nearest exit, take them as far as the tree line outside as if being released back into the wild and then return to the exits to stand guard against re-entry attempts until the administrators can come and lock the doors.

The idea is that we will sidestep the headache of the students’ impression of a prison riot that is normally found at the end of the last day. Nope, they will just be extradited to the summer break. There will be no final pass by lockers. There will be no delinquent demo of any bathrooms. There will be no final sexual misconduct in their favorite sex cranny.

I wonder if the stuff in the lockers that the students left behind would go to some sort of auction like the police have for seized property for the teachers. That would be kind of cool. Unfortunately, instead of cigarette boats and bill counting machines, we would probably just get kids’ lucky condoms, prescriptions swiped from parents’ medicine cabinets and un-opened school supplies.

Wrapping Up

It’s a shame that we have to start thinking about next year before this one is finished, but such is this life. Speaking of both next year and life, we got the re-enrollment sheets for our insurance in our mailboxes this morning. You know what these things look like. They have all those boxes that you have to tick and return. This year’s version is a bit different than previous years’. It had nothing but acronyms on it. Why? I’m not sure because it was difficult to read. It was like I needed the decoder ring out of my Captain Crunch to decipher the thing. Maybe they were trying to condense everything to conserve on paper or something. Man, I hope saving money didn’t take precedent over teachers’ health!

I got really nervous when the sheet asked me to chose Yes or No on an option called STD. Am I admitting to something or opting for it!? Relief (HA!) finally came in the form of a fellow teacher explaining to me that STD stood for Short Term Disability. Whew!

Reduce, Recycle, Reuse

With just half-days left now because these are testing days, I have a chance to clean out my room. This year I pledge to be more green. For example, I am going to wrangle up all the parent contact sheets that I passed out at the beginning of the year and were never turned back in but squirreled away like how these students do.

I’ll flip through my class sets of textbooks and dictionaries and have a whole bunch fall out only to scoop up and use next year. There’s no need to thank me. You’re welcome. I may even take it a step further and whiteout the half-completed ones and use those too. Don’t worry. No personal information will be compromised. That is unless the kid’s mother’s name is actually Mrs. McStink and his dad works at Poops R Us.

Chicken Lovers

It looks like the students are going to make it through the end of the year, but some of the staff seem to be at each other’s throats a bit. That especially appears to be the case for Dale and that other teacher again. This time I saw her storming out of his office only to turn around at his doorway to shout, “How are my students supposed to see an egg hatch, if United Streaming is not working properly!?”

Not waiting for a reply, she stomps off only to have Dale pop his head out to reply, “I don’t know. Why don’t you have two chickens do it, ya nut job?!”