Notes and A Rant

Thank you all for your comments about the artwork on my previous entry.  Addressing some of the notes…..  Just because the governemnt is trying its level best to keep religion out of school, doesn’t mean these children are not religious.  MANY of my students regulary speak of going to church and church activities.  I suspect that many of them are Catholic.  Seems to go with the predominantly hispanic culture.

I too was surprised by the proliferation of hearts everywhere at first.  But then I thought about it.  They are children who want to be loved.  Voicing my ‘suspicions’ again – I think that the hearts are an idealization of what they feel family should be about.  (and I’m not arguing there – it SHOULD be).

I was also taken by the bleeding heart over the frozen cross.  I have the advantage of knowing the student who did that drawing and you hit the nail right on the head Torin….astute, as always.  That young man harbors a goodly amount of anger.

Gang symbols?  Maybe.  But the overriding gang symbolism in my school would be for the Latin Kings….and that’s a 5 pointed crown and the colors black and gold.  There was only one crown, wrong number of points and wrong colors, so I rather doubt gang symbolism.  There were a couple, I admit, that students did which DID have some very recognizeable gang symbols in them.  I returned those to the students and made them re-do their crests.

And yes – you CAN certainly tell which ones were drawn by boys and which by girls – lol.

My favorits contradictory one was the one that pictured a shield crossed by two swords and the words joy and love on either side of the shield.  Swords, joy and love are not 3 words that go together in my world.

AND NOW FOR THE RANT.

Teachers here have to renew their certificates by earning points.  You earn points by going to classes about various topics.  Often, I might add, you are required to do this on your own time, at your own expense, and with no compensation whatsoever.  OK.  Its part of the job.  I get it. 

So I go to a training tonight.  It’s a series of classes spread over 6 weeks.  The topic is cooperative discipline.

First mini-rant.  I hate buzz words.  I hate them because they sound pretentious and are impermanent.  This week’s buzz words are next weeks pig fodder.  Cooperative Discipline is a buzz word.

But I need points and this course is actually going to pay me my hourly wage for the time I spend in class (about 12 hours).  I signed up with the hope that I would actually learn something useful, in spite of the over-hyped buzz word.

We’re not off to a very good start in my opinion.  (Yeah, I know.  Opinions are like a**holes – everyone has one.)  Here we sat, the teachers from my school.  We’re tired and hanging on by a thread.  There was another drug arrest at school today.  (That’s 4 in a week – so far).  We are dressed in our usual attire – mostly jeans and nice shirts.  The dressiest of us would be wearing "business casual".  And here come our teachers.  Sporting matching blazers, color coordinated in their school’s colors.  They proceed to tell us how they teach at what is laughingly called a "country club" school.

We didn’t laugh.

They explained.  They have problems, too.  Its very stressful.  They get notes from parents saying please excuse little Susie from doing her assignment last night becuase we went out to dinner and the ballet.  And you know you have to be very delicate when you deal with parents like that.  Why, they’ll call you and e-mail you if you refuse their little darlings the ability to turn in late work!

Really?  Your students’ problems are just like ours, huh.  Today I got an e-mail saying please excuse little johnny from class this week – his sister was killed.  Yep.  That’s just like going to the ballet.  And dealing with parents?  Well, let’s see.  I had one boy show me his father’s arrest record on the Sherriff’s department website.  Arrested for cocaine trafficing.  Trafficing.  Not possession.  I’ll have a bit of a problem talking to THAT boy’s father any time soon.

I wonder how many of their little darlings have been arrested?  In the past week we’ve arrested 4 for drugs, 3 for criminal destruction of property, 1 for a weapon and Baker Acted one student.  That’s in one week.

But enough of that.  I chose this population because they need some stability and sanity and it takes somebody tough to get through to them.  I’m pretty dang tough (stable and sane is still debatable – lol).  They’re not as easy to love as the country club set.  And they wear me right the f*ck out!  But its the need I choose to address.  So I’m not fussing at them for not wanting to work with our population.  They are not easy to work with.

What I AM fussing about is their "I know it all and if you just did what we do your school would be perfect too" attitude.  They said:  You must do XYZ.  We said.  We tried that.  Here are the problems we encountered with it.  They said – then you didn’t really do it.  It works perfectly at our school.  We said OH.

They gave an example of very bad behavior.  "Little Johnny won’t do his work and said this class sucks.  I’m not gonna do this crap."  They asked what should be done about this horrid behavior?  We said – "What’s so horrid?"  That

‘s pretty much par for the course around here and most of us won’t even raise an eyebrow at the use of the word "sucks", much less write a referral.  They looked horrifed and proceeded to LECTURE us about how we must walk the walk and talk the talk and model the behavior.

OK.  So….how many of you – as adults – listen to and emulate people who you don’t feel "get" who you are?  Timely question – how many of you are going to vote for the Presidential Candidate who you don’t relate to?  No, I don’t roll in the muck with my students.  We don’t talk about the best way to roll a joint, when to get high, or how to conceal weapons in my class.  But I also don’t come across as pretentious and high brow either.  These kids live in a rough world.  They understand straight talk and compassion.  They do not understand or respect condescending twaddle. 

It’s been said – Pick your battles.  Heck, I had to learn to do that with my own children.  When my son came home with orange hair, I really had to fight with myself to realize that his hair color was not the hill I wanted to battle and die on.  Other issues were more important.  SO – if a student says "this sucks", do I really want to make an issue of it – or do I want to address the fact that there is no food in their home, they are the caretakers for their younger siblings, and they have 2 parents in jail and live with grandma who is holding down 2 jobs to keep a roof over their head?  Do I want to fight over them saying their school work is crap, or would my time be better spent trying to show them that sticking with that school work can be a way out of the true crap that they live in every day?

Right now, I’m not sure that the couple hundred dollars I’ll get for continuing this class is worth it.  I don’t need to be lectured.  Give me ideas, strategies, ways to cope.  Let me take the ones I think will work and try them out.  I am adult enough and smart enough to tweak them to fit my students. 

I like new ideas.  I just hate being treated like an idiot.