Teaching in EBRP Schools
Listening: _The Duchess_ by Fergie
Reading: _What Color is your Parachute_ (yes, really)
The past two months have been intense and traumatic. The big news is that I quit my job at Park Elementary. I am going back to teach at LSU for a temporary gig because one of the instructors is sick. I have no idea how long this gig will last, because it depends on when she recovers. And I hope she has a speedy recovery. She is a neato person.
So, what happened was this:
I was working for 50 hours a week and then coming home and doing more work. It was exhausting. That’s why I didn’t blog. But worse was that I did a terrible job. I couldn’t manage the kids. They were crazy! Insane! The Goblin Hoard!
Until last month I did not believe in medicating kids. I thought it was just the school system’s way of handling behavior problems. Chemical discipline, as Roger Pippin put it in his thesis. But after having been with those screaming kids for a month and a half, I have to say that chemical discipline is a necessary thing. I had four students out of 18 who needed meds. Two were in the process of being medicated, but hadn’t actually been put on meds yet. One was on meds but stopped taking them. And one her parents refused to medicate her because they didn’t believe in it. I didn’t have enough hands and arms to keep track of these kids. They literally were climbing the walls. I had absolutely no control over the class. I didn’t teach them a thing. What was worse is that I was yelling and shoving them around and grabbing them by the scruff of their shirt and doing things that I would never have thought I would do to a kid in my life. It was kind of scary.
So, some examples of some things that happened. One kid took a bucket of math manipulatives, dumped them in the sink, and filled the sink completely up with water until it was running onto the floor. The kids broke into my treasure chest and stole all my treasures. They broke into my candy box and stole all my candy. They stole my cell phone twice. One kid peed on the floor three times in one day. His mother bitched me out in front of the whole first grade and claimed she was going to go to the School Board and the media because I wouldn’t let him go to the restroom. One kid completely left the building and would have left the school grounds if they weren’t locked. That was the scariest. And one kid ripped my glasses off of my face and ran around the room with them. If you’re as blind as me, you know how traumatic that is. It wasn’t that these events were necessarily bad (although they are bad), it was just that they were -routine-. As the principal said, I was doing a disservice to the students. I don’t want to say anything bad about Park, although I could, or about TBR, although TBR was a great experience, but it didn’t prepare me as well as I needed to be prepared.
So after a week of doing nothing but recuperating, I now have to figure out what to do with my life. I’ve spent the past week catching up on the news, getting anxious about the midterm election, reading the wantads, and mudding.
The upshot: I’m totally disappointed in the experience. Teaching elementary was something I -really- wanted to do. And over the summer, during summer school, I had a blast doing it, and I thought I did a pretty decent job. I wasn’t great, but I would say I had potential. When I walked away from Park, Steve flipped out. He got really mad. But we made a deal. As long as I give him my share of the bills, he’s not allowed to be critical. He keeps telling me I lost two jobs in a year. I keep telling him to remember that the entire time he’s known me, I’ve been employed, sometimes with two and three jobs at a time (back in my Hypatia days). I have 3 months salary saved, so I have a small (very small) reprieve and a little bit of breathing room for the temporary teaching. I have faith that the right thing will come along. It always has in the past. So I’m not worried or stressing. Yet. We’ll see what happens come January.
In other blogging news, I hate Netscape’s new homepage layout.
Time has an interesting piece on Hugo Chavez.
And the leaked intelligence report has been interesting to follow from multiple sources.
Stopped by to catch up, and damn!! I had a helluva stint substituting high school, but your experience sounds like he acid-soaked version of Kindergarten Cop.
Hang in there!
~Shaun