Is it bad that I sometimes hate my job? Because right now I really do. No one ever said teaching 7th grade English would be easy, but I’m about ready to walk out the door and never come back.
I’m frustrated with the kids, but they’re not anywhere near as annoying as the so-called grown-ups in the front office. It’s to the point where I find myself fantasizing about our principal and the assistant principals being run over by a school bus. If things keep going the way they are, I’ll find myself having to fight the urge to shove them in front of one.
The kids, of course, are just kids. They don’t know any better. We missed the better part of three weeks of school as a result of snow, so they’ve been almost unbearably hard to keep focused. That much, at least, I understand, but it hasn’t stopped me from becoming frustrated with the fact that they do almost nothing I ask them to do, probably because they weren’t really working all that hard before the snow set in. I give them work, tell them when it’s due, and then spend the rest of the period asking everyone why they aren’t doing anything. They talk to each other as if I’m not even in the room, turn in papers that aren’t worth reading, much less grading, and insist constantly that they don’t know what to write about. All I’ve done this week is nag and yell, and I haven’t even enjoyed it that much.
“All I want you to do right now is pick an emotion and write down EVERYTHING you can think of that relates to that emotion. Whatever comes to mind, write it down. Once you do that, we’ll work on turning it into a poem.”
“I don’t know what emotion to do.”
“Fine. Do anger.”
“I don’t want to do anger.”
“Okay, do joy.”
“I can’t do joy. I’m not happy; I’m bored.”
“Maybe you would be less bored if we could end this conversation and you actually did some thinking on your own.”
“Can I go to the bathroom?”
“No. Write about envy.”
“What’s enby?”
“Nevermind. Grief?”
“Okay... What should I write?”
“What makes you sad?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sad.”
“Really? I am.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m starting to feel a little angry, too, I think.”
“Really? At who?”
“Nevermind. Why don’t you go to the bathroom? We can work on this later.”
Meanwhile, Raymond feels inspired so he skips the brainstorming and goes straight to writing his poem:
I’m frustrated with the kids, but they’re not anywhere near as annoying as the so-called grown-ups in the front office. It’s to the point where I find myself fantasizing about our principal and the assistant principals being run over by a school bus. If things keep going the way they are, I’ll find myself having to fight the urge to shove them in front of one.
The kids, of course, are just kids. They don’t know any better. We missed the better part of three weeks of school as a result of snow, so they’ve been almost unbearably hard to keep focused. That much, at least, I understand, but it hasn’t stopped me from becoming frustrated with the fact that they do almost nothing I ask them to do, probably because they weren’t really working all that hard before the snow set in. I give them work, tell them when it’s due, and then spend the rest of the period asking everyone why they aren’t doing anything. They talk to each other as if I’m not even in the room, turn in papers that aren’t worth reading, much less grading, and insist constantly that they don’t know what to write about. All I’ve done this week is nag and yell, and I haven’t even enjoyed it that much.
“All I want you to do right now is pick an emotion and write down EVERYTHING you can think of that relates to that emotion. Whatever comes to mind, write it down. Once you do that, we’ll work on turning it into a poem.”
“I don’t know what emotion to do.”
“Fine. Do anger.”
“I don’t want to do anger.”
“Okay, do joy.”
“I can’t do joy. I’m not happy; I’m bored.”
“Maybe you would be less bored if we could end this conversation and you actually did some thinking on your own.”
“Can I go to the bathroom?”
“No. Write about envy.”
“What’s enby?”
“Nevermind. Grief?”
“Okay... What should I write?”
“What makes you sad?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sad.”
“Really? I am.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m starting to feel a little angry, too, I think.”
“Really? At who?”
“Nevermind. Why don’t you go to the bathroom? We can work on this later.”
Meanwhile, Raymond feels inspired so he skips the brainstorming and goes straight to writing his poem:
ANGRY, by Raymond
I look at the car.
I’m angry.
I look at the oil.
I’m angry.
I look at the old tires.
I’m angry.
The car is on the track.
I’m angry I’m angry I’m angry.
The car crashes
I’m angry
I look at the car.
I’m angry.
I look at the oil.
I’m angry.
I look at the old tires.
I’m angry.
The car is on the track.
I’m angry I’m angry I’m angry.
The car crashes
I’m angry
Then there’s delightful Tameka, who’s been hiding a poem she’s been working on all week. She’s been showing it to other students, but she refuses to show me. Lovely Tameka, who cheated on my 9 weeks test and once threw my 3rd period class into chaos by bullying two of my best students until the administration had to send her home for a few days.
“Is it okay if I wrote a poem about you? That poem I’ve been working on is about you.”
“Fine.”
“Have any of your students ever written a poem about you before?”
“Not that they’ve shown me.”
“It’s a hate poem.”
“Great. Is it good?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can I see it?”
“It’s not finished yet.”
“I’ll look forward to reading it.”
Later that day, I found a copy of her poem on the floor.
“Is it okay if I wrote a poem about you? That poem I’ve been working on is about you.”
“Fine.”
“Have any of your students ever written a poem about you before?”
“Not that they’ve shown me.”
“It’s a hate poem.”
“Great. Is it good?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can I see it?”
“It’s not finished yet.”
“I’ll look forward to reading it.”
Later that day, I found a copy of her poem on the floor.
HATE, by Tameka
I hate you.
I hate tha way you alwayz complain
I hate tha way you thank you rule somebody
I hate tha way you smile at me when I don’t like you
I hate tha way you are alwayz talking about how we don’t do enough in your clazz
I hate you
I hate tha fact tha you neva give us
positive comments but instead you feed
offa tha negative
I hate tha way you neva see tha best or good in us.
I hate you
I hate tha way you make me so angry
I hate you
Mann I hate you soo much you make
me sick to my knees.
I hate you I really do.
I hate you.
I hate tha way you alwayz complain
I hate tha way you thank you rule somebody
I hate tha way you smile at me when I don’t like you
I hate tha way you are alwayz talking about how we don’t do enough in your clazz
I hate you
I hate tha fact tha you neva give us
positive comments but instead you feed
offa tha negative
I hate tha way you neva see tha best or good in us.
I hate you
I hate tha way you make me so angry
I hate you
Mann I hate you soo much you make
me sick to my knees.
I hate you I really do.
So, that brightened my day. A day in which that poem was just about the only thing that got written. A day following one in which my boss hit several of us with new teaching assignments for next year. Apparently, I’ll be teaching 8th grade instead of 7th (and if I had a million dollars, I could double my money betting that Tameka will be in my class again), but I’m the lucky one. My license only covers English. I can’t teach any other subject. The other 7th grade English teachers all have broader certifications, which means they get to teach two subjects each next year. My mentor, who has 30 years of experience teaching English, has to teach two math classes in addition to her advanced English class and one regular English class, and she hates math. Another teacher has to teach English and civics. Apparently, as always, we English teachers need other responsibilities besides trying to teach kids the one skill they will need the most regardless of what they choose to do with their lives.
Then at the end of the day, poems in hand, I got to go to a department meeting where we were asked to break down our 9 weeks test scores based on the state standards and make a plan to remediate students who need additional help.
First, I had to break down which students were struggling in which specific areas according to their performance on the test. For example, I needed to make a list of kids who scored below 50% on test questions relating to analogies, as if missing one of the two analogies questions actually means that the students are struggling with analogies rather than with reading in general, or following directions, or some obscure vocabulary in the question, or one of a million other possible issues including the very real possibility that it was simply a confusing question in the first place.
I then had to do the same with poetic devices, root words and affixes, narrative elements, connotations, comparing and contrasting forms of literature, drawing conclusions based on explicit and implied information (Of course, if the information is implied, it’s not a conclusion, it’s an inference. I don’t even know what this standard means.), making inferences based on explicit and implied information (which is just as meaningless), summarizing text, recognizing figurative language, and describing how word choice conveys viewpoint (meaning what exactly?).
I then have to make specific lesson plans to address all of these standards to make sure the students understand them before the SOL test in May, but I only need to address these standards with the students who missed the questions on the test. The others have to be excused from that lesson.
“If they get it,” says my boss, “give them some sort of self-directed work to do and leave them to it. Focus on the kids in the subgroups who don’t know the information.”
So, basically, I get to take a group of students and say, “Hey, guess what? You suck at this so you get to sit over here with me while the rest of the class does something on their own!” Then I get to tell the other half of the class: “Hey, you did great! So I’m not going to teach you any more for a while. Here, do this assignment that I know you can do without any help from me and don’t bother me with questions, because I’m over here with the stupid kids trying to figure out a way to explain what a prefix is!”
Which, of course, is perfectly fair and justified. Obviously, it’s not necessary to teach the smart kids. They don’t need to learn anything until they get to college. They certainly won’t need a teacher’s help at any point this year, not if they can pass a test designed to establish that they’ve achieved the bare minimum expected for someone their age. (And you’re not going to convince me that any test that 92% of my students will pass is anything other than a minimum competency test.)
Of course, all of this makes me wonder why we make the kids that “get it” even come to school. Shouldn’t we just give them the test on day one and then send them home when they pass it?
(By the way, you’re also not going to have any luck convincing me that it is in any way my fault if my students fail said test when many of them have never passed one in their lives and some of them come to me reading at a 2nd or 3rd grade level. They’ve had plenty of chances to learn something from far better teachers before they came to me. How is it reasonable to expect them to make up a 3 or 4 year deficit in one year? Make me analyze “subgroups” until I turn purple, and most of those kids will still fail the test. I actually do have a fairly high success rate, and I might get one or two miracles a year, if I’m lucky, but I’m not going to fix every kid who struggles. Of course, my bosses and the politicians would say the problem is that most of us suck at our jobs. Maybe they have a point. I feel like I’m doing the best that I can, though, and that most of the administrators and politicians in the world would last about 5 minutes in the classroom. A lot of the administrators, in fact, barely lasted that long before they fled the classroom for the front office and completely forgot everything they ever knew about working with kids, or other human beings. I do find this obsession with test scores and their ideas about how to address problems to be incredibly confusing, though, so maybe I’m simply not cut out for this.
I think Tameka would agree with that. Maybe she has a point.)
After that, I was asked to break down everything based on “sub-groups.” I have to look and see how my white, black, Hispanic and Asian students did, and draw the obvious conclusions from that.
And just what are those “obvious conclusions?” I suck at teaching black people? I’m a racist? Black people are stupid? What information of value am I getting here? At any rate, if black students did poorly, I have to find a way to “focus my instruction” on those black students.
And how should I do that exactly? I guess maybe I’ll just send the white kids to the library for the day? Or come up with a better way to teach metaphors based on things associated with black people? Clearly, I’m expected to treat my minorities and sub-groups differently if they didn’t do well. Exactly what that means in the classroom isn’t really all that clear to me, but I can’t help but think that maybe the fact that minorities don’t do well on our tests has as much to do with the tests as it does with classroom instruction.
Still, I realize the intent is to make sure our instruction is reaching groups that have been discriminated against, but what we’re really doing is constantly and deliberately highlighting the negative assumption that minorities are dumber than white people. Of course, we do that all the time in a million different ways. We tell kids their failing grades are simply something they need to work on, but we also send a clear and constant message that what they do is almost never good enough. If a kid struggles, we slap a label on him and put him with a teacher who will give him “extra support.” That teacher is supposed to work with the classroom teacher to ensure that all of the students get quality instruction. Of course, when a quiz is given and that “extra” teacher takes out a specific group of kids, everyone knows those kids are the “special” ones.
And, of course, those kids never give up when they realize that no one thinks they can do it on their own. Oh, no, we wouldn’t allow that. Unless it happens, of course; unless they do give up. Then it’s their fault, not ours.
Not that we ever say that out loud. We just make sure we send the message: “Nothing you’ve ever done is good enough.”
“Schools are the problem,” say the politicians.
“No, it’s not our school,” say the administrators. “It’s those darn lazy, racist, old-fashioned teachers.”
“No! It’s not us!” the teachers scream. “It’s these rotten kids.”
And no one ever turns an eye towards the real problem: The idiotic culture that turns all of the best efforts of students and teachers into statistics that keep the spotlight forever focused on imagined shortcomings and ensure that no one ever pays attention to what any of these kids actually need. It’s never about the kids or about the skills they actually need to get jobs as grown-ups; it’s always about the numbers. It’s never about the environment in the classroom — about kindness and comfort and, God forbid, fun; it’s about numbers.
To hell with creativity or love of learning or job skills or finding the strengths of the ones who suck at writing or math so they can be happy someday doing something they ARE good at.
Make the numbers go up.
Torture them if you have to. Make everyone’s life miserable, the teachers and the students.
Just make the numbers go up.
Reading for pleasure? Broadening horizons and deepening understanding? Who cares.
Make the numbers go up.
Don’t worry about inspiring them, and don’t worry about addressing any specific skills.
Make the numbers go up.
It doesn’t matter if none of your students can write a summary or if they have no idea what an apostrophe is, they just need to find the “best” summary on the multiple choice test.
Make the numbers go up.
Don’t teach skills. Don’t try to inspire. Don’t ever recognize that the problem honestly may have nothing to do with the subject matter being taught.
Make the numbers go up.
We don’t pay you to teach; we pay you for test scores.
Make the numbers go up.
Heaven forbid I should help the kids that need it when they need it, treat them all as equals when they don’t, and make sure ALL of them (even the smart ones) are learning something worthwhile. Heaven forbid I should focus on mechanics and practicing specific skills while giving them permission to explore the language in their own way, to find topics that interest them, to learn to express themselves creatively, to apply reason and logic to their writing. I think I could do that, but the idiots in the front office won’t leave me alone. They want me to focus on the poor kids, or the black kids, or the disabled kids, as if any of them really need anything more than any other student. It’s almost enough to make me hate my job.
Meanwhile, back in the classroom, Jackie and Nicole failed a quiz on the book we’re reading in class. Straight A student’s getting 50’s, then admitting that they think the book is boring so they stopped reading it.
I’m angry.
Martin and Dylan spend a period laughing in the back of the room at every hand gesture I make. Rashad makes a crack about Deon not recognizing his own mother, which might have been funny if Deon’s mother hadn’t abandoned him years ago and moved to Florida.
I’m angry.
Hector and Anthony, I learn, have been throwing Cyan’s books on the floor every day before I come into the classroom and have made a daily habit of making fun of her eyebrows, of all things.
I’m angry.
Taneisha, the only B student in my SPED class, refuses to make any more effort than the others in class. “They don’t do the work. Why should I?”
(“That’s fine, Taneisha, just realize that you’re going to get the same grades as them.”)
I’m angry.
I’ve had record numbers of students in lunch detention, two days in a row. The Assistant Principal has become frustrated with the 7th grade, so he’s making them all sit in alphabetical order in the cafeteria. They hate it, so they’re understandably acting like jerks. All of which would be fine if I didn’t have to deal with the fallout.
I’m REALLY angry.
Raymond, a sweet kid who unfortunately doesn’t know how to read, is failing all of his classes and is almost certainly going to be retained, while a whole tribe of knuckleheads will go on to the 8th grade (where I get to teach them again!) based solely on the fact that they are too old to keep in 7th grade any longer.
I’m angry I’m angry I’m angry
And then Demetrius— crazy, funny Demetrius with the wicked grin and the elastically expressive face who is impossible not to like until he walks into your classroom and becomes ring-master of his own three-ringed circus; Demetrius who legitimately struggles with comprehension and reads haltingly at best but who can grasp a concept and turn it upside down in a hundred ways you never see coming — Demetrius steps up and hands me the poem he’s been working on. No name on the paper, written in what I can only describe as a careful scrawl, one word as a title:
Then at the end of the day, poems in hand, I got to go to a department meeting where we were asked to break down our 9 weeks test scores based on the state standards and make a plan to remediate students who need additional help.
First, I had to break down which students were struggling in which specific areas according to their performance on the test. For example, I needed to make a list of kids who scored below 50% on test questions relating to analogies, as if missing one of the two analogies questions actually means that the students are struggling with analogies rather than with reading in general, or following directions, or some obscure vocabulary in the question, or one of a million other possible issues including the very real possibility that it was simply a confusing question in the first place.
I then had to do the same with poetic devices, root words and affixes, narrative elements, connotations, comparing and contrasting forms of literature, drawing conclusions based on explicit and implied information (Of course, if the information is implied, it’s not a conclusion, it’s an inference. I don’t even know what this standard means.), making inferences based on explicit and implied information (which is just as meaningless), summarizing text, recognizing figurative language, and describing how word choice conveys viewpoint (meaning what exactly?).
I then have to make specific lesson plans to address all of these standards to make sure the students understand them before the SOL test in May, but I only need to address these standards with the students who missed the questions on the test. The others have to be excused from that lesson.
“If they get it,” says my boss, “give them some sort of self-directed work to do and leave them to it. Focus on the kids in the subgroups who don’t know the information.”
So, basically, I get to take a group of students and say, “Hey, guess what? You suck at this so you get to sit over here with me while the rest of the class does something on their own!” Then I get to tell the other half of the class: “Hey, you did great! So I’m not going to teach you any more for a while. Here, do this assignment that I know you can do without any help from me and don’t bother me with questions, because I’m over here with the stupid kids trying to figure out a way to explain what a prefix is!”
Which, of course, is perfectly fair and justified. Obviously, it’s not necessary to teach the smart kids. They don’t need to learn anything until they get to college. They certainly won’t need a teacher’s help at any point this year, not if they can pass a test designed to establish that they’ve achieved the bare minimum expected for someone their age. (And you’re not going to convince me that any test that 92% of my students will pass is anything other than a minimum competency test.)
Of course, all of this makes me wonder why we make the kids that “get it” even come to school. Shouldn’t we just give them the test on day one and then send them home when they pass it?
(By the way, you’re also not going to have any luck convincing me that it is in any way my fault if my students fail said test when many of them have never passed one in their lives and some of them come to me reading at a 2nd or 3rd grade level. They’ve had plenty of chances to learn something from far better teachers before they came to me. How is it reasonable to expect them to make up a 3 or 4 year deficit in one year? Make me analyze “subgroups” until I turn purple, and most of those kids will still fail the test. I actually do have a fairly high success rate, and I might get one or two miracles a year, if I’m lucky, but I’m not going to fix every kid who struggles. Of course, my bosses and the politicians would say the problem is that most of us suck at our jobs. Maybe they have a point. I feel like I’m doing the best that I can, though, and that most of the administrators and politicians in the world would last about 5 minutes in the classroom. A lot of the administrators, in fact, barely lasted that long before they fled the classroom for the front office and completely forgot everything they ever knew about working with kids, or other human beings. I do find this obsession with test scores and their ideas about how to address problems to be incredibly confusing, though, so maybe I’m simply not cut out for this.
I think Tameka would agree with that. Maybe she has a point.)
After that, I was asked to break down everything based on “sub-groups.” I have to look and see how my white, black, Hispanic and Asian students did, and draw the obvious conclusions from that.
And just what are those “obvious conclusions?” I suck at teaching black people? I’m a racist? Black people are stupid? What information of value am I getting here? At any rate, if black students did poorly, I have to find a way to “focus my instruction” on those black students.
And how should I do that exactly? I guess maybe I’ll just send the white kids to the library for the day? Or come up with a better way to teach metaphors based on things associated with black people? Clearly, I’m expected to treat my minorities and sub-groups differently if they didn’t do well. Exactly what that means in the classroom isn’t really all that clear to me, but I can’t help but think that maybe the fact that minorities don’t do well on our tests has as much to do with the tests as it does with classroom instruction.
Still, I realize the intent is to make sure our instruction is reaching groups that have been discriminated against, but what we’re really doing is constantly and deliberately highlighting the negative assumption that minorities are dumber than white people. Of course, we do that all the time in a million different ways. We tell kids their failing grades are simply something they need to work on, but we also send a clear and constant message that what they do is almost never good enough. If a kid struggles, we slap a label on him and put him with a teacher who will give him “extra support.” That teacher is supposed to work with the classroom teacher to ensure that all of the students get quality instruction. Of course, when a quiz is given and that “extra” teacher takes out a specific group of kids, everyone knows those kids are the “special” ones.
And, of course, those kids never give up when they realize that no one thinks they can do it on their own. Oh, no, we wouldn’t allow that. Unless it happens, of course; unless they do give up. Then it’s their fault, not ours.
Not that we ever say that out loud. We just make sure we send the message: “Nothing you’ve ever done is good enough.”
“Schools are the problem,” say the politicians.
“No, it’s not our school,” say the administrators. “It’s those darn lazy, racist, old-fashioned teachers.”
“No! It’s not us!” the teachers scream. “It’s these rotten kids.”
And no one ever turns an eye towards the real problem: The idiotic culture that turns all of the best efforts of students and teachers into statistics that keep the spotlight forever focused on imagined shortcomings and ensure that no one ever pays attention to what any of these kids actually need. It’s never about the kids or about the skills they actually need to get jobs as grown-ups; it’s always about the numbers. It’s never about the environment in the classroom — about kindness and comfort and, God forbid, fun; it’s about numbers.
To hell with creativity or love of learning or job skills or finding the strengths of the ones who suck at writing or math so they can be happy someday doing something they ARE good at.
Make the numbers go up.
Torture them if you have to. Make everyone’s life miserable, the teachers and the students.
Just make the numbers go up.
Reading for pleasure? Broadening horizons and deepening understanding? Who cares.
Make the numbers go up.
Don’t worry about inspiring them, and don’t worry about addressing any specific skills.
Make the numbers go up.
It doesn’t matter if none of your students can write a summary or if they have no idea what an apostrophe is, they just need to find the “best” summary on the multiple choice test.
Make the numbers go up.
Don’t teach skills. Don’t try to inspire. Don’t ever recognize that the problem honestly may have nothing to do with the subject matter being taught.
Make the numbers go up.
We don’t pay you to teach; we pay you for test scores.
Make the numbers go up.
Heaven forbid I should help the kids that need it when they need it, treat them all as equals when they don’t, and make sure ALL of them (even the smart ones) are learning something worthwhile. Heaven forbid I should focus on mechanics and practicing specific skills while giving them permission to explore the language in their own way, to find topics that interest them, to learn to express themselves creatively, to apply reason and logic to their writing. I think I could do that, but the idiots in the front office won’t leave me alone. They want me to focus on the poor kids, or the black kids, or the disabled kids, as if any of them really need anything more than any other student. It’s almost enough to make me hate my job.
Meanwhile, back in the classroom, Jackie and Nicole failed a quiz on the book we’re reading in class. Straight A student’s getting 50’s, then admitting that they think the book is boring so they stopped reading it.
I’m angry.
Martin and Dylan spend a period laughing in the back of the room at every hand gesture I make. Rashad makes a crack about Deon not recognizing his own mother, which might have been funny if Deon’s mother hadn’t abandoned him years ago and moved to Florida.
I’m angry.
Hector and Anthony, I learn, have been throwing Cyan’s books on the floor every day before I come into the classroom and have made a daily habit of making fun of her eyebrows, of all things.
I’m angry.
Taneisha, the only B student in my SPED class, refuses to make any more effort than the others in class. “They don’t do the work. Why should I?”
(“That’s fine, Taneisha, just realize that you’re going to get the same grades as them.”)
I’m angry.
I’ve had record numbers of students in lunch detention, two days in a row. The Assistant Principal has become frustrated with the 7th grade, so he’s making them all sit in alphabetical order in the cafeteria. They hate it, so they’re understandably acting like jerks. All of which would be fine if I didn’t have to deal with the fallout.
I’m REALLY angry.
Raymond, a sweet kid who unfortunately doesn’t know how to read, is failing all of his classes and is almost certainly going to be retained, while a whole tribe of knuckleheads will go on to the 8th grade (where I get to teach them again!) based solely on the fact that they are too old to keep in 7th grade any longer.
I’m angry I’m angry I’m angry
And then Demetrius— crazy, funny Demetrius with the wicked grin and the elastically expressive face who is impossible not to like until he walks into your classroom and becomes ring-master of his own three-ringed circus; Demetrius who legitimately struggles with comprehension and reads haltingly at best but who can grasp a concept and turn it upside down in a hundred ways you never see coming — Demetrius steps up and hands me the poem he’s been working on. No name on the paper, written in what I can only describe as a careful scrawl, one word as a title:
GRIEF
grief is a little
child who just
lost a family all he
said is tell me
did I do something wrong?
he just wants to
cry but his old man
beat him too
much so hush and
leave him alone
and let your temper
postpone because
he might not have
a foster home he
just wants to feel
his family’s skin again
but he said, “I’ll get
back at the villains.”
grief is a little
child who just
lost a family all he
said is tell me
did I do something wrong?
he just wants to
cry but his old man
beat him too
much so hush and
leave him alone
and let your temper
postpone because
he might not have
a foster home he
just wants to feel
his family’s skin again
but he said, “I’ll get
back at the villains.”
And suddenly, I remember why I do this. Suddenly, I don’t hate my job any more. Suddenly Demetrius, who had lunch detention on Monday, then again on Tuesday, at which point he drove the teacher in lunch detention crazy and ended up having it again on Wednesday, at which point I added one more day because he wouldn’t stop talking, has both knocked my eyes open and offered me a feeling of redemption in the same stroke of his blessed dull pencil.
Thank God for Demetrius.
Thank God for Demetrius.
Header art by T. Guzzio.
CONNECT WITH TOM:
Tom Conway is a 7th grade English teacher at Thornburg Middle School in Spotsylvania, Virginia, and an unrealized literary talent currently dabbling in poetry and journaling extensively while contemplating the possibility of writing several novels that will make him a household name. He has had several poems and short stories published locally, and has written sporadically for other publications when the mood strikes. If you are a fan of his work, it is important for you to know that he will do anything for money, since teaching doesn't pay all that well. Tom's writing can be accessed through several blogs, including Eyewitness to Education:The View from Room 203 and The Cynical Observer.
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