May 4th, 2000

All of these events have taken place since Monday of this week. Girl goes on vacation to Florida with her family two weeks after Spring Break has ended. Misses four days of school, including a test in my class. When she gets back, she schedules a make-up, but blows it off. She gets a 0. Today she came up to me (a month after this has gone down) and asks when she can make up the test. It's been so long I'm not even sure what she's talking about. I consult my grade book and tell her she missed it, and has a 0. She seems to think that my statement is debatable, and she starts to argue. "But I had no time to make it up!" "I asked when I could make it up and you said, 'Whenever'!" "I have soccer after school! And I don't get here till late! It's not my fault I don't have time!" "But now I have an F!" "You can't do this!" When she finally went away, looking at me like I was the nastiest thing on the planet, she sat and whispered with another student who had blown off a test and received a 0. I don't think I've ever felt more hated. Later I heard she was complaining about me in another class. "She is so unfair! I tried to make up a test I had missed when I was absent and she wouldn't let me. You know, she doesn't even like her job. She doesn't. She hates what she does. It really shows." We were going over a poetry test from the Modern Age. One of the questions presented them with a poem to read, then asked them to make a guess as to who the author was and why. If they got the author wrong, but their reasoning made sense, I gave them some points. If they got the author wrong and the reasoning had absolutely nothing to do with the answer, and instead was clearly pulled out of their ass, they got it wrong. "I don't understand how anyone could get number 29 wrong," announced a disgruntled chicken. I explained my criteria for how they could receive points for that question. "But it's an OPINION question. It says 'and why'. That's your opinion. Your opinion isn't wrong, It's your opinion." "Actually," I said, "if your opinion is nowhere near the correct answer, it can be wrong." This was a student who claimed e.e. cummings wrote Frost's "Stopping By The Woods on a Snowy Evening" because "e.e. cummings is noted for poems with visual appeal and unique capitalization." "That doesn't make sense. It says 'Based on what you know about the authors from this unit, who do you think wrote this poem and why?'. See? That's opinion. It can't be wrong." "Well, if your opinion is based on a faulty premise, such as, oh, that Frost wrote with unique capitalization, it CAN be wrong. Just because it's your opinion, it doesn't mean it's right." "Yes it is! This isn't fair! This test is gay! It sucks!" "OK, moving right along to number 30..." <the whole class begins to snicker, and there is much grumbling about how GAY I am, how unfairly hard this test was, how I am an evil hag> I was explaining how to complete an assignment. Boys in the back of the room, who were seated in the back of the room because they have difficulty understanding that no one wants to hear their comic stylings every 30 seconds, are being chatty. "All right, come on, let's finish what we're doing, please. Boy 1, stop talking. Anyway, you will need to answer the first question...Boy 1, stop talking please! And when you answer the...Boy 2, I said PLEASE LISTEN. This is important. So...are we on question one? Yeah. Anyway,...Boy 1, stop it! Stop it! Um, the first question asks you to think about...Boy 1! No one cares! No one cares! No one cares! NO ONE CARES! NO ONE CARES! NO ONE CARES! NO ONE CARES!" He finally shut up and looked at me, horrified. "You are so rude!" he hollered. The rest of the class gasped in agreement. "God Mrs. Lester. That was so harsh!" "You can't talk like that! You're a teacher!" "You are so mean! Why are you in such a bad mood?" Two maturity-challenged juniors in my homeroom took a student poem from a little stack at the back of the room, where they were waiting to be hung up on the wall. They also took the roll of masking tape that was on top of this pile. Taking care to be generous with the masking tape, they securely taped this student's poem to one of my desks, ruining the poem. When they got in trouble with the dean's office for it, they wouldn't admit to doing it at first until much pressure was applied. Now they won't talk to me. I thought maybe I'd hear an apology--or at least an offer to apologize to the girl whose poem they trashed--but they won't even look at me. They have made it clear that I am a great burden to them. There is a large shelving unit in the back of my classroom that I offered to the students at the beginning of the year. I told them they could keep their binders on it if they didn't need to take them home. They asked if they could keep their literature books in the classroom, too. I said no, there isn't enough room to store 125 literature books. All year long, individuals have come up to me at the end of class and asked, "Can't I just leave my book here today? I don't feel like carrying it." I would say no, that wouldn't be fair to everyone else. One afternoon after school, I decided to raid the bookcase where they keep their binders. Sure enough, some sneaky chicks placed their big literature books in their binders, then shoved them on the shelf, so they weren't visible from the outside. I gathered all of these books and brought them down to lost and found. I also wrote out detentions. The complaining when they discovered what I had done was grating enough. "But! That's not fair!" "I left it here accidentally!" "That's so GAY!" But then a problem cropped up with one of the students. It seems he hasn't ever had a detention, and didn't want one on his record. I received some pressure to remove this detention. His mother even called me--he told her I didn't announce that no books could be left in the classroom until after I had pulled my raid. Everyone wants his detention taken away, or dealt with in another way. We went over fourteen rules for the usage of semicolons, commas and apostrophes. To be creative, instead of taking a test over the rules, I gave students class time to find the rules being applied in real life. I provided stacks of newspapers and magazines and said they needed to write the rule on a piece of paper, then glue a sentence that used the rule underneath. When the project was due, I discovered that some enterprising students, instead of locating example sentences in magazines, had found more creative ways to get the assigment done. When they didn't receive points for doing the assignment in the prescribed manner, was it their fault for not following directions? Come on now. You know the answer to that. "You never said we couldn't cut sentences out of the grammar handout you made us!" "You never said we couldn't make up our own sentences, type them, and paste those to the paper! The most outraged were the people who located the rules in their grammar books and cut out example sentences...FROM THEIR GRAMMAR BOOKS! "WHY didn't I get any POINTS for these?" "Because your assignment, which was on the board for a week, was to find examples of these rules in newspapers or magazines." "You never said we couldn't use our grammar books! That's not FAIR! Can I make this up for more points?" That reminds me of when I was student teaching and one of my charges received some sort of disciplinary action. The dean called his mom to tell her that he was being suspended for tearing a locker out of the wall. She said, "Well, did you ever tell him not to?" I love my chickens. I really do. But I am tired. So tired of being the bad guy. So tired of being universally loathed for all of the mistakes they make. "You know, she doesn't even like her job. She doesn't. She hates what she does. It really shows." Some people can handle it, can not take it personally. Not me. (My journal entry for today is a continuation of sorts. -- Andy) Wanna be notified when I update? Send mail and thou shalt receive!