Ways to Get Fired from Teaching at a North Carolina Public School:

1. Say to your students, "I know you are having sex and smoking lots of pot. I don't judge you. Just don't write about it in your journal."

2. When your students tell you that the guidance counselor recommended that they sign up for shop classes next year in high school instead of honors English, tell them to have their Mom call the school right away and make her change it.

3. When you see ROTC (the high school training camp for future soldiers) on 90% of your students schedules for high school, tell them that the military is already packed full of poor young men of color who are being sent to foreign lands to die for causes they don't have any responsibility for and that they need not join those ranks. Tell them that it is a lie that the military is the only way to pay for college. Say the words, "Yes, sweetie. The guidance counselor is lying to you. Trust me."

4. After a student hits or shoves another student, make them give a "love touch" (a pat on the back or a sqeeze of the hand) to make up for it. When they say, "Man, Miss! This is gay!" Say, "So what. Do it anyway."


These are just four things I did today that could get me in trouble if anyone cared enough to check on me. I think I am going to hear back about the guidance counselor issues. I am just so frustrated, though. Every one of my students were encouraged to take "Career" classes instead of "University" classes. Every one of them was also encouraged to join the ROTC and told that they should not start out with a college track because those classes are "really hard". I guarantee that the primarily white advanced classes were not told that college track classes were really hard. I don't think most of my students understood what I was saying about ROTC, but one of my girls really took it to heart. She said, "Wait a minute! Yeah, there aren't a whole bunch of rich white people in the army! It's poor folks!" And she really got it. But, then again, she is also the student who told me that she thought "her friend" might be bisexual and she was okay with it. I love her.  ¶ 4:18 PM

  Joy of Sharing Number One of Sharing a Trailer:

Your neighbor can hear everything you say!

Today, the teacher who shares my trailer thought I had completely lost it with my kids. She said she almost called the principal, but then decided to ask me about it first. Thank goodness.

I was explaining a new system that I have created with my kids. It is a system where, if I hear them insult another student, they then have to write down 5 compliments for that person and then present them to him or her during "shout out time". I am doing this because I am surrounded all day long by kids calling each other names and it gets on my nerves. I also started a consequence where, if I hear a student say a derogatory word, they have to write the real definition of that word fifty times.

So I was explaining what I meant, but what my neighbor heard my yelling was:

"You stupid! Retard! You dumb! You wack! You ain't got no sense!"

Then a few minutes later she heard me holler:

"Fag! Faggot! Fruitcake! Queer!"

I was, of course, telling them the words they would have to define and showing them examples of what I considered insults. But she didn't know that. For a minute or two she actually thought I was calling my students those things. It makes for a funny story, but if she had actually told the principal, maybe not so much.

But the system is working. And it is sweet to end each day with "Shout Outs" and have the kids complimenting each other. Although one student did say, "Miss, you are too much, yo! You're always coming up with some new way to make us do stuff. Dang!"

To which I replied maturely, "Ha ha!"  ¶ 3:01 PM

  I just got the terms that I need to teach my students for the standardized test in May (brace yourself for many entries on this damn test, there are sure to be a million).

The words that I taught my kids last week were (for some perspective): rank, conflict, extraordinary, etc.

The words I have to teach them for the test are: cliche, lethargic, dubious, discordant, cutterage, cryptography, etc.

Do you see the divide I see? Who are these children in the state who know the word cutterage? Where do they live? Because I don't know that word, or didn't until I looked it up. My students are not prepared for these kinds of vocabulary words...and as much work as I do and all, I don't think I can get them there before May.

It is so unfair. I feel like it is so obviously unfair, but it is allowed to go on. I guess I better go back to my classroom and figure out how to make learning the word cutterage fun...by the by, the definition of that word is "the surgical scraping of a body cavity". Thank goodness they are going to finally have a word for describing that!  ¶ 8:48 AM

  Weekends do cure all ills. I hope everyone out there managed to have a good time on Valentine's Day...even those who cringe at the mere mention of it, due to the commercialism and whatnot.

I got to spend the weekend with my Valentine and go dancing and see a dragking show. All very very good things. I am very tired. I did not work for school. I don't care. But I will tomorrow.

Although, they are calling for 2-6 inches of sleet mixed with snow or snow with sleet in it or sleety-snow type mixtures of all kinds. I know that I shouldn't hope for that because they are just going to tack on days to the end of the year...but if I did have to stay home tomorrow, I could catch up on some grading...and that might just be worth it. Luckily, this is the kind of thing that I have absolutely no control over. I like that, sometimes.

In other consumerific news, I got the fanciest new cell phone ever. And I love it. And I feel very fancy...which is an important thing to a girl like me. If I was fancy enough to have a link to a picture of it here, I would. But alas....  ¶ 5:02 PM