Thursday, February 19, 2004

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 class 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. ¶ 1:18 PM