Third day after vacation, and I get to cover the wild children. After a few days of floating on my back in the sea on a Caribbean island, I was rested and ready. NOT.
Lemme splain. For some reason, it seems as though all the children, including the angels in my homeroom, have ingested high doses of crack cocaine with their breakfast Doritos. This results in unusually high incidences of screaming, randomly running around the room, putting chalk dust on each other, throwing the eraser, throwing books, banging out beats on desks, and higher volumes of the usual potty mouth language. Strangely, the wildest kids seem to be writing the most interesting poems, regardless, and the angels have managed to write some halfway decent sonnets and are constantly quoting "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" Ah well.
So I go to cover the Wild Children first period this morning. I started a poetry lesson, got the attendance list going (for some reason knowing that I have a list of their names calms them down somewhat) and started the rounds to ask them to take out their binders, because of course they're just sitting there like they're in a lounge. At one point, one of the boys, N., says, "Miss, why are you asking us for this stuff? We're the mob."
Ms. S: What do you mean by that exactly?
N.: The Mob. We don't do no work.
Ms. S.: What about your education?
N.: We don't have a teacher.
Ms. S.: I'm your teacher.
N.: (looking at me like I'm bullshitting him, which I sort of am) Miss. Please.
I wish I could say that I gave him some enlightening, inspirational speech, but I just sighed and walked away. I was tired. And I didn't feel like fighting. SO I worked with the ten people out of twenty-six who were doing the work, they wrote some good poems, and I left when the bell rang. They were happy to see me go, because although they like me, I push them to work, and ever since they stopped running like crazy people around the room, they realized that that is all most coverage teachers want -- for them to stay in their seats. So for most days, they stay in their seats for an hour and a half each day, chill with their friends, draw, write notes, and talk about the adolescent drama of their lives.
Basically these kids have had no English teacher all year. And they're not going to get one, because, rumor has it, the district will not send any more teachers to our school for Psycho Man to chew up and spit out. So, since they have no homeroom or English teacher they have just been adrift all year. With their other subject teachers they just run around and act crazy, no matter how many teachers are in the room -- two, three, doesn't matter.
Has anyone else seen anything like this? A class adrfit with a permanent vacancy? Kids who just learn nothing all year long? Where are their parents I wonder? Do they know what is going on? And of course, I wonder what I should have done about it, but just thinking about it makes me so tired.
I am so burnt out from this job and this place -- at the end of the day, which ends with my wilder class, I am exhausted. There is so much that needs to be done, but at the end of the day, I just want to go home to my other life.
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