This is not why I got in to teaching.

When I think about why I wanted to become a teacher the desire to yell at kids and put them in ISS is never on the list.  I got in to this line of work out of a desire to use history as a way to help young people learn to reason and help them use that reason to excel at whatever came after High school.  I don't require a quiet class room to work in, in fact if it is too quite I get a little worried, and I don't stress the fine points of modern education that much.  Jokes are OK even the ones aimed at me and I am not the gum or skirt police.  I have too much to do to try and catch every student with a stick of gum and I will never ever under stand a dress code the condemns tank tops but gives the OK to cheerleader outfits.  I try and set a good feeling tone in my classes where every one knows we are there to work but we can have fun while we do it.  It is a balancing act one which I frequently fall on my butt trying to pull off. The truth is as much as I might want a class room where every one is engaged and interested and acting like adults, I teach kids.  Kids don't always want to work and sometimes I don't do a good enough job teaching to make it interesting for them.  Kids just don't think like adults  and if you're a adult teacher who jokes and plays with them it's not really their fault if they miss you're cue it is time to go to work.  I think most discipline problems are  in reality not the students fault.  Take my eighth period class it is 27 seventh graders 8 of which have a  IEP or have a 504 there are 5 more who should be but for what ever reason don't.  They come to me straight from athletics and are ready to go home.  Many of them really need a lot of help which means we go slow which means the kids who get it are bored to tears, is it their fault they start to talk?  If I go faster there are about 5 kids who just can't keep up they get bored because they have no idea what the rest of the class is talking about many of them have behavioral issues all ready. Is it there fault when they lose their minds, probably not.  The real fault lies with their parents who neglect to teach them how to behave at home, with a system that puts a premium on cost not the individual needs of each student and their teacher who can't find a way to keep their attention and hold their interest.  I can't tell them that though there is no time and it's definitely not administration approved.  So I tell them to sit down, be quiet, quit disturbing class.  I give them lines, send them out into the hall and tell them how bad they are acting.  Which is all a kind of lie because in my heart I don't blame them I blame myself, their parents and the school.  On the days it is really bad and I lie a lot I all ways have the same thought; this is not why I got into teaching.

The most over used words in education

During the two weeks in the Fall every year when as a nation we remember we care about education you can't  read a news paper or magazine or watch TV with out encountering the words "it's all about the kids".  The state wide news paper uses the phrase so much I all most checked with a copy right lawyer before I reprinted it here.  I often wonder about it's constant use in that it is usually in conjunction with a demand for teachers to do more take less and in general sacrifice because in education "it's all about the kids".  I feel bad for doctors and nurses because while they make up over half of the highest paying jobs in America nobody thinks what they do is important enough to warrant a constant reminder that it is all about the patients.

Teaching is a funny kind of job

Teaching is a funny job, and I don't mean funny as much as I mean different. People put them selves thorough all kind of hoops to get an interview , every thing from the Praxis test to education classes that some times seem to have been designed to have as little real world application as possible and to last forever.  Then when you get to an interview you set through questions that often  range from pointless to absurd.  They ask people who have never spent one day in a classroom about  our educational philosophy, as if we could possibly have any idea.  They ask questions about situations so ridiculous that you can't image they will happen to YOU, but they will.  People who are all ready teachers aren't exactly encouraging, from the ones who don't teach any more because they hated it to the ones who hate it but still do, out of some perverse desire to make as many people as unhappy as possible.  When I see some of my colleagues walk down the hall I swear if I squint just right I can see the black cloud of doom that follows them from place to place, touching every person in their wake students and faculty alike.  I can even read their minds; twenty thousands dollars in debt for this, god two more days till Friday,  these kids are so bad now no respect like when I was younger I blame the parents, I wonder what movie we should watch to day, I hate kids.  The problem is the kids can read it to.  The kids are the really strange component of teaching they don't pay attention, they don't study, they don't turn in home work, they don't, they don't, they don't.  Then for reasons I can only surmise have to do with witch craft or the end of days  they DO.  They study, they read, they listen, they understand, they write better, they think better  they leave you notes telling you that they will study harder and get better grades they DO, And at the end of the day you think twenty thousand isn't that much, the Praxis wasn't that bad, the education classes aren't THAT long and even old I hate every thing and every body isn't that bad.  All because a class of fifteen year old children learned how to write a better open response, funny.