Dirty Little Secret

So the latest uproar in NYC is about the Arabic language school set to open tomorrow. Nevermind that public schools embracing French, Spanish, Italian, German and African cultures and languages have existed for years. Because the school will teach Arabic, some idiots claim that it will be a religious school. I wonder how they confuse a language with a religion? And if they do, why don’t they complain about all those French immersion public schools being religious? Because if Arabic automatically means Islam, doesn’t French automatically mean Catholic? Oh right, Catholics have never blown up innocent people or anything.

These people fussing about the Arabic immersion school, I just don’t understand. If you read any reports about the war on terror, you read about the desperate need for more Arabic speakers and translators. If you’re really afraid of Islamic terrorists, wouldn’t it be better to have more American citizens trained to understand them?

There are so many problems in the world today - hunger, disease, human trafficking, global warming, war, why fight a public school? Do they really expect it to become a terrorist breeding ground while under the auspices of the New York City schools, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the standards of No Child Left Behind? Have they ever actually been in a modern American secondary school?

Teacher guilt is like survivor guilt. At least it is for me. I am relieved every day that I’m no longer teaching in KCK (that’s Kansas City, Kansas to you uninitiated), but I sure feel guilty about it. Even though I live 1200 miles away, I know there are districts around here (Newark and NYC come to mind) where I could do a similar amount of good. But I don’t want to anymore.

It’s not just that I want to be home with my children. It’s not just that I think No Child Left Behind is making teaching hellish. It’s that I don’t have the emotional wherewithal to teach anymore.

I drank a lot during my last years of teaching. Not at work or anything like that, but I spent a lot of evenings in bars drinking and smoking like a chimney, using dark humor to make others laugh about my job. I think the very worst day was the day I found out that I had one student at the hospital, near death because of her sickle cell and that another student had been put in foster care because her stepfather had been molesting her (Super Guilt, I knew she seemed down but I didn’t know what was wrong) and another student broke down and just sobbed in my arms about everything in her life. All three girls are okay now, as far as I know. But that’s not the point, is it?

When I was pregnant with Zachary I had a challenging student with a scary parent. The man threatened to harm me on the school answering machine, though he was nothing but polite to me in person. Actually, he was a bit too polite - he asked too many personal questions, stood too close and breathed alcoholic fumes on me way too often. I was afraid of him and I didn’t get much help from the school district, the police or Child Protective Services. It was the other teachers and the custodian who made sure I was never alone with this man.

I’m a mommy now. I can’t drown my sorrows in alcohol or ignore the pain eating away at me. God bless the people who can handle it. But I can’t anymore. I’m sorry.

So Newsweek published its “Top 100 High Schools” issue this week. Their editorial slant was about the importance of principals. I’ve never taught high school, but it wasn’t news to me. Principals set the tone at every school, for good or ill.

If you are researching schools for your child, talk to principals - and see if you can get staff members to talk about the principals. A great staff can be driven away by a bad principal and there go the test scores.

Principals are the arbiters of discipline, tone and academic standards at a school. They hire the staff. They collect the data for No Child Left Behind. They deal with the problem students (and the problem parents). Their jobs demand brains, organization, kindness and an ability to bring out the best in people. They need to be amazing people.

The first time I got a bad feeling about my former principal was when I met the woman he hired to teach fourth grade. She was the only new hire, as the just-retired principal had made our school a happy place and no staff members had wanted to leave (uncommon in my old district) except for the one who had moved thirty miles away. Anyway, Mr. Jones chose Miss Waite.

Miss Waite, even though she was a brand new teacher, didn’t want any help from the veteran staff or from the instructional coach. She was offended by suggestions on how to deal with her more challenging students. She struggled with the fourth grade curriculum (no, really, the math was beyond her). But she especially struggled with classroom management. She had a hard time keeping track of materials, assignments and students. When a student misbehaved, that student was sent to the (unsupervised) hallway. Despite repeated offers from the rest of the staff, she refused to send anyone to our rooms for a time-out. When she was forbidden to use her hallway method any more, she put the troublemakers in the back of the classroom. Because she didn’t understand the curriculum, the group of troublemakers grew (they were all bored and frustrated). Eventually, some of them started eating chalk so that they could throw up and be sent home. And home was no picnic for them.

When Miss Waite was informed that her students were so unhappy that they were making themselves throw up, she stopped letting them go to the office after throwing up. She made them clean it up themselves. Now, some of the kids were very challenging kids, but not one of them was violent or hateful. They were just very, very, unhappy. When all of this came to light, the instructional coach began spending every day, all day, with Miss Waite. She was forced to send misbehaving kids to other classrooms (and let me say that every one of them who came to my room was well-behaved, diligent and sweet the whole time). The principal and the district bent over backwards to show Miss Waite how to be a teacher.

It didn’t work, and she resigned at Christmas. I’m not saying that Mr.Jones could have foreseen just how incompetent she was, but he did choose her. By the following school year, Mr. Jones had dissolved all committees except the one required by the district and phased out many of the things that had made our students happy and successful. He began undermining staff members in front of students. He created problems between staff members and resentment between teachers and his superiors. He, and he alone, ruined that school.

So, yes Newsweek, principals are everything.

Why do I care about this story? In fact, why does everyone care about this story?

Apparently, a female teacher had naughty pictures of herself. That is enough to offend some people who believe that teachers should be held to higher moral standards than those in other underpaid professions. But the fact that these pictures were on her cell phone, which she brought into the hallowed, virtuous halls of the American high school, makes it more offensive. And then, she lent her phone to a student. Who found the pictures. And then had a female friend get the pictures from the phone for distribution.

Let’s clear up one simple fact: This woman is obviously an idiot. I taught first graders and never left them alone with my cell phone. So maybe she should lose her teaching job for being stupid - I’m pretty sure American education would become great if all of the stupid teachers and administrators (and Presidents) were fired. Oh wait, that’s another blog.

Anyway, it’s the reactions of the outraged parents and citizens that get me. Let’s take a poll and see who doesn’t have any adults only pictures, texts, e-mails or websites on their phones and work computers. Oh, but teachers shouldn’t have thoughts like that, right? Teachers are supposed to serve and protect. . .oh, that’s cops. Well, I’m sure nothing dirty ever happens at police stations. Teachers are supposed to aid the sick. . oh, that’s doctors. Well, I’m sure nothing dirty ever enters a hospital, either. Teachers are supposed to develop young minds, that’s it (while serving their emotional needs, protecting them from each other and aiding them when they’re sick). I guess that means that teachers aren’t supposed to do the things that other adults do.

Hmmm. . .I guess that leaves us the nuns and the priests to teach our children. What a great success that has been!

Post-script: I sure found some interesting sites when I googled “Teacher’s Dirty Pictures on Cell Phone”. But this one is my favorite (and I promise that it’s not porn).

teacher’s dirty cell phone pictures
teacher’s nude pictures

Taken from an email I sent the last year I taught elementary school. I was eight months pregnant with Lovebug.

7:30am Arrive at school. Grade papers, change bulletin boards and write lesson plans.

8:15 am Crazy, drunk parent who is not allowed to go to my classroom
shows up in there anyway, but fortunately I am in office and my
principal coerces him into the cafeteria (which is where he is
supposed to go anyway, to watch his violent child).

8:20am Crazy, drunk parent returns to my room (leaving child to hit
people in cafeteria) while I am at my desk. I manage to slip past him
and go into the cafeteria to find my principal.

8:25am Students enter classroom. Must explain to special ed child that
she is going to have a change her routine today and she needs to stay
in the classroom.

8:26am See 8:25 am.

8:28am See 8:25am

8:50am Finally receive bus list that must be filled out for the field
trip that we are going on in 5 minutes.

9:00am Take class into freezing rain to get on the bus. Must stand
outside in the rain to break up fight before getting on the bus.

9:25am As we file into W. high school to watch the Junior
League of Johnson County perform Pinocchio, the only parent attending tells me that I
“look like shit”.

10:00am The worst play I have ever seen, including elementary school
performances, begins.

10:45am As I nod off, I am startled by the sounds of violent vomiting
behind me. Student vomits all over his coat as well as the coat and
shirt of student sitting next to him. Only one other (also eight months pregnant) teacher (even
though there are five others there) offers to help me alert custodian,
get student cleaned up and move the entire class as quickly and
quietly as possible.

11:00am Ride bus back to school holding onto sick student. Fortunately he does not actually throw up on me.

11:10am Return to school to find out that they still haven’t figured
out a schedule for school picture day, even though it IS school
picture day.

12:05pm Lunch is delayed. But do find out that we will be taking
pictures at 12:45pm. Also find out that there is an assembly at 1:30
pm that principal forgot to mention.

12:50pm Bring students to photographer, who is not ready for us. Play
Simon Says to practice things like step vs. jump and up vs. down.

1:10pm Begin pictures.

1:30pm Assembly delayed, but fortunately students are in library
skills and it is not my problem. Continue grading papers.

2:10pm Room called to bring students to assembly, but since I do not
have my students, I cannot follow this direction. Go look for
students in the gym. They are not there.

2:20pm Find students. Bring them to assembly. Remind three of them
that we do not hit people just because they are not walking fast
enough.

2:50pm Must go get students now. Am frightened. Assembly still not over.

3:20pm Assembly still going strong, even though the buses will leave in five minutes and no students are packed up to go.

3:23pm Send all my bus riders out of the assembly to get their homework, backpacks and coats on their own.

3:26pm Jog back to classroom with the rest of the students. Make sure all have homework, coats and bookbags.

3:31pm Drunk parent from this morning now looks very tired. Smells bad. I wave cheerfully to campus police officer to make him go away.

3:37pm Where is T.’s grandfather?

3:40pm Go inside to call T.’s grandfather.

3:48pm All of my students have now been picked up. I am leaving.

3:51pm See four students who have not been picked up. No one is waiting with them. Feel responsible because some of them are my former students. Decide to wait with them.

4:10pm All students are picked up. Leave.