A Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, there was a suburb in middle America.  The neighborhoods were quiet and safe and mostly white.  The schools were good, the crime rate was low, the parks were clean, and the streets were safe.  Many people moved to this sparkling suburb to raise their families and live the good life.

There was only one problem:  crippling boredom.  All the restaurants and stores were mediocre chains, and the people were robots.  Instead of living their respective lives, they forgot what it was like to be interesting human beings.  They went to work, came home, didn't talk to their children about anything important, watched TV, then went to bed.  On the weekends, they lived vicariously through their children, driving them to and from soccer and baseball and volleyball and football games.  Sometimes, these grown human beings would simply ignore said games, preferring to stare at their phones instead, more far more likely, they spent their bleacher-time berating referees and umpires for screwing up calls in an Under 10 recreational league.  And the insults got worse when their children grew up and were placed on "select" teams for which mommy and daddy paid hundreds (sometimes thousands) of dollars.

Then the parents would assemble somewhere to drink too much and talk about other people, or they would drive their kids to a sleepover, looking for some time alone - never realizing that those teenagers were drinking too much and sending pictures of themselves in compromising situations all through the vast world of the internet.

But this suburb ... how lovely were the homes!  The landscaping!  The beautifully manicured lawns and showy flowers!  While not everyone was rich, they bought landscaping rocks by the ton and hundreds of bags of mulch and dozens of pretty little luminaries to place outside.  Wind chimes and seasonal flags and stone angels sat outside every house,  This suburb was clearly a place where good people lived.

The real story in this fairy tale suburbia, though, is behind the front doors.  What is the real story?

I have a theory:  I think suburbs are the perfect hiding place.  Some people belong there - 100%.  Those people are totally on board with having kids and settling down into oblivion.  Block parties and book clubs are all they need.  (Just kidding, people don't read books anymore, silly!)  But there are others who entered the suburbs unprepared.  They thought the move was just another phase of life; they didn't realize the potential for a neighborhood to become an oppressive chloroform cloud, choking out individuality and creativity.

So they just breathed deep.  And then it was too late.  

Toolboxes

Good god.  I was forced to attend a "curriculum meeting" today.  I was taken out of my classroom in order to sit in an office meeting space to chat about English teachers' feeling-words and curriculum.  God help me.

We did "get to know you" activities for a couple of hours, had a few breaks, and then went to lunch.  Then we came back, and I was forced to listen to people talk about things which have absolutely nothing to do with me for four hours.

I was properly kicked off that committee a few years ago for asking the curriculum director what the fuck he was talking about, but a new person was hired, so I'm back in the shit-field.

The class I was representing is taught only by me, and it currently has 8 souls enrolled.  Should I repeat that?  8 students.  What a giant waste of school resources.  I could have been actually TEACHING (which is my job), but I spent the day listening to other people with real curricular issues ... and trolling the internet out of boredom ... while another person was paid $22/hour to babysit my students.

Public schools, baby.  Good stuff.

Education on Fire

So ... I accidentally lit some of my student's papers on fire the other night when I was grading them.  Is this a sign?

One of my former students told me yesterday that they loved my class, but they didn't read a single book in the curriculum all year.  I thought about slapping him, but I didn't.  I metaphorically vomited in his face instead.

The state writing test was yesterday and today.  The students' job is to persuade the state of something.  It would be really great if the prompt was persuasive, but ... it wasn't.  It rarely is.  I wonder what bunch of mouth-breathers makes up these prompts. Oh, and then the entire system crashed, suspending many students' answers somewhere in midwestern cyberspace.  Good stuff, government.

I have a typewriter in the back of my room, on which teenagers periodically type.  Here is what I read today:
     "---'s hairline makes me want to drink bleach."
     "I applied for a job at Hooter's yesterday, but I didn't get it because of my extensive obesity."
     "Here is my memoir:  'everyone sucks'."
     "My --- teacher keeps picking his nose, and I want to punch him in the back of his head, so his finger gets inserted in his gray matter."

When I asked students why they don't want to go to post prom, they said, "because they don't have ... Mountain Dew, you know?"  Yes, I know.  I was in high school once.  But don't talk to me in code about your underage drinking.  It just makes me want to tell your parents I saw you selling weed in the cafeteria or something - just to see what happens.

And ... MOST of my students are perfectly normal and lovely human beings.  Thank you, those people, for being kind, and not treating me like an inanimate object planted solely to annoy you.