Boobies. The great motivator.

One of my students was wearing a non-dress code "I ♥ Boobies" bracelet in class on Friday. I'd already told him that the bracelet was verboten, so I confiscated it this time. Now, this is a pretty good kid I'm talking about. He does his work, he's pleasant in class, and I don't wish his mother had smothered him as an infant.

He kept asking me to let him have his bracelet back, so I made a deal. We're in a poetry unit, so I figured it wouldn't hurt him to put his knowledge to work. I told him that if he wrote an elegy for his bracelet, and if it contained one approximate rhyme along with some exact rhymes, I would give him back his bracelet upon my determining his elegy was Boobie-bracelet worthy. If it wasn't worthy, I would give it to the teacher in the room next to mine.

The student turned up first thing this morning and handed me a folded piece of paper. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present Elegy for Boobies.

I can't believe you took my booby bracelet,
Cause now I'm having a fit.
My bracelet was green.
There wasn't even any red.
And yet to me my bracelet was still dead.
Actually I'm glad it wasn't taken by a dean,
Plus I'm starting to get thirsty,
So gimme a cup of tiger blood,
Cause I can't take much more of this crud.
Now I'm starting to get tisky,
So please gimme back my booby bracelet, 
Cause I can't let you walk away with it.
So please don't give it to the teacher,
Cause she'll stand over there saying
"Neener neener neener,"
And all my sadness will turn into jealousy
And those boobies will be nothing but a memory,
Because it was destiny
For you to give it back to me
So I can stand over there grinning
And be like Charlie Sheen. "Epic Winning, Winning!!"

Not exactly Thomas Gray, but not bad for an 8th grade kid. Yeah, he got his bracelet back.

But I made him wait until the end of the school day.

Good parenting. You're doing it wrong.

For all the people who think that teaching is the easiest job in the world, I have a question for you. Would you find it acceptable that, during the course of an average work day, a 13-year-old nickel-and-dime thug got into your face and cussed you out in front of your co-workers and clients, all because you told him to turn off the iPod that he wasn't supposed to be listening to in the first place? If your answer is yes, then you're welcome to work for me from now until the end of the school year. In turn, I will happily take whatever job it is that you do. I don't care if you're slinging fries at McDonald's. I'd still get treated with more courtesy and respect than I do in the average school day.

When did it become acceptable for kids to run their mouths like they do? I was waiting outside my son's middle school last week, and some jackass jaywalked right in front of two motorcycle cops. When one of the cops told the kid to walk in the crosswalk, the kid lipped off to him. Seriously? The cops pulled in to the parking lot, and one of them told that kid off. The thing that amazed me is that the kid's grandpa was right there, and he didn't get out of his car and take his belt to the kid, or at the very least rapped him in the mouth.

I'm sorry, but I don't think I should have to give respect to a kid first in order to be treated with the respect that should naturally be shown to adults and/or teachers. I respect my friends, my family, my equals, people I admire...not semi-literate juvenile delinquents. If you're 13 and reading at a 3rd grade level, I have no respect for you or your parents. I have pity for you, which is a lot different than respect.

That's not cheating on the test. Not at all.

We had CRTs for the past week. Days 1 and 2 were math, days 3 and 4 were reading, and day 5 was science. One student (the one I mentioned before as being dumb as a sack of hammers) called me over at one point during his science test. When I got to his desk, he covered his testing materials and asked me, "What do rabbits eat?" I said, "I can't answer that." He responded, "It's not for the test. I was just wondering."

If I didn't care about my job enough to not want to get written up for testing irregularities, I would have told him that rabbits eat squid.

All the glamour...all the time...

I'm going on to day four with laryngitis. I couldn't talk at all on Friday, but I went to work anyhow since we were preparing for CRTs, which start tomorrow. I will be proctoring all week in my classroom. That includes reading the state-mandated testing directions. Considering my voice is barely audible, this should be interesting.

To make things even better, there is a kid testing in my room who is as dumb as a sack of hammers. How do I know this? Because I have the misfortune of having him in my class. I had to take his highlighter away last week because he was using it to color all over himself, the desk, his review materials, the bookcase behind him, and the carpet under his desk. Then he had the audacity to tell me, "It wasn't me!" I fully expect to see him on America's Dumbest Criminals one day.

Pray for me, Gentle Reader. This is going to be a long shite week.

Hordle ordle durr

Last week I gave a quiz on 20 essential literary terms. Prior to this, I gave my students a worksheet with the terms and had them write the definitions. Mind you, these are essential terms, not random things I want them to know for my own amusement. I told them last week that they could study their terms and their quizzes (so they'd know which ones they missed), and they could retake the quiz today for a higher grade. 

I didn't just have some kids who did worse on this quiz than the previous quiz. I had kids who just memorized the order of the correct answers on the previous quiz, erroneously thinking that I would give them the exact same quiz this time too. 

Man, you should have been in my classroom to see the looks of absolute surprise when they discovered that I'm not a total idiot and I changed the order of the literary terms and the definitions. It's safe to say that many pants were shat. Then there was this brilliant exchange:

Student *working on her CRT prep packet*: What's theme?

Me: What do you mean, what's theme? 

Student: What does it mean?

Me: It's on your lit terms, and it was on both quizzes.

Student: It was?

Me: Don't talk to me.

You know what this calls for, don't you?

Racing toward the bottom

Nevada's nincompoop governor has figured out how to fix education in this state. His three-prong attack is thus: 1) Eliminate teacher seniority (we don't have tenure), which would allow them to lay off the teachers who make the most money; 2) follow Jeb Bush's model and end social promotion, while giving schools a letter grade; and 3) amend the state constitution to allow taxpayer dollars to be spent on private school vouchers.

Once again, the politicians dance around the real issues here. Teacher salaries are not bankrupting the state. I've been teaching since January 2004, I have a BA in English and an MS in education - which is required under NCLB for me to be highly qualified in my core subject - and I gross $45,146 a year. There are secretaries in the school district who make far more than I do. In fact, there are custodians for the city bus service who make more than I do. If public employee salaries are such a huge problem, the state needs to really start at the top and trim away there.

The real problem is total and complete lack of accountability for parents and students. I teach 8th grade English, and in order for students to be promoted to high school, they only have to pass three total semesters of English and/or reading during 7th and 8th grade. They take four semesters in 7th grade - two of English, two of reading - and two semesters of English in 8th grade. If a student passes three semesters in 7th grade, he/she can sit in my class all year long, do absolutely NOTHING, and still be promoted to high school. My students have to take state-mandated tests, but they don't need to pass those either. In fact, nothing about 8th grade sends the message that this is important.

And parents? I have parents who won't answer the phone, won't call back, won't come in for parent conferences - or better yet, will make appointments and then be a no-show, won't check grades, won't sign progress reports...and these parents are the majority. I have students who are habitually truant, who are on probation, who are teen mothers, who can't speak English. None of this is because of my teaching ability, but all of it affects their school performance and thus will be used to judge me as a teacher. My own son, who is also in 8th grade, reads at 12th grade level and outperforms most of his peers on state tests, and that's not just because he has good teachers but because I do my job as a parent.

As long as public schools have to accept everyone who enrolls and put them at grade level according to age, rather than ability, public schools will continue to fail. Think about it. Private schools are successful because they do not have to follow a government model, and therefore they can demand higher standards from their students. They can administer admissions exams, hold students and parents accountable for learning, and kick out students who fail to perform. They do not have to accept students who don't speak English, who are on probation, who are teen moms, or who require special education services.

If the governor really wants to change education, he needs to change the way schools are run. Perhaps it's time to rethink the idea that every student should go to college, or even that every student should go to a comprehensive high school. The idea that education is a right should go hand-in-hand with the knowledge that education is a responsibility. Not a responsibility just for teachers or schools, but for all people involved. Take some responsibility, add a dose of reality, and maybe we'll stop lagging behind third-world nations in education.