Caustically Optimistic

finding Cinderella

I was given a peer recognition award in August that I will need to unload onto someone else soon. This award was given to me for fulfilling the terms of my contract, indeed doing my least for my greatest. Don’t be confused, almost everything I do is out of calculated self-interest; I do not have an unselfish bone in my body. I thought it was deplorable that this award, which is supposed to be for excellence, was conferred on me for almost no reason. I have a sneaking suspicion that I was given the award because the laureate before me couldn’t think of someone better.

I am fully aware that the award was given to me for discharging the duties of my office to the best of my abilities so help me deity who I cannot mention specifically by name out of deference to the secular authorities who butter my bread unless I am defaming said deity. Now I am faced with the task of handing off the award to someone else and feel like I am in a modern, fractured fairy tale.

Like Prince Charming searching for his Cinderella I have searched high and low for the right fit. First, I thought that language arts teacher who says really witty things that flirt with insubordination would be a good candidate because I feel that she says what everyone else is thinking. After careful consideration I felt I had to move on to someone else because it would be obvious that I was picking her because she is saying what I would say if my boss was stupid enough to call on me during a faculty meeting. This teacher would not do because then I would get both of us into hot water.

Then, I thought I should give it to someone who is usually very lazy and rude that had a rare moment of professional comportment the week before our break until I realized that she was just being less lazy and less rude than someone else (laziness and rudeness being relative and subjective).

I thought to give it back to the person who gave it to me but there are no tag-backs. I went through the faculty directory and realized that while everyone I work with is good at their job most of us only do what we must or were already honorees. Then, I had to attend a parent meeting and accidentally found the person on whom I could pawn this award.

We have a student with a cleft palate who comes from a less fortunate family. This teacher said at the meeting that she would explore charitable organizations that might help this student’s predicament and get back to everyone. I was impressed with this sentiment because while I might dream up school related things to do over breaks they never actual happen.

When I am not at school I am busy paving the road to Hell with my good intentions, steadfastly wasting any good karma I have banked while teaching and doing my part to maintain America’s place as the industrialized world’s most obese nation. I might think to help someone like that but I never actually would; even if I wanted to I would be distracted by something shiny and move on to another activity.

Then, after the break, this teacher comes to me and has found a charity that will help this student. All we need to do is collect a measly $250 – a fortune to her parents to be sure, but not something a rather large faculty couldn’t scrape together. Since I’ve consistently remained sober at all faculty functions I am also confident that I can motivate any reluctant philanthropists using the time-tested method of blackmail. More importantly, I have found my Cinderella.

It doesn’t take an exceptional person to do what this teacher has done but it does take someone who cares. Most teachers try NOT to think about students when they’re not at school. Few would look into their students problems in their off time and even fewer would have a solution in place to said problems to the tune of lining up a bargain basement life-transforming surgery. If that isn’t worthy of recognition than nothing is and I cannot imagine anything I have ever done for a student approaches what this teacher has done.

Certainly, a small plaster eagle is not sufficient to recognize this person’s efforts but people do not go into this profession for material gain. People go into teaching one of two reasons, June and July off or July and August off. Short of a Lifetime Original Drama playing itself out at school I can think of no greater deed than this to recognize.

This eagle will also seem insignificant when that student comes back to school with a new smile.

Tactical Advantage

Actual names are not used in this, or any post.

Friday marked the end of the first quarter and the start of intersession, Monday next we will return to school. I have already planned my bulletin boards for the next quarter and have a lame excitement for it. However, the final school day before a break is hectic.

We normally plan rather judiciously on our team. We make ourselves aware of what the other teachers are doing, when. This week was not one of those weeks and our students are generally good kids in every respect – despite their noted and referenced aversion to deodorants and bathing – were wound up in a bad way. They contended with the twin evils of impending release from school and an avalanche of project deadlines and test dates. In short, we had thrown everything at them at the precise moment their attention was elsewhere.

I decided that since I had so much fun at Bar Trivia on Monday night with the Music Teachers that I would give my students a break and model their test off Bar Trivia. This was a huge mess, noisy and probably a poor way to measure their learning but I submit that when they have several other tests that week and mammoth projects due (and for the large part done) that I was not going to get a better gauge of their progress.

First the students had to chose clever names for their teams, my favorites being: Spit out your gum; Get out a pencil; Ask Meredith – we don’t know; Skip us, we don’t know either; Arm Wrestling Sissies; Drop-Kick Justin; Don’t say ‘shut up;’ and, It was her idea, not mine. However my favorite students picked the name #$%&!, which you can parse in your own imagination but I am confident that they would be as beloved by Chaos Bean as they are by their teachers.

The second process was projecting their test questions onto the Smart Board and having them answer them on tiny slips of paper, which a runner would run to the front. I kept a running tally on the whiteboard of their scores. This actually went really well compared to the Herculean task of trying to students to focus on work on the eve of vacation.

We had two major interruptions that were really funny. The first was another student who is pretty good had written ‘tactical’ completely illegibly and when his teammate tried to read it, in confusion spat out that “The Confederacy had a testicle advantage.” This embarrassed these otherwise dour students but the third member of their team is impish and this spread about to a point where there were references to ‘tacticals’ for the rest of the day. In a moment of extreme professionalism I even offered that instead of my standard offer of dropkicking Justin that I could just kick him in the tacticals. Other teachers would have handled that better but as their only male teacher during the day I feel like the boys should have a tactical advantage somewhere. School is a woman's world and I am for all intents and purposes some sort of safe haven, a home for boys outside of gym class.

I was also giving myself a break, we had three contentious IEP meetings where I had to remain professional and not actually kick anyone in the tacticals. I really, really wanted to kick one individual in the tacticals but he made it abundantly clear that he has none.

The other interruption to an otherwise pleasant day happened when, triumphantly, one of the students who performs poorly by choice shouted, “Hey, we learned about this!” It was hard to be furious with him, watching his face glow with pride, but I found it within my heart to do it. Before I could speak one of the children said, “Mr. Spritopias – cover your ears,” then addressing his peer said, “You are retarded! Of course we learned about it, why the hell would he put it on the test!”

Many things were on the tip of my tongue but I muttered something about not calling someone retarded – which is about as hypocritical as answering my cell phone, which fortuitously rang at about that time. Thank goodness for Suburban Island and her misunderstanding of time zones! I would probably have let loose and looked like a retard myself. I have to give the kid credit, it takes a lot of something to shout to your teacher, “I HAVEN’T BEEN PAYING ATTENTION FOR SIX STRAIGHT WEEKS!”

In the end, I was amazed. The kids really did know the information on the test. As an added bonus we noisily interrupted the remedial reading class on one side and the regular Language class on the other. I am not sure this is a valid measure of their learning, but we had a fun school day. In this day and age those times are few and far between.

like donkey kong

This weekend I went to IKEA with Vicki with an invented reason and to have breakfast. While we were there we were looking for a baby present for the English teacher on my team. Specifically, we were looking for a name for the baby, something unique and Swedish. I am returning my gift because the English teacher threw down the gauntlet and now it’s on, like Donkey Kong.

Here’s how things went down:

The English teacher’s son needed a mentor and I took it upon myself to be his irresponsibility mentor. His stepfather is a great man, a really amazing person who you would learn nothing but virtue from and his father is apparently some type of religious leader. It is oxymoronic to take on the responsibility of irresponsibility mentoring so it fell to me as the only man in his life who is moronic to take on this imperative task. If I hadn’t stepped in when I did he might have grown up to be a productive member of society. As a teacher it is my sworn duty to do everything in my power to prevent that from happening.

I have been diligently undermining her and her husband’s best efforts to mold him into a fine young man and contributor to society. People think that like shit*, “Spritopias Happens®,” but a great deal of work goes into being this crass, offensive, and charming. It is indeed so important that I be myself that I have a Vice-President to fill in for me in the instance that I am incapacitated or unable to fill my duties. These are skills I need to hone before Chaos Bean has her own children because my own son seems incorruptible and Jon and Melissa’s son will require greater skill than even I have.

A good example of this would be his backpack. He was doing what he should be doing, which is the wrong thing, and destroyed his backpack. He packed it all wrong and the bag fell apart. His parents, rightly, declined to buy him a new one since he didn’t take care of the one they bought him in August. He would have to use an old one. I offered to bring him one from home but I went to target with another Social Science teacher**,*** and bought him a new one instead. If that weren’t enough, I filled it with toys and hid them under school supplies – offending not only his own parents but hopefully a swath of eighth grade teachers as well, maybe an assistant principal or guidance councilor, too.

Another example of my shenanigans was when they thought it would be a good idea to take me out in public and invited me to a baseball game with them. We were so bad that two people left the game and another couple interrupted their regularly scheduled public domestic dispute to point out that we were at a baseball game and that we were being obnoxious. I forget what I said in response but I definitely didn’t apologize.

They have also invited me to church, but I won’t be fooled. I can see an exorcism attempt a mile off. It would be a waste of time anyway. You would be amazed at how many times people have tried that on either myself, or Chaos Bean. Besides, one of my best friends is a Catholic priest and he’s been trying to exorcise me for years – at least that’s what I think he’s trying to do. I’m not sure, he tells me not to question him.

So in return for this undermining of her parenting the English teacher has enacted revenge. Today in the middle of a very serious staff meeting she decided to fight back and hit below the belt. No, she didn’t share how I have worse table manners than her four-year-old or how she caught me dancing and singing along to my iPod. She disclosed my blog to the rest of the people at this meeting – people who I have snowed into believing that I am a decent human being who goes to church, pays his taxes and votes for Democrats. Now they are going to know that the last part isn’t true. The last thing I needed confirmed for the coworkers is that I am a crass, immature sloth.

I know you can’t fool all the people all of the time but you can fool some of the people some of the time. Sure, one of the people in that meeting thinks I’m an unprofessional jerk (true) and her friend in the Science department thinks I’m a pompous ass (also true) but the rest of those chumps think I am a nice guy who works hard and other things that simply aren’t true. This blog has put me through more lawyers and girlfriends than I care to count.

This is truly a disaster. It would be better for me that there were naked pictures of me on the internet, at least that way I would know that people were laughing with me not just at me. I feel so exposed and violated. The next time her son needs a new backpack, which should be in three or four weeks, instead of toys I am going to fill it with cigarettes and pornography.

*Suburban Island might say shit when no one is listening but she protests my inability to stop saying it in this forum.
** Teachers, like zombies and missionaries, move in packs.
*** I call it Social Science purely for comedy

pass the mimosa

We have a new initiative where I work where we are asked to pat a colleague on the back once a week and personally recognize them for something good they have a done. Despite popular opinion to the contrary, I hate being recognized and I abhor being patted on the back. I have been playing this game for a long time and I know that I am doing my job right. I need, personally, to have well-timed constructive criticism from an appropriate source.

I feel that praise should be meaningful, rare for something significant. When someone says, “Gee, Chris, you did a great job doing something benign in your job description as well as everyone else ever has!” I usually want to impress them with my knowledge of state birds, specifically New Jersey’s, but instead I give them a thumbs-up because I am terrible at accepting praise and worse at receiving undeserved praise. I also really hate it when people act like the “topher” at the end of my name is silent.

This whole initiative assumes that we are not appreciating each other or not communicating our appreciation. I understand that coming out of the Central Office. Central Offices are notoriously condescending, unacquainted with the goings on and needs of their subordinates. I appreciated my coworkers and to an appropriate degree my supervisors and express that when appropriate. I supposed the Central Office’s decree to appreciate each other stems from their own aversion to recognizing the work we do, the challenges we face and the lack of support we work against. I think it takes a dim view of the teachers in our district who could easily leave for safer, better funded districts circling us and do not.

Teachers have a good understanding that if we don’t hang together we will certainly hang separately; it would be foolhardy to expect support from outside the faculty lounge because as much as people express support for teachers they rarely show that support.

I think that people are too dependent on the ideas of support, recognition, and praise. So far this initiative has sparked an avalanche of meaningless praise. Maybe I am different, but I don’t need someone patting my back or telling me I am doing a good job. I can look at the quantitative and qualitative date and the anecdotal evidence to measure my performance. However, someone who has never seen me teach telling me I am a good teacher is a false praise that stinks to high heaven. How could they know? What are they basing this opinion on?

It reminds me of the time Emily and I saw a tip jar at the Gap. People don’t need a sticker, a party, a pat on the back for every trivial thing they do in their life. If you are being paid to do something, what more do you want? What happens when you do something significant or exceptional – how does the praise feel when you are then getting the same pat on the back that got when you stopped to pick up a piece of trash on the ground?

There is also a latent but strong Lutheran undercurrent to my feelings on this issue. Luther argued that our actions mattered but the true measure of those actions was the motive behind them. This idea informs Lutheran theology as well as the American legal system. Why something is done is more important than the result of the action. I do ‘good things’ because according to by religious beliefs this is the best way serve my God; helping others glorifies the Lord. There are other times when I do things that have positive results for purely human and selfish reasons. I gain from my actions and I act to gain. In instances like this I feel guilty for being thanked for what I did because I did it for the wrong reason.

I am not doing anything with this initiative that I wouldn’t do before. I would never physically pat someone on the back and if someone pats me on the back again they’re losing the hand. I always say thank you to people for doing things for me from holding doors to fixing roofs to taking bullets. I write notes, bring flowers, and send chocolates as appropriate but I feel like this scheme will diminish the value of any kind of praise or thanks given.

Just as an action is truly judged not by its outcome but by its motive, so will the recognition handed out at work. In the end I think everyone will end up feeling cheapened but I hope I’m wrong.

LOUD SPEAKER

I did a meme for my photo blog where I had to list eight facts about myself and then post them. The first fact is:

#1 I like the song “Istanbul” by They Might Be Giants so much it persuaded me to be a Social Studies Teacher, that is the real reason I’m a teacher. I will lie and tell you something inspiring when pressed on the issue but the honest answer is that I had a date in Constantinople and she was waiting in Istanbul

I did not become a teacher to sit in meetings but if there is something that college and graduate school will teach you, it is how to sit all day while someone else is talking and give them the impression that you are listening and engaged. Our administrators have been pretty good about interspersing the verbal information with games, team building, and bathroom breaks. They need to work on the snacks.

A thing that teachers have to do that isn’t covered in college is decorating your classroom. It’s covered but there is no remedial, “boys are stupid” version of the class. It took me the better part of the free time in two weeks of meetings but I finally have everything ‘just so.’

One of the key decorations in our classroom that is required are English labels on things in the classroom so that our formidable population of English Language Learners can start to connect the names of objects with their written English form. My classroom is actually Ashley’s old classroom, before her it was Jeff’s and before Jeff it was Perry’s so the room only needed old labels replaced and I had a few left over, most notably the one for the loudspeaker.

I decided that in my capacity as the team leader I should do everything I can to increase the moral of the team during the school year and especially before it. This has included providing my team with mimosas, little gifts for their classrooms, buying them lunch and at every opportunity making an ass of myself for their entertainment. To this end I taped the “LOUDSPEAKER” label to myself and then once my work was done, I put myself in the path of everyone in the building.

Yes, Konrad Hack, it was a big hit. No, I did not ask Kristy Waterman first. I usually tell her before I do things like this and then tell people that Kristy has prior knowledge to sully her name with my juvenile antics.

I left school. I went to Target and the grocery. People stared at me, some even pointed. I’m used to this, it’s commonplace like George W. Bush’s excellent grammar and Dick Cheney’s aim. We all know it’s a problem and we all just overlook it, cringe and duck appropriately. It wasn’t until I got into my car and adjusted the mirrors that I realized that I had a sticker on that said, “LOUDSPEAKER.”

I have just confused so many people learning the English language because they now think that a loudspeaker is stocky history teacher with bad hair and teeth. Shameful.

lies spritopias told me

This week in the History Seminar of Summer School we were talking about the use of Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I repeated the joke told by a Japanese comedian that, “American parents told their children about walking uphill in deep snow barefoot to school. My mother told me when I was a little girl, ‘When I was your age the Americans dropped two atom bombs on us!’” and not only didn’t my students get this joke, natives of Mexico and Arizona tend to lack first hand knowledge of walking in snow shoed of not.

However, this reminded me of a story I read in the Washington Post about a book that is being written about the whoppers dads tell their children while visiting the Smithsonian. They contended that mothers do this as well but probably not as often, I would counter that the cynicism that extreme feminism has fostered toward men has made it possible to paint an entire group of people with one, ugly brush but even if it were true that mothers are fathers lie to their children in equal proportion it does not change the fact that our parents lie to us.

I have a hard time catching my parents in a lie so either they are exceptionally truthful or artful liars. I used to condescend that I would not lie to my children. That like my parents I would endeavor to tell my children the truth but the longer I teach the more I realize that I will indeed lie to my own children because I lie to my students all the time.

law and order: spritopias intent

There are few things I feel strongly about; one of them is how young writers are fostered in schools. During summer school I have been given the pleasure of proctoring the writing instruction and have been given a free hand to teach it as I will.

The students were to write an essay or story and have the story done by today so that they could be graded, recorded and reported in time for it to count for their promotion from summer school into their regular classes next year. Some of the students still have trouble realizing that we all have stories in us that need to be told so I encouraged the incorrigibles to write about something from their own lives, an experience they had or something that was important to them.

The stories were great despite earlier worries that they would not be and that I was not teaching them anything. Some were funny, some of them deeply personal, a couple of them were surprising and some were inappropriate for school. I really do cherish the fact that my students feel comfortable confiding in me but there are times that their mouths are saying one thing and my ears are hearing, "LIABILITY" and my attorney general Alex Vance appears in the spectral form preferred by Obi Wan Kenobi and reminds me that these are dangers I face on my own – even the Professors McGonagall at the University cannot save me.

Today's inappropriateness was exceptional in that the students confessed, in amazing detail, to crimes they had committed during the past year. I want to say that the one student is the criminal savant because this crime could have gone unsolved forever and no one would have suspected him, on face. If you know him then you also know to keep him in front of you and where you can see his hands. However, the whole "reading a story about it to the class with accomplices and Technicolor detail" puts him in the running for a Darwin Award and feature in the annals of the Ministry of Silly Walks. This child was certainly suspected of committing this crime because he is a snake – and in a world where most boys are squirrels or weasels he surpases his peers. Announcing his did it displays chutzpah, either that chronic poor judgment.

The other student's crime did not surprise me beyond sharing it in class. I have committed this crime to and would still commit this crime if my best friend was not a police officer. Committing this crime is a rush but really dangerous. I would never have thought this kid would have done something like this; it was truly shocking.

Also shocking was my desire to interrupt him and give him pointers on how to do better the next time and chastise his sloppiness. I had to reconcile my roles as a teacher and remind myself that coaching their criminal activity was not my job

Also shocking was my desire to interrupt him and give him pointers on how to do better the next time and chastise his sloppiness. I had to reconcile my roles as a teacher and remind myself that coaching their criminal activity was not my job.

Some people argue against the way that I teach writing. They prefer other methods, completely unsupported by research, and they are entitled to their opinions. I am confident, however, that this method of teaching is the only one that will get unsolicited confessions to criminal activity during class and that is hard to beat.

I handed in copies of their papers to Jack McCoy or crack administrator and have almost enough Republican in me to hand over their journals where they have been keeping as well. Normally I would view a student’s writing as sacrosanct but at the same time the students know that I think criminal activity needs reporting.

This evening when I was at Ashley’s with Gretchen, husbands, dogs and children we were discussing this – because we have these students in common – and one of Gretchen’s sons said, “I do bad things. I do stupid things. I’m not going to act like I don’t. I don’t write about them and then read them to the class.”

I’m glad I’m not as dumb as some of the kids and there are a lot of times when I wish I was as smart as some of the kids.

I just can’t seem to stop writing about the stupid and bad things I do.

My First Father's Day

This Christmas I was at a cocktail party with my parents and my father was regailing the other guests with stories about when I was a baby and the several times he tried to kill me. He claims all these events were ‘accidents’ and the end result of someone being too young to have or raise children.

I am, as it stands, too evil to die.

At one point he said, “When he does have children he probably will keep them away from us until they are old enough to defend themselves.” Everyone laughed but howled uproariously when I quipped, “My oldest is eleven.”

Apparently, sometimes, I’m not as funny as I think.

TSWBAT

There is nothing ruder, in my mind, than being boring or more specifically – telling a boring story with the exception of (perhaps) telling someone else’s story incorrectly rendering it boring.  I have not been writing to you lately because of that sentiment, I did not want to bore you because that is rudeness in its simplest form School ended well – this was my first year that I enjoyed the job completely and without reservation.  In years previous I thought I liked the job or liked parts of it but could take or leave other parts.  This year I had no complaints about anything.  However, the last week of school attempted to undo this record.

Do the Social Studies teachers have large talons?

Two full weeks left and it is all uphill from here. I would like to paint myself in tones of Reagan, giving an aura of well-spoken optimism but I keep sputtering rather dreary Bush Nouveau. I swear there are ideas in my head! The aforementioned ideas are fighting their way out while my greatest fear may yet be realized, Mutiny on HMS Spritopias – full blown rebellion in the classroom. These days we are short on Reagan – we even lost, traded up, our Ragan on Wednesday. This is the time when the teachers have to hang together or we will hang separately. Some of the students are trying to divide and conquer by pitting the teachers against each other in the hope that they can gain create chaos in the school some of them are succeeding.

All is not lost and this is the normal, junior high end of the year parry.

I’m afraid that the teachers – who now have short fuses for their students, peers and administrators – will also start to go at each other. I am starting to wonder, do the Social Studies teachers have large talons?

We had our quarterly all-seventh grade activity on Friday in a continued effort to whip up excitement and interest before the end of the year. We could be mired in senseless work designed to keep them busy and under control while learning but we decided instead to craft a lesson that would teach them and keep them busy but also get them riled up and loud; very, very loud.