Too bad you can no longer employ this effective device.
Now the "Mayor" is butting in, and I doubt that he will have any valuable input, except to try to provide even more baby sitting services and freebies for "his" people, adding to the nanny state mentality.
Think about a career change.
If it makes you feel better...
I subbed for a gym teacher last week. The teacher explained that she normally has very structured activities for the students, but she'd decided to just let them play Capture The Flag. I ended up sending so many kids to the nurse's office they practically wore a path in the floor!
During my last class, one student grabbed another and was dragging him across the floor, just as I opened my mouth, the boy let go and the other kid's head bounced off the gym floor.
Sent the sobbing kid to the nurse with a buddy, gave the first kid a warning. The buddy comes back with an incident report for me to fill out. I'm filling out the paper and trying to keep an eye on the game, when the same creepy kid grabs another student and throws him to the floor.
Ok, hurt child #2 to the nurse accompanied by buddy with the first incident report, violent little creep is banished to the office. Buddy quickly returns with incident report number two.
That class leaves, and the next class was ordered to SIT and DO NOTHING while I fill out this paper! Then, I found some bean bags and allowed them to play catch with the additional order that NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO TOUCH ANYONE ELSE!
I've never felt so incompetent in my life! I kept expecting the nurse to come in to find out who the idiot teaching gym was.
Just damnnn I going send this to my San Diego school teacher aunt
The problem is clear. As a teacher you have no authority and no one supporting you. The parents don’t care and the administrators will not discipline the trouble makers. I think my friend sank into a feeling of hopelessness. The kids were so far behind academically that his lesson plans were not applicable. Try teaching a physics class when most of the kids can’t even add or subtract.
If you are looking for another job, you certainly write well enough to be paid for it.
That needs to be some kind on must read! Sends that to Rush! This one needs to live forever in cyberspace!
I am keeping that and sending it to everyone I know. Thank you!
Close all public schools immediately. Give all the money (every penny) to Catholic, Jewish, Lutheran, Baptist, Coptic, Zoroastrian and secular private schools that can prove they can graduate well-adjusted, well-educated and polite American citizens. Fire every teacher and principal and make them apply at the new schools. Fire every school board member and other “administrators” and let them find jobs elsewhere.
Things will only change when we stop funding the madness that is the public school system.
Vent more often. That was excellent!
Too bad you can no longer employ this effective device.
I taught in LA for one year. Then I got married and moved to a suburban school, and it was so much nicer. They had a copy machine that worked half the time, instead of never!
The reason the kids are so horrible there is because the principals do not discipline. They didn’t really discipline in my suburban school, either, but it was better than LA, and most of the parents backed me up. I wondered why the schools were so bad until I had a principal who actually did her job.
I escaped California and fled to the Midwest, where I taught in an inner-city school. What a difference! Our black students actually do better than our white students. Hispanics are doing in the middle, even though most of them are very recent immigrants (or maybe because of it). You know why? My principal put the fear of God into those kids if they got sent to her. Yeah, sometimes she took it too far, which was a shame, but at least the kids learned something. Because the discipline is there, teachers stay and have careers at that school, instead of leaving after a year or two like in LA. When I taught in LA a teacher who had five years of experience was a VETERAN. That’s nuts. Other schools have principals who do not keep discipline here, too, and they don’t have good scores. Or teachers who stay very long.
Anyway, it’s better teaching somewhere else, in my experience. I’m getting out anyway, I decided to go to law school at night and I’m in my last year.
Huge bttt. This is why our (eventual!) children will not be enrolled in LAUSD, even though we currently live within its borders. Even if we were in a better/affluent area with smarter kids from smarter parents, STILL the curriculum would be poisonous, something approaching what one might expect in Kim’s North Korea or Ceaucescu’s Romania.
I admire you, however, for fighting it out.
Wow, I could have written this a few years ago my self. I spent 5 1/2 yrs getting a history/education certification degree and taught 2 yrs in a NJ high school. I had a horrible experience, and I was 51 at the time. I shudder to think what this country will be like when these sorts are out in the real world. I was very discouraged with teaching. Good luck with you. The only fun I had was monitoring the hallway and asking boys if they had washed their hands when they came from the bathroom. It was amazing how many felt obliged to show me their clean hands.
You didn’t tell me you worked in hell? I swear I remember you told me your were a school teacher. ;-)
If you can go through this every day and take the time to write about, I can certainly take the time to read it. No need to thank me. But it is surely depressing.
I live in the district and should not be surprised. Let me tell you, you are up against more than Sisyphus was, because not only are the children spoiled but the parents are too.
Perhaps it is worth it to teach the few bright, eager pupils you have in your charge, but the “subject matter” stinks to high heaven. I’m sorry, LAUSD is hopeless, they trip over each other for the PC Prize. I’m surprised the schools even still display the U.S. flag and have the Pledge.
Maya Angelou... just the mention of that name is like fingernails on a chalkboard.
You are a far better woman than I am. I wouldn’t be able to take it, and I think the faculty meetings would be the last straw.
P.S. Would love to see this published in the L.A. Times!!
ROFL...