I understand that my exponentially direct manner of communication tends to set people's egos aflame with warrior energy. But, that does not deter me from my goal: jolting people from their ego induced haze of infantile gut reactions.
In education circles the "culture" of the student is thrown around as a mysterious pantheon of pathways to learning. Having taught elementary, middle and high school with highly urban (read: diverse) populations, I stand by my following statement: a student's celebratory culture (i.e. Cinco de Mayo versus the Chinese New Year) does not correlate to student achievement. Meanwhile, FAMILIAL culture IS correlated to student achievement.
Harvard put out a report (from what I have read recently) on schools "engaging" families. I understand the fundamental thrust is to encourage parents to get involved in their child's education, and strengthen community ties. And, for the record, I applaud such efforts (at least theoretically).
But, these pie in the sky, utopian dreamscapades ignore the fundamentally cancerous American Psyche. You see, America is caught in the lower evolution of the Ego. I'm not sure if we are still scarred from being the Orphan of the old European superpowers (this is sarcasm, for readers who are cynically challenged). Or perhaps the seemingly never ending plutocracy of the Boomer Generation is taking too many pharmaceuticals (all the while complaining at how the younger generations are so selfish...well, if we are, we learned it from you...tsk tsk tsk...sins of the father, etc.) which is severely handicapping their ability to stay in reality.
In either case, what we have on our hands is a victimizing lack of discipline (no, we aren't the victims, we are the perpetrators that turn ourselves into the victims in order to justify abusing other people...it's much like saying to Jesus "Hey, dude, that's what you get for refusing to be so greedy" and then getting mad and bombing other people because you are reaping what you sow...oh, wait, isn't that the American way? Hmmmm).
Our Warrior energy is misappropriated and surrealistically twisted into a cycle of celebrating idiocy, rewarding failure, and yelling at everyone else to get off our lawn when we are standing on a patch of land that someone else, technically, owns.
How does this translate into parenting?
The credit card mentality trickles down into the social recesses of the classroom. Parents and kids alike, almost in unison, demand extra credit for work they never turned in (sounds very much akin to taking out a loan to pay off credit cards, either way you don't have something that is actually yours as collateral).
The civil rights movements of the 60's and 70's have given way to the rampant and ravaging debasement of the fine line between "rights" and "entitlements". Correcting a student's work can start a chain of events including a revisiting of the Salem Witch Trials of McMartin proportions. Because, you see, making sure the student is using proper grammar, and that a teacher can read the work, is violating their entitlement to self esteem without having to meet any standard whatsoever. As you know, having standards is outright discriminatory. If people continue to have to meet a certain level of achievement in order to be successful, then, what will we have? It will be anarchy! No one will achieve anything because everyone won't even try....because competition just crushes the self esteem and did I mention that you need to have self esteem before you can achieve anything? (wait, what's that? research debunks this myth? Well, it's wrong, can't you see that my child has high self esteem and he is getting A's in math...he's in 7th grade....wait, hold on, he needs help finding a pencil so he can copy his friends math homework...dammit, if the teacher doesn't give him an "A" for all of this work, I'm going to call the Superintendent and the School Board!).
Discipline. We lack it like the Sahara during a dry spell (and I mean the Sahara Desert for those of you geographically and ecosystemically challenged; yes, I made up the word "ecosystemically" now let's move on). But, that is only about one half of the story.
Let's move on to blame. I was sitting in a parent meeting not too long ago. The student plagiarized their report. Let's call them student A. Student A didn't even actually do any of the writing. Student A delegated that task to Student B. Furthermore, Student A kept missing deadlines for assignments. Gee, a surefire way to fail in just about anything in life (unless you're a bank that is too big to fail, then, you just hand out bonuses for failure, but that is another blog entirely...and mark my words, eventually, the natural cycle of correction will swoop in...but that is another blog entirely). Well, one nasty and highly accusatory (without grounds, I might add) email later (from Mom Warrior) I'm sitting in front of Mom and Dad. It doesn't start out very pretty. Indeed, I felt like I was in the scene in a "Few Good Men" where Jessup and Kaffee face off. The parents weren't only unable to handle the truth, they were making very poor attempts to turn the tables on me. They laughed off the plagiarism as if I had just popped off with Michael Scott manuevar (because, you know, when you do work as a group, you're excused from fraud...I'm thinking they were either former Enron employees or voted for Bush both times).
Did I mention that Student A was sitting and watching the debacle this entire time? On the surface it may not seem so bad, but, I welcome you to try and manage a classroom after a student witnesses another adult (in this case two) trying to humiliate you. In secondary school, "street creds" are alive and well. Once you're punked in front of the kids, they can and will harass you. Which, if course, is your fault because you were stupid enough to care about other people and be a teacher. Idiot! Why didn't you became a banker and work for Goldman Sachs instead!? I mean, you could be making MILLIONS while other people lose their life savings, perish, and die! Isn't that the greatest American hero? Take THAT Bruce Willis! You can have your little asteroid! Destroying human kind through corporate domination is far more cool!
I walked out. I had to. The student did not meet the standard of being "too big to fail" (neither were they "too smart to fail" as the parent's wanted to believe...I mean come on, even the Enron "Smartest Guys in the Room" failed). And of course, they were hurling personal insults down the hallway as I made my way to, once again, split up my attentions between 200 adolescents who thought they were going to be rich and famous before their 18th birthday (so far, how many have made it to that place...well Zero).
You might be saying to yourself, well, this is only one incident. No. Not by a long shot. I've seen and have experienced firsthand (NO! They are actually RARELY directed at me) repeated sloughing off of parental responsibility in the name of fantasized victim-hood for at least a decade now. Parents don the caregiver persona like poorly made up drag queens. If they actually cared about their student's education they would read to them, take them to the library, make sure they get to school every day and on time, would have made sure they just about NEVER missed a day in elementary school (here's a tip, the kids who miss 5 or more days in elementary school, or who jump between schools perform far more poorly in school), check their home work every night, keep the junk food to a minimum, make sure they are getting to bed at a decent hour (no, this isn't relative, if school starts at 8 am, staying up past 10 pm is asking for trouble...and yes, this also goes for those people that claim they only need a few hours of sleep...bull pucky), make sure they eat before they come to school (or at least drop them off in time to be able to eat in cafeteria and get to class on time) and make SURE there are CONSEQUENCES for their ACTIONS.
Look, I'm a parent AND a teacher. I know after working your rear end off all day, that many times, the last thing you have the patience for is getting on your kids about clean rooms, home work, etc. But, it needs to be done. Unless you want them to be living with you (and off of you) when they're well into their 40's (ok, I know, with this economy, it might not be such a bad idea, but they at least need to be able to read the labels on your pharmaceutical bottles so they don't mix up your meds when you're blind from not having access to adequate medical insurance). Sometimes, you just want peace and quiet while they tap away at the computer playing the newest version of World of Warcraft, or hopefully getting some exercise even if it means playing Wii Sport until midnight.
I also understand that we have both good and bad in the profession. However, the same can be said for doctors, lawyers, construction workers, etc. That hasn't stopped you from accessing any of these services? Seriously, how many of you have performed surgery on yourself? How many of you have defended yourself in court (Ted Bundy tried to do this and he ended up in Florida's electric chair, just some food for thought)? How many of you have built your own house from scratch? Ok, you get my point.
Teaching is one of the few professions where the everyday Jane or Joe, or Juan, or Juanita, or LaQuinta or Jamal, mistakenly believes they can do the same or better. Really? What is differentiated instruction? What is RTI? What is Dibels (and what is its validity/reliability)? What is SRI? What testing protocol would you use to measure student academic levels at the beginning of the year? Why are CRT's not reliable indicators of why student's aren't achieving at grade level? How do you implement any of these in a classroom where you have 51 minutes and 40 students, without a teaching aid, with people entering and exiting your class every five minutes, through fire drills, assemblies, parent conferences, parent phone calls, grading papers, taking attendance, auditing the attendance, when there is a 40% transiency rate, and state tests occurs for various students every month, and you have SPED students whose IEP's are legally binding (and you could be sued if you don't follow them), when on any given day 20 to 30% of the students don't attend school, and you have to provide them with make up work? How do you handle students mouthing off, students who absolutely refuse to do any work, students whose parents email you everyday demanding special treatment (aka helicopter parents)? What would you do when parents corner you while you are in the middle of teaching (and you need to keep your job, thank you very much)? What about the fact that students who bring weapons to school may leave for a week or two but are allowed back onto the same campus? Or when they've threatened a teacher, or hit a teacher (and yes, for those of you infantile thinkers, the teachers didn't "disrespect" the student first...grow up).
Ok, ok. I'll stop. My mini tirade doesn't cover even half of what we encounter in U.S. schools on a daily basis.
So? You may say. You get time off. With pay.
Lie. We don't get paid for the time off, silly. We are only paid for the days school is in session. The only reason some of us receive paychecks year around is because they divide our salary by 12 instead of 9 or 10. Get it now? And I assure you many, many, many teachers take summer jobs in order to make ends meet.
But, but, but, you get pay raises and don't have to do anything.
Again, LIE. We have to PAY to take units in order to keep our credentials active. In order to move over on our columns, again, we have to PAY to take units. And, with the cost of higher education continuing to climb faster than unchecked ivy, our 1-3% increase doesn't cover what we have to spend. Oh, and, also, we spend hundreds of dollars on classroom supplies for kids that aren't even our flesh and blood.
Look, I'm not complaining about being a teacher per se. Yes, I chose this career. What I choose to NOT accept about teaching is that it is somehow MY job to parent the kids. It doesn't mean that I don't love them like a parent. I do. But, yes, there is a "but", the school system cannot compensate for the absence of a home environment essential to a healthy Ego.
What is a healthy Ego? First and foremost Ego with a capital "E" has moved beyond laying the blame for all of its ills onto other people. A mature Ego recognizes that other people do exist, other people have a right to exist, and that we can satisfy our own basic needs without trying to annihilate others. In fact, the "good" Ego has found a way to access primary resources for itself AND others. (oh man, America is a long way from this!) The Flourishing Ego takes responsibility for its mistakes, seeks out the lesson in the experience, then moves on. It is not afraid to fail and it refuses to take others down with its Titanic.
Finally, I understand that many people are hurting financially. Yes, I believe the schools can do much positive support in this area. Canned food drives, keep a contact list of social services on hand (more for the front office than the teachers...we do our best, but we have so many confounding variables just in the classroom alone...and, quite frankly, I've seen how much down time offices really have...we, teachers DO NOT have the same amount of coffee cruising bathroom breaks...I'm lucky if I get to make it to the restroom once per day at work), take clothing donations, and so forth. But, parents can still be parents even under dire circumstances (I'm not speaking out of my rear end here, I've been through times without food, money, assistance of any sort, you name it). You will get through this. It DOES take education. The days of stable blue collar jobs with a solid pension and retirement benefits have been over for quite some time now. For all intents and purposes, high tech, highly complex, scientific oriented jobs are what you'll be competing against your kids for.
I urge you to stop working against us, return to the Horatio Alger image of picking yourself up by your bootstraps, increasing your own formal education (grants, loans, scholarships, there is so much available out there, and yes, you need to expend energy in order to attain it) and stop the American Downward Spiral towards making "Idiocracy" a self fulfilling prophecy.
