Where Does Work End and Life Begin?

I got an email from Punk’s high school this morning.  In it was an attachment of a letter to parents from the principal, letting us know that there was an “incident” involving a substitute teacher.  Here’s the pertinent part of the letter (the emphasis at the end of the note is mine):
Today we were informed that a recent substitute teacher at Local High School was involved in an incident in the community last night that resulted in criminal charges.
We have met with Local PD and have been assured that the event was not related to LHS, and we have no reason to expect any issues here.
The district has taken appropriate action in response to this information.
While this incident did not involve our students we wanted to be sure you had the information in a timely manner.

 

Here’s what I want to know; if the incident had nothing to do with the students, then why, exactly, does the administration feel it necessary to inform us about it?

I have long advocated for a clear and bright distinction between one’s personal life and one’s professional life; as long as your behavior off the clock does not impact your job, then it’s no one’s fucking business what you do in your free time.

Several years ago, the principal of my town’s middle school was fired for having been busted for DUI, and I remember being deeply troubled by that; the fact that he acted with less than stellar judgement during his free time had nothing to do with the fact that he was (as best I could tell) a reasonably effective administrator in the school (though, of course, the DUI could have been the excuse the school district needed to get rid of him; I’ll admit to not knowing all the facts in that case).

My point is that, at least according to this letter, this substitute teacher at no point put kids at any kind of risk.  Why, then, did I get this letter?  What purpose could this possibly serve but to stir up angst, curiosity, or even outright panic?

Someone help me out here, because I really don’t get it.

What Ever Happened to Professional Courtesy?

A few months ago, I applied to be a long-term sub at a local school.  I didn’t get the gig (it went to the intern working under the teacher who was leaving, which makes perfect sense to me), but after I got word that I’d been passed over, I sent a polite, professional email to the department head asking for feedback about my interview.  When I didn’t hear anything back from her (which seemed incongruous, given the impression she gave me when we met), I re-sent the email (with a preface saying I wasn’t sure it sent correctly the first time, to let her save face).  I have yet to hear a peep back.

Then, a few weeks ago, I caught wind of a job opening at a different nearby school district.  I put together a packet of all the things the posting asked for, crafted a solid cover letter, put everything in a professional folder, put that in a nice envelope, put on some nice clothes, and drove the packet to the district office.  That afternoon, I followed up on the delivery with a short, polite note to the principal of the school in question, introducing myself, directing him to my website, and making myself available at his convenience to meet or talk on the phone.

Here’s what I want to know; just how fucking hard is it to hit “reply” and send back a quick “thank you for your interest in our school; I look forward to reading your resume” note?  Not that hard, one would think, but I’ve gotten precisely bupkis from this guy.  Nothing.  Are you old enough to remember getting post card confirmations that your resume had been received by personnel offices?  Yeah; that doesn’t happen anymore, either.

Flapping in the breeze is a very uncomfortable feeling.  I get that the market is flooded, and I get that employers can afford to be dismissive and impolite to job seekers, but that doesn’t make it right.  At the very least, let us know that our resumes got to someone’s desk and please, if someone sends you a personal email, do them the basic courtesy of a brief reply.  So many of us are putting our hearts out on the block for impossibly long stretches of time; don’t further demoralize us by ignoring our communications and pretending we don’t exist.

 

Quick Hit: Do NOT Start with Me

This afternoon, I came to the high school at 2:35 to pick Punk up for an appointment that she’d be late for if she took the bus home.  A group of students was waiting for their bus on the sidewalk on the far end of the driveway that loops to the front door, and a few kids were across the driveway so they could all throw snowballs at each other.  No problem; I expect that (especially considering there was a doozy of a snowball fight happening in the senior parking lot as I drove by).

I slowed and stopped so they could see me, and made eye contact with the two kids still on the driveway.  One of them crossed back to the sidewalk, so I slowly proceeded toward the door.  As I made my way by him, one of the students threw the snowball he was holding at my car, hitting the drivers’ side rear window.  He crossed the street behind me and rejoined his peers on the sidewalk.

In a dark red coat.  He was easy to pick out of the crowd.

I stopped the car, backed up, and called the young man to my passenger window where I calmly but sternly scolded him (I’m the mother of two teenage daughters and a high school teacher myself; I have some experience with this sort of thing).

Me:  You.  Over here….  What was that?

Kid:  It was a snowball.

Me:  I know it was a snowball.  Why did it make contact with my car?

Kid:  Uh…

Me:  NOT okay, do you understand?  Do not ever do that again.

Kid:  Okay.  Sorry.

To his credit, the boy apologized to me, and I heard him being soundly ribbed by the kids watching from the sidewalk as I drove away.

My intent was to embarrass him – which I did – and to make him think twice before he does something like that again.  I think he was genuinely shocked that I backed up to reprimand him, and I know that many (probably all) of the kids looking on were surprised; I’m sure they’re not used to being called to task by total strangers.

Punk-ass kid.

 

I… I Just… I Have No Words

I received this email from a student in the class I’m taking.  I present it to you completely unedited:

yeahh i can deff meet up this thursday after 6 if that works for everyone else so we can just get it done?? and lets come prepared with facts and current events. I have already started doing some thing but not a whole lot. Also i do not have the current version of ferg so i only have stuff from ore on our topic so bring that book if any of you guys have it!!

Please bear in mind when reading this that this young woman is a SENIOR IN COLLEGE.  Let that sink in for a second; she’s a SENIOR.  It kind of makes one wonder how she managed to get that far, doesn’t it?  It also makes me wonder where she expects to go from here.

I am both sorry for the professor (who’s going to have to read this girl’s paper and many, many like it) and SO glad that I’m taking the class as an independent study.

Sad

When I came home this afternoon, this was in my inbox:

I miss you at school so much, Mrs. Chili. Ms. Danielli is apparently our English substitute this week and I’m about to pull my hair out. She screamed at Elizabeth this morning during class, and the sad part is that though Liz said some bold things; it was what everyone was thinking. The gist of it was that Ms. Danielli was being very unfair and micro-managing our class when Mr. Lannen specifically said we could handle making decisions for ourselves, and Liz spoke out saying something along the lines of, “I thought this school was supposed to be about freedom.”  Liz makes me nervous when she says things like this, but instead of just her feeling this way, this year she’s the only one not afraid to speak about the elephant in the room.

There’s a different mood to the school this year. It’s quieter between classes, cliques are really tightly-knit, there are noticeably less positive shares in the morning, no one has very much enthusiasm about anything, and for the most part, people are absolutely miserable. I can’t speak for all of the teachers, but Mr. Wayne took our sophomore advisory aside and talked about it as a group with the door closed last week and everyone agrees, including him. It’s just a really sad place to be, and it’s been made clear that it’s not just the students who have noticed this.

I don’t want to be another Sarah (ed. note; Sarah was a girl who attended the school last year.  She was generally miserable and felt that her misery deserved everyone else’s company; as a consequence, most of her energy was spent spreading malcontent) and I don’t want to cause trouble, but I’m upset, nervous, conflicted, and angry. I’ve wanted to talk to you about things for a while, not because it could possibly fix things, but because it might make me feel a little bit better. I don’t want to ever give up fighting for this school, because CHS has always picked me up when I was down, and I want to do the same for it. But I feel like power has been taken away from the students, and this hurts me most because you said you’d always be my advocate for these things last year when I felt powerless. I know you were an advocate to a lot of students this way. I think a lot of kids have lost hope this year.

I don’t know how much more I can say, because I’m sitting in advisory and I’m close to tears. Sometimes when I get really upset, I try to read and hear your voice in my head like I used to when we read The Book Thief. Maybe I’m just hormonal and having a hard time, but I’m really upset and I guess I just really needed to let it all out. Consider this a morning write

I love you and I miss you so much, Mrs. Chili.
- Amayah

Oh, Lord.  WHAT do I do with THAT?!  I wrote Amayah back and told her that, while there really isn’t anything I can do to change the conditions at CHS, I AM available to meet with her (and anyone else who wants to see me).  I can be a sounding board, I can help them think critically about the situation and work through possible solutions, and I will do everything I can to empower their voices.

This is exactly what I didn’t want to happen after I left.  I knew that leaving the way I was forced to did would result in at least some of the kids feeling abandoned and that, more than anything else, kills me.

I hate this.

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Teaching the Pigs to Sing

Honest to God, you guys; I feel like barnyard the choir director.

image credit

The last few weeks have been an unending shit storm of apathy and belligerence.  Tuesday, for example, 4 out of my 25 freshmen actually did the reading I assigned.  FOUR.  Out of TWENTY FIVE.  They had a major project due – for which I’d given them at least 3 in-class opportunities to work – and only two of them were able to present the project on time (and of those two, one of them was so poorly done as to be laughable).

This morning, three of my 16 seniors read the article I posted on the website.  I should mention here that the reading was due Tuesday, but I extended the date to Thursday because no one had read the article on Tuesday, either.

The thing that astounds me about all of this is that no one can give us any indication of what the cause of the problem is or of how to fix it.

I’ve about had it with this shit; I’m disheartened, I’m tired, and I’m sick unto death of caring more about the students’ grades than they do.

Thank God vacation starts tomorrow.

The Nerve *Edited*

Sometimes, though not terribly often, I’m stunned by the audacity of some of my students.  I see a real disconnect between their perception of their performance and the reality, and here’s yet another shining example (I only edited to change his name and any identifying references):

Hello Professor

I was just wondering if the grade posted on blackboard is the final grade? It says I received a D, however when I add up all the grades that I received, even putting in worst possible case for the letter grades posted ie. 80 for a b-.  Also, it says I received an ” – ” for my personal narrative, but I have the paper right in front of me and you gave me an A on it writing “Louis, This is a good paper. you do a nice job of the “before and after” and though there are a few places I’d encourage you to trim and tighten, those aren’t enough to detract from your message A”  I then added up all the grades that you posted and I got 960/1162 which is about an 83% then I added a 95 which is about an A for the personal narrative and It comes out to be 1053/1162 which is about an 91%.  I don’t understand why I have a D? the whole reason I took this class again was because I received a D or D+ freshmen year. Retaking this class and getting a B is, quite frankly, embarrassing.  I understand that the English department has a 3 absent rule.  And to get a D from a A- I would have to skip a total of 11 classes and I don’t believe I did.  On the chance that I am wrong, I was very sick for a lot of this semester for some reason and I’m not saying it’s right, but I have already taken this class.  I have gone through most of this material before and it isn’t like I skipped the home work.  Yes I truly am sorry that I handed home work in late, but due to the power outage it put me a week behind and with intro to chemical engineering I was backed up with a copious amount of work and stress.  I know I have to prioritize my work and not make reasons for why things happen and take responsibility for these mishaps, but there are reasons for everything and that’s why things happen.  I’m a Junior in college already working my butt off with everything, just wishing I worked harder my freshmen year so that my GPA didn’t prevent me from getting into [LU's school of business].  I need a 2.9 in the class and I was kicked out of business stats because one of my credits from [LU's satellite school] did not transfer as the pre req that I needed.  I had to take the pre req this sem and if I get a B+ in english and a B+ in econ and hopefully a C in intro to chem engineering I will still be short with a 2.89.  I’m very stressed about everything because I already know I’m going to graduate late unless I do a full semester during the summer and Jterms, which I can’t because I need to get internships in for money and work experience because getting a job in this economy is super super hard from what I have heard.

My Apologies,
Louis Chandler

P.S. I know this sounds kiss ass, but i really thought your english class was a lot more fun than mine freshmen year.  I had a three hour lecture once a week and it was just so dry.  Your class was much more entertaining and I got a lot more out of it than my freshmen english class. so thank you

I swear to God, you guys; I can’t make this shit up.

Edited to include:  Here’s my response to Louis:

Louis, you were correct in that I missed updating your personal narrative grade.  I did that, and the result was that your grade increased to a C-.  Given the number of classes you missed and the number of assignments you turned in late, that is an entirely appropriate grade.
-Mrs. Chili

To which he replied:

Fair enough, I’m guessing there’s nothing I can do to change my grade now.
Louis

And then followed up with THIS gem:

I’m also just was wondering from someone who is around colleges all their life. What’s the point of putting all this stress upon myself? Why do I go into debt just to be able to get a job to get myself out of it?

A Curious Student,
Louis

I’m not planning on responding to this last bit….

“Are We Doing Anything Important?”

GAH!!!

Actual letter from an actual Local U. student.  The only things I changed are our names:

Mrs. Chili,

I didn’t realize until now that I am scheduled to work my work study job tonight. It is way to late to switch it now, so I don’t think I will be able to make class. I mean, if we are doing something really important, I guess I can call out. I am so sorry, this was definately my fault for not looking at my work schedule earlier. Just let me know what you would prefer me to do soon please, so i can notify my boss. Thank you Mrs. Chili.

James Dumbass

Dude has NO IDEA how insulting – and stupid – he comes off.