Teaching with the squirrel

So the last four or so months of my life has seen a major shift in my focus. When I found myself jobless some nine months ago, I totally immersed myself in my running. However, in the back of my mind, I knew that there was a serious possibility that things were going to change significantly in the summer. And sure enough, they did. I guess this is all kinda redundant, to go through the play by play of the first half of 2009, as most of you probably heard or read it before, but in case you don't know what I've done the past four months, here is the abridged version. I was accepted into the NYC Teaching Fellows program (it's an alternate route program for folks who want to teach but didn't major in education in college) and my training began on June 15. For the first 3 weeks, I was just taking masters classes, but in the first week of July, I began my student teaching. This eventually turned out to be the school at which I was hired to teach.

My days pretty much started with me leaving for the subway at around 7:00am and getting home around 7:30pm. Needless to say, I just didn't have that much time for much else. Luckily though, Mrs. Squirrel and I did have time to move. I believe around the time of my last post here, I had mentioned that we had found an awesome apartment in my old neighborhood of Long Island City, Queens, and on June 20, we moved in. Again, I'm sure most of you already know all this, but I just feel like I should throw it out there.

Anyway, for about 7 weeks in the middle of the summer, my life consisted solely of going to school, "learning" about teaching (and I use that word very loosely) and practicing my craft with summer school kids. Good times. I was, however, one of the lucky ones in that I was able to land a job long before the summer ended. This allowed me to enjoy the month of August unlike many of the other Fellows in my group who spent the month interviewing and racing to job fairs for one or two available spots. At the time though, I was having a blast hanging out with a bunch of other people who were all going through the same shit as I was. That got old quick though, but I'll get back to that.

So school started on Wednesday September 9. Some time the week before, I actually emailed my assistant principal just to ask about what classes I'd be teaching, where my classroom would be, when I need to be at school, basically, what the fuck I was gonna be doing. I didn't even know when teachers reported. Not surprised, of course, to find out that teachers report to school on Tuesday September 8. A whole 24 hours before students. Nice.

Luckily, I pretty much planned everything I was gonna do on the first day for each of my classes. It mainly consisted of handing out my rules for class and going over them. I just wanted to establish myself as a bit of a "I don't take any shit from any of you" kinda teacher right off the bat. You know, just plant that seed.

My observations over the first month now are as follows. First off, as a teacher, you cannot count on anyone else to do things for you. You can't count on there being paper for copiers or books for every student. I figured out real quick that since I get into school so early I could go into the student computer lab before anyone else was in and snag a ream or two of paper so at least I could make my copies. Other teachers still ask me "where did you get paper from?" And I'm just like "I buy my own and no, you can't have any". Whatever. None of you who know anything about me should be shocked by this.

My second observation is that the majority of kids are assholes. They may brilliant, but they're brilliant assholes. I can't say I blame them. Most of them have gone to shitty schools with shitty teachers who have shitty attitudes for their entire lives. Hell, I went to a great bunch of schools with many great teachers and I turned out to be a bit closer to the asshole side of the personality matrix, I can't expect that many of these kids are gonna triumph over the crap that they've been dumped in. Either way, they will try to get away with whatever they can. This goes from the very best one to the kid who comes to class once every two weeks and is a jack-off while he is there. Again, do I blame them? Absolutely not. I blame the idiots who have stood in front of them for the 10-12 years before they got to me.

But it goes way beyond being assholes. They just don't know basic knowledge. I've had so many experiences over the first month where I just had to step back and ask myself why these kids as 10th graders don't know what latitude and longitude lines are. Again, it isn't their faults, but it sure as hell ain't mine.

Which brings me to my third observation, most of the other teachers don't give a flying fingerling potato about these kids. All they care about is their ass and doing the least amount of work possible. It's unbelievable. Actually, it's pretty believable when you consider just how much clout the union has. I've gotten a somewhat less than warm welcome from many of the tenured teachers in the school once I told them that I was a Teaching Fellow. I can't say I blame them. In two years I'll be earning what it took them some ten years to earn. Again, whatever. I actually enjoy that bit of adversity. Shocking, right?

As far as the other Fellows who I went through training with this summer, seeing them is kinda a double edged sword. I like seeing all of them because hearing how miserable they are with the workload makes me feel like I'm either extremely lucky or just really good, but at the same time, I just cannot deal with all the complaining and whining about how tough it is and how bad the kids are and this, that and the other thing. Seriously? What were you expecting? You're teaching in schools where no one else wanted to teach. You thought it was gonna be easy? You thought it was gonna be fun? You gotta make it fun. So I've been making it fun. What else can I do?