Bob’s Blog

I do not expect a “thank you”, “nice job”, or any type of compliment or positive comment on my work from my boss’s. Nobody should; that’s just reality of the world we live in. However, I do expect 3 things from my higher ups. I think they’re fairly reasonable and really not too much to ask for:

1. To know my first name. I’m not asking you to know anything about me, I just simply desire you to know my first name and to not write my name wrong on every document, form, or letter. Especially after I’ve specifically stated what my name was 2-3 times.

2. To give a simple “hello” every now and then.

3. To have my back when I need help or at the very least, guide me to some type of solution when I come to you.

My place of employment provides none of those 3. And the administrators wonder why every teacher is so miserable.

You know, when a teacher literally gets assaulted by another student, and the student is still allowed to come to her classroom and nothing happens to him…I seriously have to wonder about the competence of the people running the school.

In fact, it truly amazes me how that administrator still maintains his job right now.

I also have to question the administration when I have Girl A in one of my classes who is threatening to beat up another Girl B in the same class. Oh, did I mention that Girl B is 6 months pregnant? And that Girl A “doesn’t care if she is or not. And that I’m going to beat her up and I don’t care about the baby”? And they will do nothing to help me in the situation. I contacted all parents involved and 2 out of the 4 have come to the school already about this matter and are absolutely irate that nothing is being done.

Can we say “negligence“?

I’ve spent a lot of time nagging administrators and making it a point to raise hell in order to give a kid punishment that fits the crime. But it’s getting to the point where it’s becoming useless. Some teachers have just given up completely. Take for example, when two kids get sent back to your classroom 15 minutes after they just fought each other in the middle of your lesson and they never receive a suspension or ISS or anything…there’s a serious problem. Not only have I had to deal with that, but also many others in the school.

One day, a giant hammer of a lawsuit is going to fall on this school because they ignored and brushed aside behavior like this. The administrators at this school are completely out of touch and don’t care. And because they don’t care, what kind of motivation does that give me to stay?

I still can’t get over these Garfield videos. They are so incredibly weird yet hilarious and brilliant at the same time.

So strange yet hilarious.

As a die-hard Indians fan, I’m disheartened with the changing of “Jacobs Field” to “Progressive Field”. While there is no question that corporate naming in sports is nothing new, and it’s something that will never be changed, and that every Indians fan knows this day was eventually going to come, and that teams do this to help them financially…it’s still rather disheartening.

Perhaps the name “Jacobs Field” is only being missed because of the memories and good times that it has given the city. If the Indians were terrible during the 14 year tenure at this park, maybe things would be different.

But there’s something to be said about the originality and purity of the name in a time when most ballparks and arenas get named after corporations and large businesses. It was one of the few ballparks left whose name wasn’t a corporate one.

One could never imagine Wrigley Field being renamed “Best Buy Park” or Fenway Park being renamed to “Time-Warner Field”. Why should it be any different here?

Ah well. Life goes on, I suppose.

I received my letter of intent last week and in a few weeks, will (most likely) be getting a contract for next year. My options are as follows:

1. Move back to Cleveland, try to find a full time teaching job and/or live at home and sub for a year and save up money to try and go back to school. If you were to ask me just last week, I would’ve told you I have completely ruled this option out. Now? Not so much.

2. Stay in Atlanta, and stay in Griffin and hope that this year was just a transition year for the administration and that what most of what I’ve gone through is mostly first year teacher/first year principle stuff. The principle loves me, I’m well-liked by the administration as a whole, I love my department, I get along with everyone, and I’ve grown more comfortable with what I do inside of the classroom and my skills. Despite many of the cons, there’s always a lot of things here that I won’t necessarily guaranteed to have at other places.

3. Move to the northside of Atlanta and try to land a job where I have a connection. Better pay, better kids, more involved. Of course, the grass is not always greener on the other side.

And so, there it is. I have some time to figure it out. And quite frankly, I really don’t know what to do.

Things seem to be turning around some at least. The good news is that I’m not homesick anymore. But the bad news is that I now I just feel homeless.

I decided to watch the New Hampshire primary debates last night. I was hoping for something exciting, new, and different from the candidates. Instead, I had to turn the debates off with about a half hour left because of the complete and utter disappointment I had with all of the candidates (on both sides).

On the Republican side, I’ve come to the conclusion that they’re all nuts. Except maybe John McCain, I liked McCain back in 2000 but he’s become a sell out in my book and I’d never vote for the man. Mitt Romney totally rubs me the wrong way, don’t even get me started on Ron Paul, and Rudy Giuliani scares the living shit out of me.

I usually don’t vote based solely off of party lines, but I am not voting Republican in 2008 after their actions in the past 10-15 years.

As far as the Democrats go, I was hoping that I would see something great, inspiring, and hopeful. And instead, there was none of that. Instead we have them all arguing over who really wants “change” and who really has “more experience”.

You know what I want? I want a candidate that speaks to me. Someone who is going to look over this nation and take into consideration people my age. I want someone to come out say,

“We’re going to fix Social Security so you have something to fall back on when it’s time for you to retire, we’re going to fix the health insurance companies because most people your age and situation can’t afford doctors. No, scratch that – most people in this country can’t afford this either. It needs to be fixed. We’re going to fix this war so your friends and family don’t have to continue to die needlessly. We need to compete with the rest of the world in terms of education – we’re going to fix NCLB for your children and the children you currently teach. We also need to compete with the rest of the world with jobs, here’s my plan to stimulate the economy and make us #1 again. We need to reduce emissions to help slow down global warming, we all need to make sacrifices. Here’s what I offer. I want you to feel proud to be an American and where you’re from. “

And there’s none of that because they spend all their time arguing over who wants “more change” and who’s being negative and who isn’t. And while I would feel comfortable with an Obama or Edwards vote a year from now, I’m still not entirely sold on either.

Where’s my generation’s JFK or Reagan? The candidate who brings hope and optimism to an entire generation of people who have been forgotten and lost?

In August, I started my first teaching job. I am a 23 year old high school social studies teacher. From time to time, I’ll share some of the stories from my classroom. I hope to one day keep a set of memoirs on the experience and maybe, just maybe, publish them one day. If you’d like to read all of these stories so far, all you simply have to do is click the “Teaching” tag on the right hand side of the page. Enjoy.

I spent 5 years earning my bachelors degree. Generally speaking, I felt my education program was underwhelming in seeing that I was not fully prepared for the onslaught that would ensue once I entered the teaching world. You were never formally taught how to deal with certain crisis or students, how to manage time, how to deal with IEP’s and 504’s, how to deal with meetings, parents, etc. Basically, your time is being spent learning about Harry Wong, and all of these other psychologists and doctors who’s ideas have almost no real application to what really takes place inside of a classroom. “Classroom management” is buried into your head. No friends – it is not called “classroom discipline”, because if you have to “discipline” a child, you have failed as a teacher.

Or so they make you believe, anyways.

Responsibility has shifted away from the students to the teachers. Students, essentially, are not held accountable for their actions at my place of employment. But that is an entry for another day.

Today was the first day back from winter break. No kids. However, we spent the entire day in a training session. How to build rubrics and lesson plans, re-learning standards, and things of that nature. Tomorrow’s session will be spent on how to lecture.

L et me be frank: I’m sick to death of training sessions. I have counted the amount of training sessions I’ve had to go to up until this point and it’s been around 10. 10! Now, mind you – many of these training sessions take place during my planning period; the one period I have during the day where I can de-stress a bit and plan for the following day gets taken away from me, and all other teachers, to be “trained” on how to “differentiate” instruction, or how to build rubrics, or perhaps how to “classroom mange”, building UBD lesson plans, and all sorts of other nonsense I was force fed in college. So, what I was force fed in college is now being force fed upon me again, and once again eating up my time.

Newsflash: Harry Wong’s ideas do not apply to me, or most of the teachers out there. Sure, there are some decent ideas within his book. But on the whole? It cannot be applied to most teachers. I work in a school with over a 50% drop out rate, where kids are poor, where they have no structure in their lives because their parents cannot control them, and where education is not a priority in the culture. I’ve asked other fellow teachers in other school districts about his book (in areas that are rich and middle class) and we all laugh and agree that his ideas, for the most part, inapplicable to most classrooms.

Some may call that being “defeatist”. I call that being “realistic”.

I was given Harry’s book at the beginning of the school year because I struggled with my last period freshmen class. I looked through it, laughed to myself but to please the higher ups, I gave a few of the ideas a shot and they ultimately failed and his ideas were disregarded a couple weeks later.

You know what I want training sessions and books on? How No Child Left Behind works and impacts my classroom and what I can do to help them raise test scores. How to time manage. What are good resources for teachers to use to pick up lesson plans. How to work with kids who are special ed or are a bit slower than your average student. Perhaps maybe a training session on how to create effective tests. Maybe a training session on how to motivate children, how to deal with parents, and you know…things that will actually apply to me; not nonsense on how to “manage” and not “discipline”. And maybe these training sessions can’t cover the unexpected but I would much rather sit through these types of sessions than, you know, talking about how to build a rubric and re-learning standards.

If I knew I would’ve had to deal with this in college AND the workplace, I would’ve just saved my money and just gone for a degree in History and skipped the education program as a whole; at least that way I would only have to hear about this non-sense only once.

You know how to become a good teacher? You do it through experience, common sense, and by getting to know your students individually and understanding their strengths and weaknesses. And you don’t need a damn book or training session to do this. Save your money and time for more important things, such as classroom supplies, grading, lesson planning, and those couple of drinks you need at the end of the week.