So I had to change the title of the blog. It began as Effed Up Shit My Kids Say. Then I told my mother the name of the blog and it was just too much. It took me almost two hours to change over my GMail and the Facebook account and then the blog even got deleted and I had to email Google. All because of the disharmony I felt telling my mother the name of the blog and then realizing that it didn't really fit with the message of the blog or the intended audience.
My intended audience is primarily teachers, educators, and the cool parents. I know some readers (if there ever are any) may take issue with my cussing, but I have to do it. I know that in school I can't cuss, but if you only knew what was going through my mind half the time you would be amazed at what didn't come out of my mouth.
I think that most teachers have a teaching persona that they wear during the day. And in the background of their minds, they have a little narrator that they dialogue with that keeps them sane throughout the day. I converse with myself constantly. There is a stream of consciousness that hurls out rhetorical questions and asinine insults, while my face says and mouth pleasantly nods, smiles, redirects, and reteaches without so much as a furrowed brow.
That's what mothers can do to you. They worm into your subconscious and keep your demons at bay. On occasion, mine seep out when I think that nobody is looking. I preach about this constantly to my students.
You have to have integrity. You must do the right thing when nobody is looking.
I don't know if writing an anonymous blog full of cuss words about my teaching life lacks integrity, but something about referring to my students as "effed up" felt bad. So, it had to go. Even though I feel like I've got to hang on to that creative license to write how I think sometimes, I don't want to put down my students. I mean, they can't help it if their parents are totally fucked up.
Just kidding.
Sort of...
Let's just say that I don't ever want to know what they say about me at my kid's daycare. Fair enough?
But, the bottom line is that I don't think I'm alone. I think a lot of teachers are like me. We struggle. We love these kids. We work so hard to help them succeed. We take a lot of criticism from a lot of people who don't know what the fuck they are talking about and granted sometimes we don't know what the hell we are doing, but we are doing our best.
I personally know some administrators who have changed their surnames to Redtape. I've deforrested 40 acres in the Amazon filling out bullshit paperwork that never go anywhere for kids that are "generally low" and will never get the real support and services that they need. Who hasn't?
So maybe it's not that my kids are effed up. Could it be that something else is failing them? I know the answer to that, but I don't have the solution. I know and so does every other teacher out there that works his or her ass off for their kids everyday. I'm not special or unique. There are thousands of under appreciated teachers out there and I could be any one of them.
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