Arson...It's Not Just for Grown-ups Anymore

A few years back, I worked at Bowie Elementary (also an alias) in a Houston-area ISD. Bowie was whack. This was primarily because the administration at Bowie hated dealing with the deranged behavior of the students, so instead of the students realizing that they were at school where there were high expectations for behavior and learning they thought that they were in a precursor to prison day camp. All of us teachers were really doubling as prison guards and reading, writing, math, and science were a cute little sideshow until they felt like wrecking some havoc.

I made some great friends, while I worked at Bowie. In fact, it was a great friend that got me the job there in the first place. We still keep in touch and I get to hear about the effed up shit that still goes on there. Not that I am happy about it. It breaks my heart to hear about how these excellent teachers get put through the ringer every fucking day, because the principal doesn't have the guts to lay down the law. You can have your class on lock down, but when your kids act like these kids act and nobody gets your back, you are FUCKED! And that's a fact. Here's an example of what I'm talking about... My best friend calls me yesterday.

I had the best day today.

Really. Why?

Brendan, tried to burn down the school.

What?

Yeah. You heard me. Brendan. Tried. To. Burn. Down. The. School.

So.... what did they do? (I'm referring to the admin, because this is what matters in this situation. I'm always curious how Mrs. Trout handles the behavior issues at Bowie.)

Oh, they let him sit in the office for an hour, cause they had to read "Green Eggs and Ham" for a Great Day of Reading first. Then he was sent to Exile (teacher talk for the extended suspension campus) He's gone!

They let him sit for an hour? He tried to burn down the school. And they didn't attend to him for an hour?

Yeah. I know, 'cause they couldn't read any other time of day.

This is what pisses me off. A child brought a lighter to school and held it to the bathroom wall in front of even younger students. He scared them so badly that they started to cry and reported him to their teachers. He said, "I'm gonna burn the school down and I'm gonna kill Mrs. Wall."

To a kid, an hour seems like forever. And sitting in the office is a consequence of no consequence. And as all that time ticks by, he is thinking that everything is probably okay for him or he's plotting how he's going to try to burn the school down even better next time. As an administrator, you should know that if you don't handle issues like potential arson IMMEDIATELY then you are sending the message that it was NO BIG DEAL!

Even if the kid is sent to Exile, you didn't do a good enough job of sending the message that attempting to burn down the school is a a REALLY BAD CHOICE WITH MAJOR CONSEQUENCES! That when you try to burn down the school, it puts people in so much danger that even the principal stops the very important thing that she is doing to deal with you. This is why Bowie Elementary School and other schools like it suck. A principal without principles leads everyone astray.

Why I Changed the Blog Title

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.