The DN

Say cheese.

1  Bay Bridge. Brutal. 

2   This time of the year is exhausting enough. My friends and fam who are going through the entire Bay Bridge thing right now, huge thoughts to you. 

3   Well! It's FRIDEEEEEEEE!!! We made it to a three-day.

4   Not a moment too soon. 

5   The sheer mugginess and odd heat are oppressive. 

6   And I have nothing to complain about. 

7   Still, teachers can't quite explain the bizarreness of the first couple of weeks of school. 

8   Even though I had a relatively good day yesterday, by late afternoon I found myself exhausted and eerily sleepy.

9    That seems to happen to a lot of us. 

10   It isn't really difficult work; it's just relentless. Perhaps that will be the theme of today's DN.

11   So let us take a closer look. First off, the school day doesn't end at the final bell of the day. Many of us go home, analyze each class, look at our pacing guides, and somehow make materials that will turn into lessons of quality. And we have to try to make it look as though it is the proverbial piece of cake. 

12   I try to make it as comfortable as possible for my students. Their books for my class alone are remarkably heavy. If we multiply that times their other books PLUS any journals, folders, mini-binders or anything else that other teachers demand, we might wind up seeing a student with a backpack that sticks out two feet behind them. 

13  Not good on the back, the mind, or the spirit. 

14   Making it more comfortable for my students means just that. Instead of making them haul my huge book to school each day, I try to use any  materials necessary to get the information needed into their hands. I often run things off away from campus, using my own resources, and more often than not, my own wallet. 

15  I write vocabulary lists that are directly out of stories and literature that I teach. This includes my writing out each word and pronunciation. I use the International Phonetic Alphabet, where things like  the letter "a" with two dots on top of it would be the "ahh" sound, as in "Say ahh!" The IPA also has upside-down "e's." The upside-down "e" is called a "schwa." It is the "uh" sound. 

16   I teach over four-hundred words a year, some directly from the lit, and some from SAT lists and flash cards. 

17   I often change the literature I teach each year for various reasons. It isn't unusual for me to spend three to four hours perfecting a new word list. 

18   It pays dividends, but during the year I am a man possessed,  constantly at the computer working on lessons. 

19   Our literature book has nine books of Homer's Odyssey. The workbooks that I go to for class sets have far fewer. Thef story in its entirety has twenty-six "books," a book being the equivalent of a chapter in a regular book. Some are long; some are short. 

20   I have the plot outlines for the entire Odyssey, so that the students  read the nine books that we have in our lit book, but they also get the remaining seventeen "books" from my use of storytelling, which I consider one of my strengths. 

21   This takes a ton of preparation as well. It usually includes few rehearsals at home before I get in front of the students. It is a bit like a stand-up, but it also works, and I have a lot of fun presenting it. 

22   If time, I also augment that with a mini-history lesson that covers the entire Golden Age of Greece.

23   It is a LOT of work and preparation, never mind the grading of papers and tests/quizzes, all of which our admin expects to be current each week. 

24   Am I explaining, complaining or boasting here?

25    None of the above, really. I just think it is good for people to have an understanding of just how many hours teachers put in. I talk about what I do only I think I represent what a LOT of teachers do. That IS a lot of the job. And as I stated before, it can be exhausting. 

26    It's difficult to say to people, "I was exhausted yesterday! I got home at five and conked out on the couch!"

27   It isn't unusual for someone to say, "Oh poor baby! I was stuck on the Bridge until SEVEN! Cry me a river dude. Oh. And HOW much vacation time to you get each year?"

28   And on and on. 

29   Do teachers enjoy their vacations? A LOT of teachers work during the summer. They work on all sorts of different projects to try to make it happen for the students. A LOT of teachers volunteer to help youth in the community during the summer. Some take students out of the country to assist people who might be in need of help. 

30  When teachers post that they are enjoying themselves during the summer, it is because they have finally given themselves real time off, not the stuff that is written on paper. 

31   So yes, when we first get back to the classroom we have hopes and dreams of creating greater lessons and trying still to master the art of teaching. 

32   It is a hard job if taken seriously, and most of my colleagues take it pretty-darned seriously. 

33   And it isn't just the teachers who make the schools happen. The support staff at every school knows full well that THEY are the backbone of all of it, from office to office. Office people who work in schools nowadays have workloads beyond what most people would be able to handle. 

34   I have so much respect for them it is beyond anything I could say right here. They are every bit as professional as anyone else working in a school. I think that after four years of proven service, they should be given degrees. You know how teachers get tenure? I would love to see these dedicated people get twentyure~!

35   <twentyure~!> 

36   Moving on, Part One: Sorry.

37    A part of my mission with the DN is to give the layperson a better idea of what the profession is like. I don't mind at all ripping the school inside out so others can see how things happen. 

38   Can't seem to reach a counselor? We have two full-time counselors and one part-time for nearly 2,700 students. Our counseling people get attacked by angry parents all the time. It is often because the student or parent may have overestimated how much of a workload the student could handle, and despite warnings, would like perhaps one less AP class. That's a common one, and always difficult. 

39   Don't like that they lock the gates after the first ten minutes in the morning? We have tons of strange adults who try walking around our campus during school hours. 

40   Don't like that they are making it difficult to get on campus from an area that says clearly NOT A DROP-OFF ZONE? We have had students  hit by cars, sometimes critically. We have an entire street behind our school that is not a safe place to drop students off, but each day parents stop, and kids jay-walk up and down the street while their parents make quick u-turns. It is ridiculously unsafe. Our present admin is working hard to prevent this. 

41   Teacher doesn't pay enough attention to MY kid? Teacher has to take care of the needs of entire classes each day. And if you want to meet, most teachers are willing to set up a time. But teacher won't always drop everything they're doing because a parent shows up unannounced. That dog, as they say, don't hunt. In most schools you're better off not trying that one. 

42   We have meetings, appointments, copies to run, families to feed, and lives to live. Contrary to popular belief, we are not a 24/7 service, although I have often taken care of emails in the middle of the night, just because I'm awake and can't sleep. 

43   This might be making some people angry. That's fine; I am simply the messenger explaining WHY certain things happen as they do. 

44   On the good end, we have thousands of students going to school, learning a great deal, continuing on to college, and becoming intelligent, educated adults. Thousands. Every year. Somehow all this seeming insanity put degrees in students' hands every year. 

45   And while the schools clearly have a LOT to do with it, nothing makes it happen more than parents who DO care about their children's educations, who keep up on what they study each day, who talk to them about what they learned, and about which teachers they like.

46   And most important: what makes the school really work is the students. To them, this is their entire world, albeit seen from a much younger perspective. The majority of them keep all of us going with their youth, their enthusiasm, their honesty, and their spirit, which keeps all of us young. 

47   The educational system isn't perfect. Neither is any system anywhere anyone works. But somehow the degrees continue to happen; the students move on and contribute to the world, whether they get all the degrees or not. 

48   Most grow into pretty fine adults. 

49   And I have fond memories of many, many, many of them!

50   I  hope this was a nice insight into how it all seems to work. Of course I didn't cover everything. Broad topic, hopefully insightful.  

51   It is who we are. 

52   Thanks for listening. 

53   Have a great three-day.

54   See you again.

55   Peace.

~H~

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