Some Pig

Not As Sick, Just As Tired

SO!  IT'S BEEN APPROXIMATELY 36 HOURS SINCE INDIA FELL ILL!  AND I HAD TO TAKE HER TO MY MOM'S TODAY SO I COULD GO TO WORK BECAUSE OF COURSE WARREN COULDN'T STAY HOME!  AND I WAS PRESENTING AT OUR FACULTY WORKSHOP SO I COULDN'T STAY HOME!  AND I'M REALLY REALLY TIRED FROM TWO NIGHTS OF BASICALLY NO SLEEP AND I HAD TO DRIVE AN HOUR EACH WAY TO TAKE INDIA TO MY MOTHER'S AND CELESTE TO DAY CARE AND I DRANK A WHOLE SODA ON THE WAY HOME, NOT ONE OF THE HUGE SODAS BUT A BIG SODA NONETHELESS, AND I NEVER HAVE SODA, AND IT DIDN'T SEEM TO DO MUCH TO KEEP ME AWAKE WHEN I WAS IN THE CAR BUT NOW THAT I'M HOME ALL THAT CAFFEINE IS REALLY KICKING IN!! AND NOT ONLY THAT BUT IT WASN'T A DIET SODA SO IT HAD AN EXTRA SUPER DUPER AMOUNT OF SICKLY SWEET HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP IN IT, WHICH SEEMS TO MAKE THE CAFFEINE EXTRA POWERFUL, AT LEAST IT DOES THAT TO ME ANYWAY, DOES IT DO THAT TO YOU??  DOES THIS MEAN I'M GOING TO HAVE TO TAKE A SLEEPING PILL SO I CAN GO TO SLEEP TONIGHT?  AND ISN'T IT KIND OF IRONIC THAT I WOULD NEED TO TAKE A SLEEPING PILL BECAUSE I'M OVERTIRED?  OKAY I'M GOING TO GO NOW!  I'LL SEE YOU AFTER I COME DOWN!!!

Sick and Tired; Or, That's Baroness von Munchausen to You

I'm home today with two sick little girls.  The vomiting is projectile, the fevers are raging, and the husband is out of town.  Figures.  Warren, that lucky bastard conscientious primary breadwinner, is something of a shirker Golden Boy when it comes to messy childhood situations.  With the exception of the Great DC Metro Puking Incident, he has largely been unsoiled (literally) by the vagaries of youthful ill health.  He traveled a lot for his consulting job when India was just a tyke, thus putting him safely out of range when the colds and viruses hit; somehow Hestia has smiled on him yet again, sending him to an overnight, off-site meeting just as the stomach virus made its presence felt chez Pig.  This reminds me of the time when we both had conferences to attend - his was outside Paris, France, and mine was at the Exit 8 Holiday Inn.  Bah.

Not that there isn't an upside to this spate of ill health, mind you.  My girls, normally the demanding and energetic sort, have been rendered positively tractable by their viral nemesis.  India is completely content with her cup of juice and a steady diet of PBS Kids, and her questions-per-minute count is way, way down.  I think I've only answered fifteen, twenty questions all day, tops.  Celeste is happy bouncing in her bouncy seat, jingling her carefully-researched, developmentally appropriate purple hippopotamus, and snorting through her clogged little baby nose.  It's enough to make Munchausen's syndrome by proxy an attractive idea!

NB to those of you who have your finger on the speed dial button to Child Protective:  KIDDING! I'm just kidding!  I have no interest in making my little kiddos permanent visitors to the pediatric ward.  It's just me and my "offbeat" sense of humor, but that's to be expected.  In fact, that's my motto - Caroline:  Making Inappropriate Jokes Since 1978.

To Boldly Go

I learned something distressing earlier this month.  Recently, my better half (no, I don't mean the cat, I mean Warren) and I began watching back seasons of Battlestar Galactica on DVD.  If you are hopelessly behind the times on your pop culture references, those in the know refer to this show as "BSG", which is far easier to type.  Actually, Warren's been watching and I've been half-watching, which is saying something, as I usually don't find the sci-fi genre particularly compelling.  I've always been a little leery of anything that encourages people who walk around talking in nonexistent languages and making weird hand motions, for one, and I don't find the thought of alternative realities tremendously thrilling.  The idea that parallel worlds could possibly exist is more demoralizing than anything else; I probably have just as many unfinished chores to do in the fourth, fifth and sixth dimensions as I do here.  But I digress.  Anyway, I discovered that Warren's interest in BSG isn't purely artistic, nosirree.  There's more to it for him than just an appreciation of the topical yet timeless storylines, the poignant dialogue, the special effects.  Warren's got an ulterior motive.  He's got a jones for Starbuck.

In case you've been eschewing TV in favor of attaining bodhisattva status or pursuing a leisurely re-reading of The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, Lt. Kara Thrace Starbuck is the gun-totin' cigar-smokin' whiskey-drinkin' ass-kickin' fighter pilot babe-in-residence on Galactica.  Generally, you can count on at least one scene per episode that will require her to take off her jumpsuit and strut around in her bulletproof vest thingummerbob while either a) playing cards, b) disobeying orders, c) pummeling some male soldier-type character into mashed potatoes, or d) doing all three simultaneously.  I ask you, how the hell do I compete with that? I whined said as much to Warren, who immediately chose to interpret my fears to mean that I'll be hitting the gym full force.  "Does that mean you're going to get all buff and toned like Starbuck?" he asked eagerly, face alight like a little child's on Christmas Day.  "You mean you want me to start kicking your ass on a regular basis?" I responded sweetly, deliberately misinterpreting his point.  "Sure, I can do that."  Warren's face fell about six stories.  Somehow I don't think that's the reaction he was hoping to get.

After thinking it over, I don't know why I found Warren's lust for interest in a burlygirl all that surprising.  When Warren and I were first dating, and therefore on our best, pre-taking-each-other-for-granted behavior, we went for a hike on a warm summer's day.  As I walked ahead of him, I unthinkingly did what I always do when I'm exerting myself in the great outdoors, and I, um, blew my nose without benefit of tissues. (NB: I'm pretty damn good at it, too - seldom any blowback or unwanted residual slime hanging about.) "You did a snot shot," Warren marveled in tones of sheer astonishment, "you just did a snot shot.  I saw you do a snot shot.  Did you just do a snot shot?"

"Oh hell," I thought to myself, "here I go and find one of the only straight, smart, gainfully employed, non-neurotic, unmarried males under the age of 50 in the greater Boston area I've ever met who doesn't head for the hills at the prospect of having me for an actual exclusive girlfriend, and I go and gross him out beyond recompense.  Nice going."  But I was wrong.  Warren wasn't repulsed by my distinct lack of couth; he was thrilled - because it meant he could do snot shots with wild and reckless abandon his own self.  Apparently, his previous girlfriend wasn't as relaxed about proper tissue etiquette as yours truly is.  Or gross. You could say gross.  Regardless, the point is, Warren has a sneaking attraction to women who are willing to transgress standards of ladylike behavior on occasion.  Like, most of the time. 

Well, not being one to stand idly by and watch my husband salivate all over the screen, I thought perhaps I should go out and get a pop culture crush object of my own to wave about in his face.  Unfortunately, given the fact that I have approximately thirty-five minutes to myself each day in which to do any pleasure reading, TV watching, email responding, personal grooming, et. al., that I might feel inclined to do, my ability to accrue a vast selection of potential crush objects is very limited.  Given the shows I watch, I have three basic options. 

The first option is Mike Delfino from Desperate Housewives.  I know, being a woman of a certain age and stage in life, that I'm supposed to get all breathless over the thought of a bit of rough with a hidden soft side and no visible plumber butt showing.  Imagine, he can think deep thoughts AND fix a clogged drain!  What woman wouldn't want that?  Sadly, ole Mike really doesn't do it for me.  Yeah, he's kinda cute and all, the tattoo is tasteful and can barely be seen peeking out from his t-shirt sleeve, the gut-to-waist ratio is firmly in his favor.  Despite all that, I don't go all weak at the knees when he comes on-screen.  While he sounds good on paper, the whole is actually less than the sum of its parts in this case.  He's just missing that certain oomph I want in a crush object.  Next!

We watch Survivor regularly, so there's always Jeff Probst, but please:  The shirts?  The manly-yet-slightly-artsy necklace thingie he wears? The cheesy, pseudo-dramatic "insights" shared after each week's ritual bloodletting?  How does the man look in the mirror and not crack up laughing?  Moving on!

The only other show I get to watch with any degree of regularity is Curious George, so I have to consider The Man With The Yellow Hat, even if he is animated.  Again, on paper, he looks pretty good - runs marathons, appears to be gainfully employed, speaks in whole sentences - but there are a few red flags.  Or rather, yellow flags.  I have some concerns about the whole yellow thing going on.  The man wears the same suit every day, and let's face it, YSL Pour Homme it ain't. Yellow is a difficult color for most of us to wear, and quite frankly, I don't fancy standing next to someone whose clothing is going to make me look jaundiced all the time.  Even leaving aside the fact that it's a blindingly bright shade of yellow, that suit isn't exactly the most stylishly cut set of garments.  The Man exacerbates the problem by tucking his pants into his boots, which makes him look like a total dorkenheimer, and then we get to the boots themselves.  On the one hand, the boots could connote a certain proclivity toward kinkiness that could be a bit of a turn-on, given the Man's otherwise completely straight-arrow appearance; on the other hand, they could just indicate that he hasn't looked in the mirror since, oh, ever.  Finally, I really don't relish the thought of having to compete with Curious George for the Man's attention.  Let's face it, if you had to choose between listening to me bitch about my exhausting life, frustrating day, and irritating kids, or watching a cute little monkey frolic about getting into picturesque mischief, which would you choose?  Yeah, I thought so.  Clearly I need to take some serious steps if I expect to find a crush object who will stir Warren's competitive juices.  I guess I will just have to watch a lot more TV.  As they say, if you want something done right, sometimes you gotta do it yourself.

I Thought I Had Dance Fever (But It Was Just a Touch of the Flu)

I spent last night chaperoning the spring semiformal for the class of 2009.  From the cravenly opportunistic perspective of a class advisor, it was a roaring success.  We cleared six hundred-plus dollars on an investment of a few phone calls, three trips to the party store, and three hours of listening to deafeningly loud music, not to mention the usual aggravation that comes from trying to get our class officers to follow through on stuff.  They're more "idea people" than detail people, meaning they are perfectly happy to generate fundraising ideas as long as my co-advisor and I actually do all the work.  From my viewpoint as an armchair sociologist, however, what I saw left me deeply concerned.  It's not just the fact that each generation manages to shock and dismay the old fogies who preceded them with their louche behavior, lax morals, and suspect dress sense, although there was plenty of that to go around.  [I just have to digress long enough to tell you this:  One girl came to the dance in a ruffly dress that was so short, to quote the great Tom Robbins, her crotch didn't even know she'd gotten dressed yet, paired with - I still have a hard time believing this - cream colored thigh high stockings with bows at the top.  The final effect was waaaaay too Taxi Driver for comfort.  Do the kids know the kind of image they project sometimes?  Did her parents know?  Never mind.  I think I know the answer.]

I'm concerned about how dances have changed in popular perception among the kids. When I was in high school (cue the creaky rocking-chair noises), if there was a dance at school, a pretty wide cross-section of people showed up.  Even though our self-imposed social segregation was straight out of the post-WWI Balkans, dances were one place where the groups would mingle, if not exactly mix.  Jocks, preps, geeks, band fags, drama hags, hicks, burnouts, just about everyone came to dance to Def Leppard and Journey; if it happened to be Winter Carnival or Homecoming, we'd all gather in the middle of the gym to watch a girl in a godawful Gunne Sax dress and a boy wearing his dad's dress shirt and sneakers with his dress pants squirm in their uncomfortable finery as they were crowned King and Queen of whatever at ten o'clock.  How Stone Age were we?  We were so behind the times that - I cringe with embarrassment even just typing this - whoever hosted the dance would run announcements for us to bring our own albums, as in records, from home, with our names written on the outside, for the volunteer student DJ to play on the school record player.  Senior year, my friends Lisa and Donna, always ahead of the curve, once forced David Berry to play U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday", during which they yelled "pop rockers go home!" and sat in the middle of the gym floor in protest of the horrendous dreck being perpetrated on our young ears.  Needless to say, no one got it. The song ended, everyone looked at each other in bewilderment, and Dave put on a Foreigner disc. Ah, youth.

Now dance attendees, at least at my school, consist of two-thirds freshman and sophomore girls, a little less than one-third freshman and sophomore boys, and a smattering of juniors and one or two seniors.  More importantly, the kids represent only a small segment of our school's social groups. The fall dances generate at least a minimum of upperclass interest, but by the spring dances, the kids we get tend to be on the bottom half of the social ladder.  I can't think of any other way to describe it.  The more popular kids from all the subgroups, whether it be athletes, musicians, skateboarders, fashionistas, brainiacs, whatever, those kids stop coming to dances fairly early on if they even started at all.  By their junior year, the only school dance they'll attend is Homecoming, maybe. 

I asked my friend Kelli, Assistant Principal Extraordinaire, why.  "AlcoBlow," she answered, shrugging.  No, that's not a reference to a booze-fueled sex act, it's the name of the breathalyzer we keep handy at the door.  "They know they're going to be caught if they have a few before they get here, so they won't come."  I also used the topic to run a model focus group in my Sociology class a few years ago.  "School dances?" the kids, mostly seniors, sneered.  Why would they go to a stupid dance in the caf when they can go to an eighteen-plus night at a real nightclub and not have to obey school rules or be watched over by school administrators?  Why would they want to pay five or six or seven bucks to hang out with a bunch of freshmen, some of whom are still playing tag in the back of the gym during the dance?  Prom is good because you get to dress up and the afterparties rock, Homecoming and the Halloween dance are marginally okay for an hour or two, but all the other dances?  Get real.

The result is something of a death spiral.  Because the more popular kids won't go to dances, dances aren't popular.  The only "cool" upperclassmen the kids see at dances are the ones who come to work the snack bar for their business simulation class, and those kids make it darn clear they're not there for the social scene.  Therefore, when the current crop of dance attendees hit driving age, they won't go to dances either, lest they be seen as uncool.  The younger kids who want to be seen as cool then stop going to dances in order to seem more like the upperclassmen they want to emulate.  Who's left?  Freshmen.  Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course, but there's something to be said for social events that bring everyone to the school.  Aside from the obvious benefit of providing something for the kids to do in a somewhat supervised environment, there's the socialization element, too.  I remember being a freshman, eyeing the big, sophisticated seniors at the dance, and wanting to emulate them.  I envied them their easy rapport with the chaperones and other adults there, and as a result, I strove to behave just the slightest bit more maturely than usual so someday I could hang around and chat, one adult to another.  We already have our fair share of kids who act like they were raised by wolves, and they need all the (hopefully appropriate) peer modeling they can get.  Now the only behavior these freshmen see at dances is - other freshman behavior.  I don't think that's healthy. 

The other unhealthy aspect of this situation is the dearth of opportunities for kids to break out of their (often very circumscribed) social circles.  While we had far less experience of the world than kids have now, and were far less tolerant of each other as a result, at least we had one forum where we all came together.  Sometimes we even - gasp - transcended social boundaries for a dance or two.  My first experience with real, grown-up flirting happened at the same dance mentioned above, when a very popular boy invited definitely NOT popular me to slow dance for some reason.  Maybe he was dared to do it, maybe he was just putting me on, I still can't figure it out.  As the dulcet tones of Air Supply filled the gymnasium, we started to shuffle around each other, clinched together in what passed for slow dancing and locked in the dead silence typical of the times.  What the hell, I figured, and I asked him a totally stupid question about something and laughed.  He answered, I said something sparkling and witty in response, and presto!  We were flirting, and damn, I was actually good at it.  That never would have happened at the dance I supervised last night, which is really too bad.

So, comment away - what were dances like for you?  Am I just kidding myself, thinking that there was an advantage to the way things were?  And if you graduated from high school less than a millennium ago, I'd really love to hear your views.

Also Known As

Nicknames can be a big deal - just anyone saddled with the unfortunate moniker of "Stinky" (more on that later).  I've had a few nicknames in my teaching career, and I'm not just talking about the muttered imprecations issued as I've kicked someone out, either.  As Madge noted recently, the best nicknames arise organically, in response to the unique qualities of the individual in question.  In the worst-case scenario, a random name is applied unilaterally, with no regard for the person so encumbered.  A deservedly ex-boyfriend of mine tried to nickname me Stinky once, not because of any inordinate amount of whiftiness on my part (I swear!  I shower every day!  Okay, nearly every day!  At least four out of five days, anyway.  And use deodorant!  True fact!).  He thought that I would appreciate his efforts to subvert the dominant paradigm by choosing a distinctly unromantic nickname - sort of a reverse psychology of nicknaming, if you will.  After I nearly dope-slapped him into the middle of next week, he quickly rethought that stance. "I just didn't want to call you something stupid like honeybunch or lovey," he sulked, after I finished ripping the hide off his back pointing out that being called "Stinky" doesn't exactly make the average girlfriend's heart grow fonder, and definitely doesn't increase anyone's chances of getting lucky.  Dumbass. [Note to Joanne and Sarah:  Yes, that was Paul.  Surprised?]

My teacher nicknames started off fairly predictably:  Ms. C (before marriage).  Coach C (the universal coach nickname).  Ms. S (post marriage).  Then the Class of 2005, Greatest Class Ever, came on the scene and things got a lot more interesting.  Ms. S became S-Dawg, then thanks to Calvin Broadus' influence on pop culture I morphed into Bigg S Dogg (I am five feet tall).  When the "-izzle" suffix gained traction my nickname morphed again to Bigg S Dizzle, and my assessments were renamed "S Dizzle Quizzles".  But sic transit gloria mundi - that class graduated, my subsequent classes didn't know me as well, and my cool nicknames fell by the wayside.  My street cred (hall cred?) declined considerably.

My latest nickname was bestowed by a colleague instead of the kids.  My department is infamous renowned for being a bunch of jokers very collegial.  Example:  Our previous department chair used to refer to one of my fellow teachers as a "cow fucker", and that was a term of endearment.  As we used to say, "A department meeting's not a department meeting until Kevin's a cow fucker."  Sure beat the hell out of talking about learning standards, I will say.  The department is kind of like a big, dysfunctional family - we ride each other mercilessly, but woe betide anyone else who tries to do so.  If there's a chink in the armor, you know someone else is going to find it.

My new nickname has been honestly earned.  When I came back to work, Celeste adjusted to day care beautifully, except for one minor issue.  She would not, and still won't, take a bottle.  Yeah, it's great fun.  After several desperate phone calls and emergency trips to nurse her at day care, I caved like a wet cardboard box.  My chair rearranged my schedule so I can go to day care every day during my lunch/prep period and do my dairy maid number.  One day, upon my return to work, my friend Jen piped up, "The lunch truck is back!"  And so now I am known around the department as ... Lunch Truck.  Sweet!  I can't wait til the kids get hold of that.  It'll be MRS. Lunch Truck to them, thank you very much.

The Ides Of March

As people much more important than I am discovered a long time ago, March is not exactly a barrel of laffs.  The thrills of winter (even one that arrived so tardily) are long over; the joys of spring (both weeks that we get here) are still months away. This is particularly true here in the frozen north.  The sunny, breezy landscapes inhabited by the models in the spring catalogues might as well be from a different planet. Where they frolic through fields of new-sprung grasses under azure skies, we slog through snow that's gone gray with age, like a white shirt that should've been put in the Goodwill pile awhile ago, with skies to match most days.  But at least it's daylight savings time, so we get to see the dirty gray snow and the dirty gray skies and the dirty gray cars longer and longer each day.  That's good news, isn't it?

The March doldrums affect schools just as much as they do the outside world, for all the aforementioned reasons and more. March is, frankly, the pits.  No, it's the bottom of the pits.  It's the bottom of the pits where all the damp air condenses, ferments, and gathers into a pool of stinky yuckiness that sucks all the fun out of being a teacher.  How do I hate thee, March?  Let me count the ways.  Winter break is long behind us and spring break is so far in the future as to be theoretical.  The novelty of the new semester (new classes! new faces!) has dissipated, all the fun stuff (prom, yearbook, graduation) won't come up for weeks, and the end is nowhere in sight.  Getting the kids motivated is, to put it mildly, a challenge.  I try to do all the ed school stuff I was taught about making the work relevant to their lives, setting a purpose for learning, activating their prior knowledge, blah blah blah, but what works in October sure don't fly in March.  The kids stare at me, like Henry VIII in his latter years looking at yet another banquet table (what, swan again?), their eyes conveying equal parts boredom, contempt, and disdain for my efforts.  They are so over this. 

In March, my patience wears a little thin. Where I normally shrug off an apathetic reaction to one of my scintillating lessons, at this time of year I want to leap over the desks and slap the vacuous-cum-supercilious looks off their faces, cramming unfinished homework assignments down their throats and shouting, Dirty Harry style, "So you don't WANT to do homework, huh?  HUH?  Well, do you want to ask people 'want fries with that' for a LIVING, you arrogant little punk?  Well, DO YA? DO YA?!?!" If I ever get hauled up on assault charges, I will bet you dollars to doughnuts (mmmm ... doughnuts) it'll be in March.

This past week was a prime example of the living hell that is March.  All my classes, including the honors kids, were doing their best imitation of yogis entering a state of suspended animation, if yogis were capable of emanating waves of passive-aggressive resentment in my direction.  Trying to get a discussion rolling was an exercise in futility.  No matter how easy or open-ended the question I asked, the response was the same - a deadly silence, broken only by the mild hum of the overhead lights.  How dare I ask them to exert effort on something as pointless and unnecessary as thinking about history when they have much, much more important things to think about, like what's for lunch or how they're going to manage to cut out of study hall today?  [insert eye roll here]  In one class assigned to do oral reports, only one group - ONE GROUP - out of seven was ready to present on time.  The rest stood in front of the class, smirking and shuffling and laughing at each other.  I'm glad they found the situation so highly risible.  I'm sure they won't be laughing when they see the "F"s on the report card.  Then I'LL be laughing!  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

I'm doing my best not to get pulled into the suckhole of apathy, but it's not easy.  March brings out the cynic in me, the one who thinks dark thoughts about how we're headed down the tubes a la the Roman Empire.  Why?  These kids are beyond spoiled. We're a victim of our own success.  Stuff is so cheap, and our lives are so easy, relatively speaking, that a lot of these kids have everything they possibly could want.  Now they believe that life is meant to be fun and easy and entertaining, and if it's not immediately interesting to them (and keep in mind this is an age group not known for its discriminating taste), they have no use for it.  They've also fallen prey to the uniquely American idea that 'you can be anything you want', that anyone can get a good job, have a big house, get rich and buy all the toys, but they have no conception that they actually need to do something for which someone will pay them significant money in order to have those things.  They'll work untold hours at their stupid crappy job because they can use that money right away to buy gas for their car and beer for their parties, but they won't put thirty minutes into an assignment I give them in an attempt to help them, gee, build some of the intellectual skills they'll need if they want to succeed later on.  They piss and moan and carry on about having to read ten pages of a text, because it's too hard, Mrs. S., I didn't get it, but they'll spend hours doing jack-all on MySpace (okay, can't really get too high and mighty about anyone wasting time on the computer, now, can I?).  I ask them all the time, "who here is planning to go to a four year college," and almost all the hands go up, but then when I try to explain that they're going to need to read stuff that's just as hard as this and harder, well, they just give me the "no way" stare and turn away.  We've trained these kids to say they want to go to college, but they have NO idea, half of them, that college is more than just Grade 13, it's actually difficult, that no one is going to give them extra credit for showing up with a pen, that their professor doesn't care if they pass or fail or even show up but the student loan company is sure as hell going to care that they get paid back for the loan even though you failed the class.  And if they don't go to college, their boss isn't going to find it amusing when they don't get their work done, or they do it but so minimally it all has to be redone, or they do it late every single time.  Then, maybe then, somewhere in the dim recesses of their media-addled, sugar-saturated, instant-gratification-addicted brains, a little voice - my voice - will pipe up and tell them I TOLD YOU SO.  I sure hope it does, anyway.

The cure for March mind mold, I find, is to teach harder.  For most of my classes, I need some really juicy lessons, lessons that'll make them sit up and listen, preferably on a subject that has some kind of connection to a popular but PG-rated movie I can show in class.  And food.  These kids will do just about anything to watch a movie they've already seen a million times and eat snack food they would never touch at home, just because they're doing it in school.  The free gift with purchase for me is that a movie gives me at least two, sometimes three class periods of blessed silence from the kiddos.  For three days, I'm their favorite teacher AND I don't have to interact with them!  It's a win-win.  On the other hand, one of my classes needs a figurative kick up the butt.  They've been so heinous recently I wouldn't spit on them if they were on fire, so there's no WAY I'm rewarding THAT with three days off from geography.  So I will have to come up with something that will keep them busy, silent, on-task, and off my last nerve, preferably related to the cultural geography of the US.  If you happen to have anything like that kicking around your brain, let me know, would ya?  And please hurry.  We're only halfway through the month.

I Must Be Growing Up

We are in medias potty training here chez Pig.  What this means, aside from an unfortunate tendency for the wash basket to smell like a Bowery flophouse, is that my elder daughter is endlessly fascinated by all subjects elimination-related.  There is much verbal speculation around these parts about whether or not one needs to pee, whether or not one has peed, when one might need to pee again, et cetera. It's loads of fun (ha! poop reference!).

Recently India combined her newfound concern with bathrooming with an old favorite topic, aminals.  She realized that, indeed, just like her, animals have to poop!  And pee!  I think this bulletin was sent out over Reuters.  So, putting two and two - or rather, number one and number two together (ha! another pun!), she started to ask about the digestive habits of all kinds of animals.  Specifically, she wanted to know where all her favorite animal friends happened to do their, um, "doody."  So she started asking the same question over and over: "Mommy, where does [insert species of animal here] poop?"

I held it together pretty well, I thought, through a veritable Noah's Ark of the usual suspects (horses, cows, bunnies).  But then India came out with, "Where do bears poop, Mommy?"  And it was only by dint of sitting on my hands, sucking in my cheeks, and biting down hard enough to prevent my lips from moving that I managed not to reply:

"I don't know, honey.  Does a bear shit in the woods?"

Your Government Is Here To Help You

Dear state legislators,

I have something to tell you that may be hard for you to hear.  I know we've been together a long time, you and I. I want you to know that I am very grateful for all your efforts on my behalf.  As a one-time Civics teacher, I fully appreciate that without you, the three branches of government would cease to be.  If my legislators weren't busily legislating, the executive branch would have nothing to execute and the judicial branch would have no reason to, um, judish.  And then where would we be?

So please don't be offended when I say, I think it's time we took a break from each other.  Not forever - that wouldn't be possible even if we wanted to - just for now.  You know how it goes with relationships; they all start out so full of enthusiasm and optimism.  This time it's going to work!  They like me!  They really like me!  But then real life takes hold.  Before you know it, silences creep into the conversation, feelings are hurt and never really smoothed over, and pretty soon it's all forced politeness and rote shows of solidarity that fool no one.

When you started us down the path of statewide educational reform, you meant well.  Sure, the state standards you dreamed up were as weird and confusing as only something written by committee can be.  Yes, the "performance indicators" we were supposed to be measuring veered wildly from totally vague to completely micromanagerial.  We lost two weeks - two weeks! - of classroom time with our juniors as they took a grueling battery of statewide assessments and then required psychological counseling to decompress afterward.  And our poor Life Skills teacher nearly had a nervous breakdown trying to meet the new state laws that required she prove that she had assessed each and every one of her students according to the standards.  Most of her students were non-verbal, true, and the majority of them still had potty training issues, but hey!  They should know the difference between a command economy and a free market economy too, right?  Sure, there were these little bumps in the road, but we managed, didn't we?

Looking back, I should have seen the signs:  First, you threw out the social studies and math assessments, because NCLB doesn't measure math and social studies. You postponed the implementation of the new statewide graduation requirements that we supposedly were working toward, and then you canceled the state-written exams altogether and made all the juniors take the SAT instead.  I kept making excuses - you're busy, you're trying to meet NCLB, you're worried about property tax relief - but I should have known.  Yes, I was in denial.  I see that now.

I know I shouldn't dwell on the past, and I'm the one saying it's time for us to move on, but I just have to ask.  Did you ever think of me?  Do you realize that I swore - swore - to parents that the new state graduation requirements were here to stay, and their kids were going to have to meet state standards on common assessments, or no magic piece of paper would be coming their way? Did you ever think of the hours upon hours and days upon days of department meetings, committee meetings, teacher in-service days I spent rewriting and revising our curriculum to meet official state requirements?  Do you know how much time it took to write and pilot the common assessments and the scoring rubrics you demanded, time we could have spent doing something - anything - on behalf of our students?  Do you care??

And now you can't even be up front with me.  The "temporary" moratorium you called on implementing the standards?  Is permanent.  Not only that, you're not going to revise the state standards, you're throwing them out completely.  How did I learn this?  I had to find out through lunch table scuttlebutt. You couldn't even call me and tell me yourself.  All those parents I told to get ready for standards-based diplomas must be wondering what kind of crack I was on.  Not only are we not implementing the new standards, we're right back where we started from, counting credits toward graduation regardless of whether or not anyone actually learns anything.  Isn't this what we were trying to get away from in the first place?  I know, I know.  What's done is done, and there's no point beating this particular horse.

I guess the worst part of all this is the disenchantment.  When I got into this teaching gig, I vowed I would never become one of those bitter, cynical old farts who live in the teachers' lounge and greet every attempt at change with a loud raspberry.  When the naysayers started sniggering that these reforms would never see the light of day, and that they weren't going to revise their curriculum until the first kid walked across the stage with a standards-based diploma, I both disdained and pitied them - disdained them for their unwillingness to change, and pitied them their ossified worldview of education.  Now I find myself saying things like, "I'll rewrite my curriculum when they pass a law promising not to throw it out."  How has it come to this?  I thought we understood each other -- no, no.  I said I wouldn't go there.  Best just to move on.

So please - go do what you need to do.  Pollution control, highway construction, job development - I know you've got a lot on your plate.  Perhaps someday we can meet, get together, revise a law or two for old times' sake.  I'm just not sure I'm ready yet.  I need some closure first, some time to let the healing begin.  Don't think of this as goodbye, think of it as 'until later'.

Sincerely,

Caroline

An Uphill Battle

In some ways, being a teacher is a lot like being Sisyphus.  After all, we both do the same thing day after day, hoping for different results. Most days I feel like my load is the easier of the two.  Then there are days when I envy ole Sisyphus.  A boulder is nice and quiet, and probably listens to all the instructions the first time around instead of making a big cock-up of a simple assignment and then yelling, "I don't get it."  I bet his boulder never stares at him blankly when he says "please pass up your homework" like he suddenly sprouted an extra head that speaks only in Farsi.  Yep, next incarnation around, I'm gonna be a figure from Greek legend.

A downside to being an experienced teacher is that, after awhile, you've seen it all before.  At times it's hard to summon up the energy to fight battles that I would willingly have undertaken five years ago, even if I know I really should fight them regardless of the likelihood of success.  I spent a bunch of time at the beginning of the quarter chasing after a student who seems determined to fail my Geography class.  (Yeah, I know - it's not exactly Differential Calculus, is it?)  I called home to sound the alarm, and the reaction I heard immediately raised a bunch of red flags.  A little research and a few emails confirmed my suspicion - the mom is far more interested in singing that famous sad song,  "My Poor Kid (Life Is So Hard)", than she is in seeing him pass my class.  I got a lot of verbal hand-wringing and statements like, "I tell him all the time he has to do his work," but my gentle suggestions that he do something - anything - that required taking action on his part didn't get very far. 

Seven or eight years ago, I would have taken this as a personal challenge. I would've sent work home to be signed, given weekly updates, hounded the kid to stay for after-school help.  That kid would've seen my smiling face pop up at every turn.  If his mother wanted to excuse him from learning, well, it wasn't going to be with my collusion.  Now I'm not so quick on the draw.  Parents like this (and I know this is a bad sign, when I start saying things like 'parents like this') don't necessarily want their kids to do the work, as strange as that may sound.  Some of them will talk a good fight, but they just want the issue to go away already. Some of them use a problem or an issue that really exists as a reason to excuse their kid from ever doing anything.  Some, quite frankly, are addicted to the drama of having a 'problem child' and aren't interested in actually resolving the issues at hand.  A lot of them combine a little bit of all of these.  Eventually being the thorn in their side backfires, and the parent starts questioning why I'm so harsh on their poor kid, don't I know he's got a learning disability/no father at home/problems with female teachers/take your pick?  I've headed down this route often enough that I already know where I'm going to end up, and if I'm just going to finish right where I started, why bother?

Thus the internal tug-of-war begins.  I should bother.  I should bother because this kid is sorely lacking in skills he needs to get through day-to-day life, never mind World Geography.  I should bother because Mom is not going to be able to call the boss ten years hence and ask him/her not to fire her son, doesn't s/he know how rough her son has had it?  I should bother because in less than three years, this kid is going to be old enough to fight and die for his country, but he won't know what continent he's on when he does if his current performance in World Geo doesn't take a turn for the better.  On the other hand, at the end of the day, nothing is going to change without his mother being on board.  The energy I would have used in vain to try to get some work out of this one student could be enough to move four or five other students from the "fail" column to the "pass" column.  So do I go after the intractible case, or do I go for the low-hanging fruit?  Ideally, I'd do both, but ideally, I'm a size four and Al Gore won the 2000 election.  Ideals are nice, but they don't always match the reality.

I remember once hearing a social worker say that in her work with homeless adults, "you have to start where the client is," which was a nice way of saying, "if you can't get the other person to buy into what you're doing, you might as well be pissing up a rope."  For whatever reason, this mother feels that she needs to protect her son from feeling the consequences of his actions.  I don't agree with that, but he's not my kid.  So maybe the best I can do is to nudge her a bit, just a tiny bit, toward being a little less enabling as I try to get this kid through the class with a passing grade.  Is it worth it?  I don't know.  Should Sisyphus lug that boulder up the hill one more time?  I don't know.  And I won't be able to answer that until I try.

Just Say No

I debated long and hard whether or not to write this post.  I was afraid that writing about this topic would only encourage people to do exactly what I'm warning them not to do, but then I realized that this is the same philosophy taken by the Bush administration to prevent schools from teaching sex education, and that hasn't stopped any teenagers I know of from having sex, now, has it?  So, here it is.  I'm telling you for your own good.

Whatever you do, don't let your husband go to Whole Wallet and troll around for something yummy to eat.  And if you do, don't - repeat, don't - let him find a big red bag of something called Popcorn, Indiana All Natural Kettle Corn.  And whatever else happens, don't let him bring a bag of this home.  Because if you do, you'll find yourself wondering, "What's the big deal?  It's only popcorn."  You will open the bag and toss a handful in your mouth.  And then your brain will immediately go into overload as all your sensory organs except your taste buds shut down, the better to savor the impossibly delicious tension between the subtly sweet butter-toffee-ish crunchy kernels and the salty-but-not-too-salty salted kernels, and you will realize that you have found the perfect snack food, well, as perfect as a snack food can be without containing chocolate, and before you know it you will have dipped your hand in the bag again and again and AGAIN as you watch on, helplessly, your limbs moving as if of their own accord, your mouth craving the next handful even as you're still chewing the handful you just ate, and you will find yourself wishing yourself back to the days before kids, before you met Warren, when you could sit and eat whatever the hell you wanted for dinner, vegetables and protein be damned, just so you could eat a whole bag of this ambrosial delight all by yourself. 

Whatever else you do, don't - repeat, don't - then put the bag where it is accessible to you on the way down into the basement, where the washing machine is, because then it will be too easy, nay, it will be mandatory that you stop by that red bag on every trip down to the basement, and Buddha knows you make a LOT of trips down to the basement what with the two kids and the diaper blowouts and the potty training, and that is a lot of visits to the big red bag.  Then you will find yourself inventing reasons why you need to go downstairs and pass by that big red bag.  You will find yourself attempting to tie the bag around your neck so you can stick your whole head in the bag and gulp it down by the mouthful without chewing, like a hyena over a fresh kill, because sweet holy living baby Jesus this stuff is that good. You will realize that, if you were given a chance to go back in time to the early 80's, to the day before Microsoft went public, and you could buy up all the Microsoft stock you could want and become wealthy beyond your wildest dreams, but the cost was that you had to give up ever buying another bag of Popcorn, Indiana Kettle Corn always and forever, you couldn't do it. And when the bag runs low, and then runs out, and it is late and you're home alone with the kids and you can't go back to Whole Paycheck and get another bag, you will find yourself seriously considering crawling through the house on your hands and knees in the hopes that you might find a few stray kernels that got lost down by the baseboards.  You will see yourself scrabbling around on the floor chasing after one last lonely kernel that got squashed by someone's foot and you will think, so this is what they mean by hitting bottom.  Then and only then will you realize just how completely and totally out of control your life has become since you opened that first big red bag, and how you have to admit you are powerless in the face of your addiction if you ever hope to overcome it.

But of course, that's you.  I can stop any time I want.