High-Pitched Whine

There’s a burn-out that comes at the end of each school year, but it seems to be more deeply entrenched this year. I’m forcing myself to suit up and show up, and there is a feeling inside that if I have to grade one more paper, I’ll explode in a consuming rage.

Teaching has always been more than my job, more than my occupation: it’s been my passion. I love working with a classroom filled with students, sharing both expertise and wisdom with them and then watching as the eyes light up and understanding occurs. It’s powerful and important. However, those moments are fewer and fewer as more and more time is spent in classroom management, the repetitious detritus of daily routine that wears away the surface like a finely-grained sandpaper, often so subtly that it’s hardly noticeable.

How many times and in how many ways can students be directed to sit down, shut up, open the book, get out the paper and the pencil, turn around, face the front and pretend to be present both physically and mentally? How many times and in how many ways can students be directed to put their last name, first name—and the assignment—on a paper BEFORE handing it in? How many times and in how many ways can students be directed to READ the passage BEFORE coming to class because we are going to DISCUSS it, not read it?

I do the same repetitious tasks daily, not once, not twice, not three times—but each and every class period many times over. Directions I give to the class must be repeated several times because there are those students to whom I was obviously not speaking: they are the ones who need individual attention or they turn their attention deficit into major classroom disruption. I cannot count how many times I have to repeat “What page are we on?” because students zone out. No, they cannot read the page numbers on the board and/or they cannot understand that the pages numbers written on the board are actually what we are doing in class TODAY, not just some arbitrary numbers I pulled out of a hat.

Return to your seat. Open your book. Turn around. Stop talking. Put your IPod, cell phone, MP-3 player or whatever electronic device you have AWAY! It simply never ends, and I try to teach in spite of the conditions, not because of them.

Added to that is the constant flow of tardy students, each of whom has to interrupt whatever is in progress to ask, “Are we doing anything?” When I shush them because we are in the middle of the lesson that began when they were still outside, visiting with their posse, I’m accused of being pissy and not doing my job. When I lock them out, they stand and pound on the door, laughing and calling out profanities because they want in—without any books or other school supplies, which means they are coming in only because all their friends have finally gone to their classes. Yesterday, I called Security and let them deal with the situation.

My requirement is full sentence responses that begin with the question turned into a statement that is then completed with information from the literature. It’s been the same direction since the year began and many, many examples have been given to show how to do this, but it’s news to the students each time they hand in an assignment. The student who wrote, “he’s dead,” informed me (correctly) that it is a sentence, but didn’t grasp the concept of connecting it to a stem so it’s a sentence about what? He told me I should read the questions before I grade his homework so I know what I’m doing!

Today, one student had the gall to tell me that her father is going to talk to me because I’m not putting a specific grade on the weekly progress report! He’s pissed because he wants to know what her grade is at any given moment in his life. However, he’s not willing to sign on to the on-line grade data base—because that would answer his question without a confrontation with me wherein he reinforces that my job depends on pleasing his every whim. I do progress reports once a week, and when I have a stack, I often merely indicate pass/fail, rather than take the time to look up about 75 students to find a specific grade for the week. Guess that’s not good enough for this daddy; after all, his daughter is special, talented, really smart, and it’s bad teaching that is keeping her grade in the C range.

The boy with 13% wants to know if he works “really hard” for the next 28 days, will he still pass the class? He’s failing at least 2 other classes, but he can only fail 1 class—or he falls behind on credits. I asked him how many times we’ve had this conversation since last September, and he told me that we haven’t talked about it today, and it’s really important! Once again, I show him that he has ZERO points in the grade database, which means that he has NEVER completed an assignment, so there is NOTHING he can do to pass the class in the remaining 28 days. After showing me that he does have random points here and there, he told me that I don’t have to be so mean!

Added to the daily stress is the constant disruption from the on-going construction: pounding, booming, whining, thumping construction noises that keep everyone on edge. I still haven’t figured out why construction projects aren’t done in off-hours when they occur right outside the classroom doors …

It’s like being dragged under by quicksand: I know not to fight it, as it only makes the sinking sensation worse, but I’m still going under, so I desperately want to extricate myself before the sand smothers me.