Professor Noob's Daily Disquisitions

You know, I consider myself pretty competent at dealing with asshat students by now. Despite the threats that are aired in this online journal, I am actually quite a mild-mannered teacher: the Clark Kent of pedagogy, if you will (except that if I ever wore my underwear outside my pants, I'd be fired. And then sued for traumatizing the poor little kiddies, all of whom have had sex and not a few of whom are parents). Still, I've learned how to shut Ms. Mouth down and how to not make such a public fuss if someone isn't doing their work. It helps that my students have actually cleaned up their act somewhat and keep their sass to reasonable bounds.

Until today, when I decided to try and have an actual conversation with them. They'd just attended an assembly, during which members of the community (actually, they were all from the casino) and elders of the tribe spoke. I was fascinated by the elders' stories about the days before running water, before electricity, before spanking was verboten, before entitlement and snowflakery. The students, who have listened to their elders' sing-song voices lecturing them about respect since they were in the womb, were less impressed. In fact, it seemed to make them cranky.

So when I asked in class, "What did you think of today's assembly?" the first response I got back was, "What kind of question is that?" One that requires effort, apparently, and is therefore a Stupid Teacher Question.

The "conversation" rapidly degenerated into:

Me: [in my brisk, professional "teacher" voice]. Stop that tapping, "Mutter". I find it annoying.
Mutter: I think you're annoying.
Me: [finally snapping a little under the pressure of the continual rudeness]. You're funny. I laugh at you, you know.
Mutter: I laugh at you. We ALL laugh at you.
Me: [still smiling] Really? Why would you do that?
Mean Girl: Because you're ugly.
Me: [still smiling, because I don't know what else to do] Well, I know that isn't true.

What was I supposed to do? Beat them? Yell at them? Send them into the hallway (can't, last time I did that they blocked the hall doors with desks). Dock their grades? Write them up? Probably one of the above would be the correct response. But I, stunned by their sheer fuckwittery, by their stupid rudeness and their bitchy, fragmented, hate-driven little minds, didn't do anything except keep talking.

The talk didn't end so badly. Building on the elders' lament that so few students spoke the local language, I pitched my university to them as a college that is Native-friendly, complete with Native-language classes so they can learn their tribe's traditional tongue. A few listened. A few nodded when I asked if that had helped, bless them.

But as to the others:

I hate you. I'll still teach you and I'll still be fair to you and no, I won't write you up for stating your opinion on my looks. But I hate you. I want nothing to do with you. Does that surprise you, snowflakes? Oh, I forgot, I'm a teacher. Apparently, it's my job to suffer your abuse and still love you in spite of it. No, screw you. I'm here for your classmates, the ones who actually have the courtesy to not be complete douchebags to my face.

I sort of wish I'd said all that...

And now, five minutes ago, I did it again. I let a student who walked out of my classroom get by with just a warning. Not right, and not at all consistent, because I wrote him up last time. What the hell is wrong with me?

I think I need to pray at the shrine of Saint Snape. Oh, Severus Snape, show me the path to the dark truth of total student control. Bless me with the power of your glare, Great One, and I will wear black all my days in your honor...

Well, that was anticlimatic.

No ranting. No fingerpointing. And damn near no parents. I had five parent-teacher conferences in two days, and not one of them lasted longer than three minutes. Only one parent of a failing student came in, and since her daughter has just gotten an IEP and will be getting help with her schoolwork from now on, she really didn't have anything to be pissy about.

I'm actually rather disappointed. I wish I could say that it's because I'd hoped more parents of struggling students would come in, but really, no one in their right mind actually expected them to. I was just hoping for a chance to practice withstanding a hurricane of parental ire while Perfect Mentor was standing (okay, sitting...and napping) behind me.

So, today I admit to being a little peeved - and for once, not at my students, but at those who brought them into being.

I've met this student's mother before, and she's actually a friend of Perfect Mentor's. A lovely woman who is thankfully quite involved in her slightly wayward son's life. He hurt himself and had to take time off of school, and she was diligent about coming to school to pick up his homework, which he was equally diligent in at least trying to get it done correctly.

Side note: I don't care how many hours you log in tutoring, or how many homework assignments you make up. There is no substitute for class time. Believe it or not, you miss things when you're gone! Important things, like how to do the assignment properly and why it matters! And if you think I'm going to sit down and re-teach the whole lesson to every single student who has missed my class (of whom there are at least ten per day), you seriously underestimate both my workload and my patience.

Ahem. Sorry, that really had nothing to do with today's story. To continue...

So, everything was pleasant and wonderful. Then the boy comes back, spends a few days in classes, and promptly is suspended for doing...something very bad.

Cue an enraged e-mail from the mother, demanding his assignments and complaining that she has never received a syllabus for the semester. Complaining in the really formalized way that indicates that she might use this e-mail to take legal action.

Um...what?

Look, I'm not saying a syllabus isn't a good idea, it's just not required in high school. And I'm not saying that we haven't been a little disorganized about giving her son every assignment that he's missed (when he's been gone about half the semester, it's easy to overlook these things). But don't you dare take out your pissy mood over your son's misbehavior on me. It's not my fault that he misbehaved shamefully and it's not my fault that they suspended him. If you're going to yell at anyone but your son, at least go yell at the principal. It won't do you much good, but at least you won't be actively alienating the only people who can keep your son from failing.

Her e-mail, though annoying, has alerted me to a much more serious problem: the parent-teacher conferences. It's suddenly hit me that about half my students are failing (not my fault! I swear! Ask the staff, they'll back me up!) and that, most likely, their parents are all going to blame me for it. And accuse. And yell. And threaten me with bodily harm. And...okay, it probably won't be that bad. But my wager is that at least one conference will get ugly. Shall we start a pool? Person closest to the number of shouting matches wins?

It's been awhile since I've written, and many things have changed. For example (and with sincere apologies to my Turkish friend) I am no longer interested in teaching abroad - at least, not at this moment. Instead I'm entering grad school next semester, partly because my friends have been equally delayed in departing from school, partly because I'm disillusioned, but mostly because I've taken a long, long look inside myself and discovered that, not only am I very slimy, but I'm also far too ravenously curious to quit learning now. There are fairytales to decode according to Jungian archetypes, connections to be drawn between Dickens' novels and subsequent social improvements in Victorian England, and most of all, lots of Lovecraft to read. I suppose my great hope is that all this scholarship will eventually influence my writing for the better, a belief validated by my study of the great authors of the last few centuries, all of whom seem to have been voracious readers. In addition, I have been accepted to study Arabic abroad this summer, an experience that I've been looking forward to for years.

My fear, pedagogically speaking, is that with all this ahead of me I'll just "check out" of the classroom and abandon my poor students to the merciless intricacies of sonnets. However, considering the enthusiasm with which I just lectured on blank verse, and the heart-warming enthusiasm my students displayed for the subject, I no longer think that is likely. No, as always, my problem is to control my passion for literature. Why attempt to undermine such love, you ask? Ask any student who's gotten his/her head bitten off for not properly appreciating Vonnegut...