Warning, Teacher Rant in Progress

I wouldn't call this a kicking, screaming rant, but more of an "I don't get it" rant. We are required to do mid-year reading tests in our program. The test we have to give takes 2 days, 20 minutes for Vocabulary, 35 minutes for comprehension. We have found that before Christmas is not a good time to take the tests - the kids are hyped up on way too much sugar. The first week back isn't good either, we're dealing with slugs. Literally, my students slink into my room that first week in January looking like slugs. So, we give it the second week back to school.

Okay, here's what I don't get. In every class, I heard some variation of I don't want to do this. The lady I team teach with finally lost it yesterday afternoon and told one of our more obnoxious students, "I don't recall asking you what you wanted to do." Then one of our more difficult students said, "Can I flunk this? What happens if I flunk this? I'm not even gonna try because they don't give me a grade for this." I wanted to tell this student, "No, you don't get a grade, but this is recorded on your permanent records, so if you want to look like a moron, go right ahead." I didn't say that but gave the you-need-to-do-your-best speech with helpful hints on what to do if you get stuck. When I was a student, I can't remember saying to a teacher "I don't want to do this," and it making a big difference. I got to thinking about saying something like this to Mrs. Rascher, or Mrs. Blough, or any of the other teachers I had in High School or even my professors in college. Yeah, that would have went over like a ton of bricks in any of my classes. Heck, it would go over like a ton of bricks now at my classes at MU. Where do these kids get the idea that they just don't have to do anything they don't want to do? What's going to happen to them when they have to get a job and the boss tells them to do something that they don't want to do? Does telling their parents that they don't want to do something get them out of chores at home? It would have gotten me a blistered backside and I still would have had to do what my parents told me.

So we do the vocab part. The student who said he wasn't going to try didn't. We kept telling him to slow down, check his answers, blah, blah, blah. I graded the vocab part last night and he bombed it. When I handed the answer sheet back to him today to complete the comprehension section, he yelled at me, "Why did you make me miss all of these?" Excuse me, I didn't make you miss all of them. I should have sent him to the office, or assigned him a detention. Unfortunately, that wouldn't make a difference or change the behavior. In our school, it's like a badge of honor to see how many detentions you can get assigned. What I would really like to do is smack him upside his head and tell him to wake up, not everything in life is easy, and he's going to have to do a lot of things he doesn't want to do or he'll find himself living in a van down by the river (sometimes Chris Farley said some relevant things)or living in his parents' basement. I wonder if his parents plan on supporting him because he won't be able to hold down most jobs with the attitude that he has. He didn't try on the comprehension section, so even though we've worked our tails off this semester to show improvement in his reading level, when I finish scoring his test, it's going to stink. That low score is what will be recorded and quite frankly will be the bottom line when the adminsitration looks at how effective our program is.

To add insult to injury, last night I happened to be glancing through the want ads in the local paper. The St. Charles County Sheriff's Dept. has an opening for a dispatcher. This job provides full benefits and requires only a high school diploma. When I looked at the salary, I wanted to cry. Starting salary for this job, which only requires a high school diploma, is $500 less than what I earn right now with 10 years of experience and a master's degree. Yet people wonder why teachers are leaving the field and you're considered a veteran after 5 years. Reading something like that and dealing with the kids I deal with on a daily basis makes me wonder why I am doing this job at all. But days like I've had this week make me more worried about what our country is going to look like in about 20 years.