Tag teacher appreciation

Photo Dump

Dusty 1 Comment

This is the last week of school, and my brain is broken, so I will not be writing. But here are pictures.

Every year we get teacher appreciation certificates. And every year, my administration tries to personalize them for every teacher — and every year, they think “Well he likes pirates…”

This appreciation gift, from one of my graduating seniors, was MUCH better. Those darts can really fly.

Last night the graduated seniors did the traditional Senior Prank. We have very nice students, so they try not to damage anything. This is what they did to the Dean of Students’ office:

They also came in this morning to clean up the mess.

And this is what they did to my room. This year’s theme was apparently — cabbage? I’m assuming it was an Avatar, The Last Airbender reference, but — I dunno, man. Cabbage. They left radishes, too.

The ridiculous mess of books and papers, by the way, is all me: I am not a neat man. And it is the end of the year.
See the two radishes? One in front of my keyboard, the other is under the phone.
This was the best cabbage placement. I left this one up for the day. (By the way: on top of the clock is a 3-D printed figurine of the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons. He lives there.)
The cardboard head cutout was from Graduation; it’s a good likeness of one of our newest alumni. When he and I took a photo after the ceremony, I asked if I could have the head; so he left it for me last night. The Snickers bar, unfortunately, appears to be a new tradition: last year’s senior prank also included poop-chocolate on my chair. Sigh.
This is where the head cutout lives now: on top of the large Darth Vader cutout I already had on the inside of my door. This is now #DarthDrew.

And then one last thing, which has made me much happier than I was last week: at Graduation this year, and last year, we had a Flower Ceremony. We gave the graduates roses and asked them to deliver a flower to the person or people who helped them reach this achievement. Last year my favorite student tried to give me his rose (We only gave them one flower apiece last year; we realized the problem there and gave them two this year) and I told him to go give it to his mom. Then this year — I got four. Left me pretty close to speechless. Here they are (The fifth rose is actually an extra one I gave to Toni because she should always get flowers, but I’m letting it stand in for the flower I turned down last year. [Also I got her a new bouquet of flowers today because she should always get flowers.])

Thank you Than, Alex, Julia, Sofia, and Meghan. This meant the world to me.

This Week

Dusty Leave a comment

So it’s been a solid three weeks since I last did this, but I don’t intend to just give it up after two habit-testing attempts, so here it comes back again. The intervening three weeks have really been more about survival: I had to finish the school year, I had to grade, I had to sleep, I had to keep my spirits up. So that’s the habit I’ve been trying to maintain every week for the last three weeks: sleep, work, live.

I’d like to report that I stuck with all three things every day for the last three weeks. I suck at sleeping — which is not news —  but it’s not a question of habit, it’s a question of stress; when I wake up at 2 or 3am, when I’m stressed, I start thinking about the thing that is worrying me. Believe me, if I could break that habit, I would; now that it is summer, the habit will be broken for me, which is nice, but kind of not the point of these posts, these attempts. I am good at the habitual grading of papers every single day; but that’s not a habit I want to maintain — and it too has been ended for me this past week. Living and keeping my spirits up? Sure, that’s a thing I want to keep doing. I’m sure it will be quite a bit easier now.

So I’m moving on to new ideas.

If you recall, three weeks ago I decided to give up snacking, particularly gum, per my wife’s suggestion. I did it for the week, and it wasn’t terrible: though I admit I cheated a time or two, once because I honestly forgot that I was doing it for the week, and I grabbed some chips at Costco and snacked on them; once at school because I wanted the snack and I said, “Screw it.” I also ate donuts at school because donuts were available — it was Teacher Appreciation week, when we don’t get a raise and people don’t treat us any better, but they do bring us food and shit — along with cake and a few other gift-snacks. So it wasn’t  a perfect abstention from snacking.

I never chewed gum, though. Not once. So, success.

Really, the main point was not to munch on my salty snacks once I got home. They’re my main food vice, and there are times when I get out the bag of Cheez-its and forget that I’m eating them until I’ve downed way more than I should have; that’s the habit I was looking to break, really. And that I did not do.

But like the video game stoppage the week before, it didn’t really amount to much. I didn’t feel healthier, I didn’t feel better, I didn’t lose weight — but I also wasn’t miserable, and I didn’t fall asleep at 8pm, which is one reason I do snack sometimes, because it keeps me awake. Basically I proved to myself that I don’t need to snack, but that I am a bit happier when I do.

The last week or two has actually been something of a better test: because I really haven’t snacked unless I’ve been hungry or craving something; and more than once, I decided to avoid snacks because I didn’t want to ruin my dinner. And that has been — just fine. So maybe because of the week without evening snacking, and maybe just because I’m steadily growing more aware of what I eat and how I eat it, I think I’ve actually got a pretty good handle on my snacking.  So again, success.

This week I think I’m going to go with exercise. I go to the gym, and I ride my bike; but in both cases I’m very on-again, off-again. A little bit because my wife likes going to the gym with me, and she hurt her wrist pretty seriously back in January and has been recovering ever since (It’s her drawing wrist, so we’ve been taking it very seriously), so she hasn’t been able to do much gym time, which often means I don’t go, as well. But I’ve also come to understand that I can go without her and it doesn’t actually bother either of us too much, so I have to give up that excuse. Again, it’s been rough trying to survive for the last month, so I haven’t really gone, and now that the school year’s over I want to get back into the habit. I also want to spend some of this summer getting into better biking shape because I’d like to get myself to work like that as much as I can next year.

So that will be this week: every day I will either go to the gym, or I will ride my bike. I will probably give myself an exception this coming Saturday, as we are going to move starting that day, so my “exercise” will be cleaning and/or lifting heavy things. But we’ll see. Between now and then, it’s every day workouts for me. (Yes, I already did one today. It hurt a lot. Part of the reason I want to get back into the habit more.)

I will report back next Sunday. Hopefully.

This Morning

Dusty Leave a comment

This morning I am thinking about appreciation.

Yesterday I tried to recognize the teachers and educators I have worked with (And I still forgot a few — so thank you, Mary Wells, for all that you do, and thank you, Nora Caragan, for being the best paraprofessional in the history of paraprofessionals), and I got a grateful and heartwarming response. Teachers loved hearing what I had to say.

But there’s a problem there: I had to say it.

One of the things I object to, even though I participate in, is the support network that teachers provide for each other. It is a staggeringly wonderful thing: these people, who are already working so hard, and who are already giving so much, turn and without hesitation give even more to each other. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen it: teachers go into each others’ rooms all the time, and frequently the visitor comes in mad or frustrated or down — until they see the face of the person they are visiting, and see that that person is feeling even worse. Suddenly, whatever the teacher came in to complain about or vent or even ask for help with is gone: frustration vanishes in concern, and the visitor says, “What’s wrong?” Prepared, in an instant, to take more burdens onto shoulders already weighed down with overwork and the emotional strain of seeing up close and personal the struggles and sufferings of children (And also with the strain of struggling through the suffering caused by children — and the worst is that it is often the same children, that those who are neediest and most desperate are the most obnoxious people we see. Which is saying something.), not because we don’t need help any more, but simply because a friend, a fellow teacher, needs help more, or even just needs help too: and so we help.

It’s amazing and inspiring. I will say, without any humility, that I participate in this, that I support my fellow teachers at all times and in whatever way they may need, and that I rarely ask for help myself because  I don’t want to trouble them.  I’ve even seen this go too far, when I was part of my union’s negotiating team and we were  fighting for better compensation and working conditions; trying to get teachers to actually stop working, to stop sacrificing, to start asking for something for themselves — and not luxuries, but a living wage and necessary health care and the like —  was nearly impossible. They wanted to give up whatever they had to give up in order to make everyone else happy. The magnificent bastards.

But here’s the thing: we shouldn’t have to do that. Of all the people who should be sacrificing in order to keep teachers sane and healthy, IT SHOULD NOT BE TEACHERS WHO DO IT. That makes no sense. It defeats the purpose. We not only put on someone else’s oxygen mask first, we take ours off and strap it on top of that person’s own oxygen mask just so they can be twice as safe while they watch us suffocate.

If it’s not clear already, this drives me nuts, that teachers do this. I don’t like that I do it, either, but it is without doubt who we are as people, and what the culture of teachers encourages in us. This is why we spend our own goddamn money on school supplies for our students, despite how little we are paid. And perhaps the worst part, though this is not the place to get into this, is that we are therefore propping up a system that is in many ways a terrible system: not terrible for us, though it is that, but terrible for the students, and terrible for the country. Yesterday I bought donuts for all of my students taking the AP Literature test. I encouraged and helped students to “succeed” on a high-stakes test run by a private corporation with disproportionate influence on college admissions. I structure the whole class around that damn test: a test I should be opposing with every fiber of my being. But I bought them donuts.

So here’y my request, for those who want to appreciate teachers — REALLY appreciate us, not simply nod in our direction while we lie bruised and bleeding in a ditch. (I know, it’s hyperbolic, but it’s also the end of the year, and it feels like that. I feel bruised. I feel sick because I haven’t been sleeping, and I feel sore because my body has been too tense for too long: my shoulders honestly ache right now.) Ready?

Make it so we don’t have to hold each other up.

Give us enough support, and take away enough of our burden of responsibility, that a single person can do a teacher’s job alone, or at least can handle the pressure alone.

Specifically, that means essentially three things: money, time, and trust. In the first years of a teacher’s career, there is a fourth, which is: help.

I don’t want as much money as I want, if I can be permitted that sentence. I want as much money as is needed so that I don’t have to worry about it. That’s all. I’ve been a teacher for twenty years, and I still don’t earn enough to own a home, and I don’t have any retirement savings, and I still have debt that I haven’t been able to get rid of.  I want to make enough money to take care of those problems. I don’t need enough to pay for vacations or jet skis or that diamond-encrusted pirate hat I’ve had my eye on; just enough so that I don’t have to suffer from money stress. I want to be middle class. I aspire to the bourgeoisie.

I want enough time in my school day to get my work done in my school day. I don’t mind planning lessons from home; it’s kind of fun sometimes. But I don’t want to have to spend one more weekend grading, not one more evening filling out paperwork. I already work 40 hours a week at school; why is it that I am expected and required to add another 10-20 hours on top of that, every week? It’s because I have too many students, and too many requirements for teaching those students. Too many things I have to cover, too many things I have to compensate for, and too many people I need to report to and satisfy in order to show that I did my job. You know what should be the only evidence needed that I did my job? That my student can read a book, write an essay, discuss a poem. That’s it. Don’t ask me to prove that I did my job: ask the kid. See what he can do. And ask him, honestly, if I helped him do that. Make it his responsibility to prove that I did my job. He is the product, after all. (Please note: this is not a serious suggestion for assessment of teachers. Students shouldn’t have to have that burden either, and too many of them are not reliable witnesses nor reliable learners. All I’m saying is that I don’t want to do it, to prove to all and sundry that I did my own job.)

And anyone who thought “But you get summers off!” just know: I am currently mentally punching you in the brain. Hard. Kicking, too.

The last thing I need is trust. I have proven that I am a good teacher. I’ve won awards, I’ve won accolades, I don’t have anyone who disagrees with that basic premise: not students, not students’ families, not other educators. Of course not everyone likes me or likes my class: but I don’t believe there’s a single person who could genuinely say that I teach badly. So please, I beg you. BACK OFF AND LET ME TEACH. Don’t try to improve my curriculum for me, or my methods. If you’ve got suggestions, I’ll listen, of course; but don’t tell me what to do, especially if you’re not versed in my subject or my profession. Stop assessing me: my driver’s license is valid for 25 MORE YEARS: and that’s based on a single test I took more than 20 years ago. Yet my teaching license expires every three to six years, and requires hundreds of hours spent on learning to be a better teacher. I get observed every year, often twice a year, and have multi-page evaluations, every year. How much proof do you need that I can do this job? The answer is that there will never be enough proof that I can do it, because I will never be trusted to do it. That has nothing to do with me and everything to do with our culture and our system, but I don’t care why it is that way: I just want it to stop.

I already care about my profession, and about my students, and about my subject. I care about my fellow teachers and educators. Please, stop making me also care about and for myself: let someone else do it. Give me some real appreciation.

And don’t let it come from other teachers.

This Morning

Dusty Leave a comment

This morning I am thinking about teachers.

It’s teacher appreciation week. That doesn’t always mean a lot, but the only way to make it more meaningful is to actually fill it with meaning. So here goes.

Thank you. Thank you to all the teachers who have worked with me over the years. Thank you to everyone who has been an inspiration, who has been a help, who has stood beside me and fought back against the rising tide of ignorance.

Thank you to Molly Jonnum, Deanna Martin, and Robin Mills for mentoring me as a student teacher. You let some random jackass come into your experimental new course that you’d been planning and fighting for for years, and you taught me everything teacher preparation classes couldn’t. I wouldn’t be a teacher today without you.

Thank you to everyone at San Pasqual, my first job. Carol Byrnes, for taking me in and giving me advice and friendship. Kelly Devine Grigsby, for being the teacher I wanted to be, and for being my friend at the same time. Linda Schott, for working with the hardest students and never losing your sense of humor. Laura Whitten for being the perfect mentor and friend. Cindy Finn for struggling right alongside me. Renee Sherry-Farrell for being the ultimate math teacher, and Marc Salazar for being an awesome social studies teacher. Art, Trish, and George for being the best supervisors and APs I’ve ever had, and Steve Spraker for being one of the best principals. And the guys in the band for letting me play with you —  that was one of my favorite experiences. Thank you to all of you for your neverending patience and kindness, for your intelligence and your experience, and your ability to translate what you know into something that others can learn. You’re all amazing.

Thank you to — well, most people at St. Helens High School. (Maybe not the ones who tried to take my license away. Or the one who was arrested last year.) A thousand thank yous to my PLO cohort, Tonya Arnold, Carrie McCallum, LaDonna Joy, David Schmor, Gerry Tinkle, Martha Sipe, and Ron Barnett, for everything you shared with me and showed to me and talked through with me. You were the reason I made it through ten very difficult years. You do the same for your students. Thank you. Thank you to LK for being the coolest person in the building, to Brian Dickerson for being one of the most dedicated and honorable and optimistic, to Amber Horn for having the biggest heart. Thank you to Keith Meeuwsen for always fighting. Thank you to Tamera Wahl, and Bill Dale, and Sib Owens, and all the other teachers whose names I can’t remember offhand, for being the best SPED department (along with LaDonna) that I’ve known, by far. Thank you to Mike Herdrich for being an entire damn school all by yourself, and the same to Pat Brame, and also for being an artist. Thank you to Jaime  Meadows and Jean Simmons for being the librarians and for doing everything good librarians should do, despite all the crap that got heaped on you by people who don’t understand that librarians are solid gold. Thank you to Diana Peterson and Lorraine Coopersmith and Denise Bennett — and Ruth at SP — for being the secretaries and functionaries who actually run the school, and thank you to Ted and Andy and especially BG for being excellent administrators in a sea of bad ones. Thank you to Alex Reed for being the best neighbor ever, even though I was the only one who thought that. Thank you to John Prunty for beards and music and laughs, and for looking exactly like Socrates. Thank you to all the teachers I knew and talked with and liked but did not name here — including Jessica Porter and Linda D’Amario and Alexia Hamilton and John Lessard and Cory Young and Todd Smith and Mary Downey and Kelli Curtis and — honestly I don’t remember everyone’s name, but I remember you, and I am grateful to you for the work you do.

Thank you to Tom Fuller for teaching me.

Last but not least, thank you to all of the excellent teachers at my current school here in Arizona: thank you especially to the brilliant and wonderful Lisa Watson, for everything that you do and everything that you give, and for everything that you are not appreciated for: I see you, I appreciate you. Thank you to Scott Ayers for being so damn delightful, and to Marty Sade for being so damn cantankerous, and to both of you for your brilliance and your dedication. Thank you to Danielle Randall for being so incredibly practical and capable, and also so much damn fun. Thank you to Toni Ramos-Hickman for being everyone’s mom, and for sharing coffee with me. Thank you to Jim Collins for teaching math without being evil yourself, and for reading every day. Thank you to Amanda Hanson for being the Platonic ideal of a teacher. Thank you to Adriana and Veronica, and Kellie, for fighting through the first years and being excellent teachers despite all the terrible nonsense you had to confront. Thank you to Mustafa Kilcak and Aichu Zhalilova for being so cool and so kind. Thank you to Helena Boosamra-Ball for being so — everything — and for loving dinosaurs and trivia. Thank you to Melisa and Scott Cole, Diana Benson, and Barbara Kahn for doing good work, and then getting out when the getting was good. Thank you to Mimi Akcay for being an excellent counselor, and to Carol McCluer and especially Dana McGirr for running the office. Thank you to Mustafa Alkhazov, and to Tim Luttrell in St. Helens, for being the angels of the school — and also for being the kindest men, and good fathers, and for working despite terrible health crises, both of you. I don’t know how the hell you do what you do, but I am forever grateful. Thank you to Florencia Ruiz for being the linchpin that held the admin together and made the school a hundred times better by your presence and professionalism.

And thank you especially, forever, with all of my heart, to my wife: who taught me everything that has made me what I am, who taught me everything I know about being an adult, and being an artist, and being in love and being married. Thank you for being so incredible in every possible way — and, as if you weren’t already perfect, for coming to teach beside me every day for the last three years, for being an inspiration, for being an amazing teacher even though you didn’t have the experience or training. Nothing stops you. You are a wonder. I love you. Thank you.

Thank you to everyone I missed. Thank you to everyone who teaches.