School

Being a teacher in the late Spring means that you will have to deal with days where you and your students lose your body weight in sweat three time before lunch. Today, is one of those days. I really feel for my students today. They look like they showered, didn’t dry off, put their clothes on and came directly to school. I am allowing them to take it easy today. I am giving them as many water breaks as they need. I am allowing them to stand directly in front of the two fans I have in the room. Which is a gamble as some of them are stinky. I wouldn’t know but by the reactions of the students sitting downwind from them, some of them ought to invest in some deodorant.

These sorts of days make me nostalgic for my youth. In particular the 2nd grade. Ah, what lovely days those were! Days like today, in the upper 80’s with humidity as thick as a latte made with rubber cement. Days when we would go out for recess and come back in beat red, dripping with sweat and begging for water. Desperate for a drink in our second-floor classroom which had two operational windows. A classroom lorded over by a teacher who seemingly hated children. She tied one of my classmates to a chair with a jump rope once. Not as a joke, just because she was tired of his acting up. Yeah, real pyscho shit. On days like today, she would (again, not as a joke) deny us our pleas for water, smile at us from behind greasy glasses and then pour herself an iced tea the size of Andre the Giant’s leg. Filled with ice. Looked good. She would then explain that since we had done (insert innocuous second grade behavior) that we were not going to get water that day. It got to the point where we would save some of our juice boxes and hide them in our lunch in order to have a quick swig if we were to be denied water which was basically every time. I remember once, some of us laughed during prayer (it was an Episcopalian school) right before lunch when she was leading. She literally told us that she hoped we “choked on lunch” and stormed out of the room. Nice lady.

I have heard that she passed away a few years back. Which, I suppose is sad. She was an obviously messed-up person. I don’t know why she was as bitter and mean as she was and frankly, I hope she has found some rest. That being said, she was a total bitch. She scared the ever-living shit out of all of her students and made our lives a living hell. My Grandfather once put her in her place with a perfectly timed sarcastic chuckle. He was in very bad shape with cancer at the time and basically didn’t have the time to put up with anyone’s BS. His little chuckle and the look of, “are you serious, lady?” on his face shut her down immediately. After that, she didn’t bother me too much. She still went after our class but as for going after me individually, there was a definite cessation in hostilities. And I realize now that it was because she was a bully. When bullies are finally stood up to, especially publicly, they tend to wilt. Which is wonderful to watch. Taking anger out on anyone is a bad look. Taking it out on kids is downright sinister.

So, to my fellow teachers out there, let the kids get some damn water. So what if they actually just want to get out of class for a moment? Maybe you’re boring. Or maybe they want to talk to their friends. Or maybe they’re actually just friggin’ hot and need a drink. Or maybe you are like my second-grade teacher. If that’s the case; maybe think about a job where you don’t have to interact with kids / adults / any living thing. Maybe a nightwatchman at an abandoned steel mill. Just an idea.

For the past couple of days, I have been showing the film, ‘The Pianist’ to my students. I am a high school religion teacher and my classes are made up of mainly Sophomores and Freshmen. As a religion teacher, I saw it as the perfect opportunity to illustrate the fact that the Jewish people’s struggles didn’t end after the Babylonian exile or the Roman occupation of Judea. I wanted them to see a film with gritty realism which was faithful to the actual story of one man’s survival. I wanted them to remember to never forget the Holocaust. Most importantly; I wanted them to understand that as human beings they have a sacred obligation to stand against evil whenever and wherever they see it.

It is not an easy movie to watch by any means. You do not need to be a Jew or even a student of history in order to be gut-punched by the film. Regardless, they seemed to truly enjoy it. Or enjoy it as much as a film like that can be enjoyed. In fact, my Freshmen clapped at the roll of the closing credits. Lots of questions followed. The question which was the most disturbing was asked a few times by a few different students. “Why did they do that?” They, being the Nazis and do that meaning something horrible. It dawned on me by the third time I was asked the question that they didn’t know who the Nazis were. Only a person who does not understand the depth of evil and visceral racism which permeated National Socialism would ask a question as innocently naive.

So I asked them; how many of you don’t know what the Holocaust was? To my shock and horror a number of hands came up. The rest seemed to have a hazy idea of what it was about. Only a handful of students out of all of my classes understood it sufficiently to be able to relate the horror of what they had learned to their fellow classmates. Absolutely unacceptable.

I spoke with one of our history teachers the following day and was told that the Holocaust was covered during our student’s Junior and Senior years. Well that’s good. But, what the hell is going on in our public schools? Most of our students come from the public school system. They find the transition to the Catholic school system to be challenging at first and then they adapt quickly. That is of course, after they are forced to catch up on core subjects such as English, math and science. I have had sophomores whose writing is essentially on par with a fifth or sixth grader’s. What the hell is happening?

Our school system is nothing more than a liberal proving ground. We care more about having all of our children learn in the exact same manner than what they are actually learning. We care more about possibly offending the sensibilities of students who see an American flag in the classroom than we do about the sensibilities of students in the same classroom who may have lost family defending that same flag. In the end I suppose it doesn’t matter. I, along with the history department at my school, can teach about the horrors of the Holocaust until the proverbial cows come home. The minute they get to college, their professors will tell them how Israel is an evil country. Their idea of the Jewish people will be so politicized that the lessons of the Holocaust will be lost in a broken jigsaw puzzle of progressive claptrap to the point where they no longer exist in the minds of the students at all.

But enough about what students know or what they should know or what they need to know. Lets talk about where they can shit.

The Yankee Privateer

A Short One About the Heat

Porcelain > Knowledge