I am trying to refocus my mind recently, and doing a poor job of it, but I thought I'd attempt a story anyway.
*****
Have you ever spoken to a teacher and gotten the sense that that aren't all that intelligent? Perhaps it was one of your teachers, or the teacher of one of your children. The fact is that many of them are stupid. Don't believe me? Listen to this story.
It was several years ago. I had volunteered to work summer school to give me something to do. I know that many people are jealous of the fact that teachers get two months off in the summer. What they fail to realize time is mo that teachers do not get paid for those days, and the time is practically comp time, since so many of them work for hours at home each week to prepare for class time.
Well, I tended to get really bored over the summer breaks so volunteered for summer work at any opportunity. That year, the theme for summer school was Space, as in outer space, and I was assigned to work with a group of 4th grade teachers pulled from throughout the district.
I knew almost immediately that we were going to have a problem. One of the first things we did was create a list of general supplies we were going to need for the 4 week program. The group decided on items like scissors, notebook paper, crayons, pencil colors, construction paper, glue, spirals, etc. The teacher we asked to take notes, and thus create the list to turn in to the summer school supervisor wrote the list like this.
1. sciizors
2. notbook papper
3. cayons
4. pensil colors
5. con papper (because she didn't even want to try writing the word construction)
6. glue
7. spirreal notbooks
Scary, no? A woman charged with teaching children basic skills has the intellectual capacity of an 8 year old child. Her reading level is fairly low as well, as I saw that she could not read through the teachers' manuals; they were too difficult for her to read. She is praised by her principal, incidentally, as being his best faculty member. And she still teaches, passing her language and spelling skills on to group after group of kids, year after year. Is it any wonder that no children from that school ever make it into the district's spelling bee?
Well, after I went to the restroom to laugh my ass off in private, I returned to the group so that we could begin to put together a general agenda of week to week topics that covered our theme of Space. By the time I returned, the ladies had already created one. It looked like this.
Week 1. Planets
Week 2. Solar System
Week 3. The Moon
Week 4. Stars, Suns, Comets, and Asteroids
I am sure that many of you can see the ridiculousness already. Planets then solar system? After you cover the planets, there isn't much to add for solar system, other than the sun and the asteroid belt. And then, star and suns? Suns are stars, morons! I felt the need to interject here, and my conversation with the group went something like this.
Me: Well, this isn't bad, but there is some overlap. If we cover the nine planets we will pretty much cover the solar system. Because, you know, our solar system consists of our planet and 8 others plus a few other things.
Them: Nine planets? There are only seven in the solar system!
Me: Umm, no, there are nine planets in our solar system.
Them: Well, we can only think of seven!
Me: Just because you can only think of seven doesn't mean that there are seven. Our solar system consists of nine planets, an asteroid belt, and a star.
Them: What? There are no stars in our solar system. We have a sun!
Me: Um, our sun is a yellow star.
Them: What are you talking about? Suns are big, stars are small!
Me: Suns are stars, many of them bigger than our own sun. They just look small because they are very far away.
Them: No, you don't know what you are talking about.
The crazy women then proceeded to ignore me, and look at me like I am insane. So at this point, I went to the summer school supervisor who was responsible for hiring, and I told her she hired a bunch of idiots. I then proceeded to sit with the fifth grade teachers and told them what had just happened, and we all laughed. Of course, I could see the fourth grade group looking over at me, no doubt telling each other what a moron I was.
And most of these women are still teaching as well. Interesting, no?
Here's another tale.
I went into another teacher's room one morning because he could not get his computer to print (he hadn't turned the power switch to "on"." Well, when I was in there, I looked at his chalkboard where he had written a list of contractions. This is what I saw:
can not ----- can't
will not -----won't
is not ------isn't
ain not ----- ain't
Ok, ain not? When the fuck was "ain" approved as a word? Where was I when Webster made that decision. And once again, kids are taught incorrect things that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.
Which brings me to the word "chameleon". I am sure we all know how to say this, yes? Well, this was during my college days when I would substitute teach to make money. I was round robin reading a story with the class called Chameleon the Spy, and each and every time one of the student came to the word "chameleon". they would pronounced it "sham-uh-lee-on". I kept correcting them, to no avail, until one of the kids finally said, "But sir, that's how our teacher told us to say it."
Oh really?
So next time you get a feeling that your/your child's teacher is an idiot, she probably is.
*****
I have stories about crazy people too. Crazy teachers (one who cleared her room overnight to run away to another city for a man, leaving the class without a teacher for the rest of the year), crazy parents (oh my, where to start on this one), and nutty elementary kids (one who tried stripping for their friends in the restrooms). I can tell you about corrupt board members who trade district jobs for promises of votes, and district level administrators that lie, cheat, and steal, trading away millions in district contracts for kickbacks. And they are all still employed and pulling their shenanigans. I'll try to get some of the stories up. After all, why not?
