ALT-4 Surviving your first Year as a Teacher
There are some days when I don't want to do this. There are some days when I think it's hopeless, that no matter what I say or do it won't matter because they've had a lifetime of this stupid programming and are just hardwire wrecked. There are some days when I think they're so deep into their own drama that it's become their reality, and therefore it doesn't matter if the sky is blue or the grass is green, I'm the idiot and the crazy one and the punctuation at the end of the resounding and echoing through the corridor "f*ck you b#tch!" Nice. They believe Jerry Springer is God. How am I supposed to fix that...
On some days I have ideas - I want to grab them up by their eyebrow piercings and toss them outside in the snow, in the rain, in the wind at 4:00 the morning, and make them run until they throw up because this will show them what their breaking point really is, and how most days they're nowhere near it. I want to put them in the yard and have them pull weeds under the sun until they have no choice but to give in and listen to the world without the noxious noise that hemorrhages from their headphones at train wreck decibels. I want to see them paint the building and three strokes before they finish tell them to paint it again so they learn that doing something worth doing at all means doing it well and doing it until it's finished. I want them to know what it is to work and sweat for something because yes, they are unfortunate, yes, they have been abused and have parents in jail and daddy and mommy issues and all just want to be loved, and on some days I feel sorry for them. My heart does, in fact, go out to them when my maternal side kicks in on some days and wants to protect and defend them. But today is not that day.
Today I want some old-fashioned white-hot hate for hard work to burn them down the center and solder their fragmentation. I want them to all agree on a new standard of suck in life because this will at the very least bring them together, and that's a damn good place to start. Just for today I want no one to enable them, no one to help them up when they get knocked down, no one to intervene in soft voices or comfort or coddle or redirect - they're hardened, not stupid. They've learned to lie and manipulate and take advantage of kindnesses because this was necessary in order to survive. As a result they have false self-esteem, false confidence built upon fear and intimidation instead of on having done, having been, and having earned.
Today, in my class, they will do and be and earn.
There are some days when I don't want to do this. There are some days when I think it's hopeless, that no matter what I say or do it won't matter because they've had a lifetime of this stupid programming and are just hardwire wrecked and today started out as that day. But now I remember that I've been out in the snow, in the rain, in the wind at 4:00 in the morning and have run until I've thrown up, and because of this know my breaking point, and today is nowhere near it.
No, today is not that day.
