Thank God it's Friday! Thank God it's Friday! Thank God I have two days to get over the fact that it is impossible to teach children anything at all. Of course, then I get to go back on Monday and teach the same crap I've been teaching for the past two weeks. Every day I teach the same thing, and I'm not kidding. I teach them something and the next day I have to teach it again. Then today I gave a quiz and 99.9% of them failed, I'm sure. Most of them just sat there with blank looks on their faces, then asked me to repeat each question about 5 times before just writing anything that sounded right. Many thought they knew the answers and were wrong. The rest turned in a paper with their name on it. No answers, not even guesses, just their name and the date.

I have been teaching these kids the basics of writing a 5-paragraph essay for the past two weeks. They still do not understand that the main ideas are based on the thesis statement, or that the thesis goes in the introduction and is restated in the conclusion, or even what a thesis is to begin with. They refuse to even memorize this stuff so they can pass a freaking five question quiz. So I re-went over (since I've gone over it I don't even know how many times now) everything and they still would not pay attention even when I said we might have a make-up quiz on Monday and that they should learn it so they could actually pass this one. They act like they understand it, and they refuse to take notes, which I have said will definitely be part of their notebook grade which will be part of their final grade, because they supposedly know it well enough to not need to take notes. Then they complain because they failed the quiz.

And they're stupid as all hell. I've never seen so many stupid people. Not uneducated. Just plain stupid. I honestly think the kids in my mother's class of first-graders wrote better than my kids do. Even my advanced class is stupid. Stupid. Yes, they are more advanced than my other classes, but when I was in school that was not how "advanced" classes worked. You were put in "advanced classes" if you were among the top in the school. Not among the top of the stupid kids. And as far as I can tell, and I'm not kidding, I think my kids are the lowest in the 8th grade. There are four 8th grade teams � the really smart, the kind of smart, the kind of stupid, and the extremely stupid and/or ESOL. My team is the last group. And therefore, my advanced class is the highest of the lowest. The smartest of the extremely stupid. I am ready to pull my hair out one giant clump at a time.

Oh yes, I am ready to use the emergency exit window to throw children from. I thought there was a fire in the hallway, Mr. Principal, I swear. I had to try to save the dregs of society by throwing them out of my second-story window. I told them to roll when they landed; isn't that what you're supposed to do? It's not my fault they landed on the portable next to my building and then rolled off the side!

last - next

I can't believe - 11.22.2006
life sucks - 11.19.2006
alone and unhappy - 11.14.2006
please don't let it end - 10.15.2006
nothing to wear - 08.28.2006

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