How low can we go?

I think I've figured out the purpose of blogs. I can vent about the things that drive my crazy and pretend that people are listening. It's a nice feeling. Here's my vent for today:

I just finished teaching a horrible class. HORRIBLE!! My personality in the classroom is one of great patience. I rarely throw kids out of the room and you will know I'm getting frustrated, but you'll rarely see me lose my cool. Today was a day where I wanted to explode, but remained calm simply because I didn't have the energy to care. I passed out the exams that they took so that we could review the answers so that they could see where they went wrong and LEARN (because we're in school and that's what we do) from the mistakes. I was appalled when I had three (not one, but THREE) kids bring the whole stack back up to me and say, "take this. I don't even want it on my desk." I told them that they needed to hold onto it because we were going to review the answers. The response: "I don't care what the answers are. I already know my grade." Awesome. The rest of the class just went downhill from there. Complete chaos, disinterest, and flat out rudeness dictated the rest of our time together. Their excuse: "It's Friday." My response: "It's Friday for me too, but you don't see me acting like I'm five years old, do you? Grow up or get out of my room. I know you don't want to be here and if that's the case, I'd rather not have you here either. I'm sure the discipline office would enjoy your visit." I handled that well (can you sense the sarcasm?).

Then, I come back to my desk and take a little down time after the intense ninty minutes that I had just suffered through only to find an article on cnn.com about a kid in Wisconsin who is suing his public school district because his summer homework caused him "undue stress." You have got to be kidding me! You choose to take pre-calc and you don't want to do the homework because it takes time and effort. Here's my answer: be a slacker and don't take hard classes. If you value your social life over your education, then you can make the choice, but don't sue the state to punish the other teachers and students who DO care about the work that they have to do. I'm sorry, E, I know that you are diving headfirst into the legal world, but I'm not a big fan right now. Just because one kid is too lazy to do his work and too focused on gaining noteriety among his lazy, uneducated peers does not mean that the rest of us should be ordered to lower our academic expectations! (That's how angry I am. I just used two exclamation points in one paragraph.)

I've been trying to go into this new semester with a more positive attitude about being a teacher, but it's really, really, REALLY hard when I have to deal with the kids that I have and when I have to watch school districts shell out tons of money to defend their attempts to educate students. The district in Wisconsin is being sued for doing EXACTLY what it is intended to do. Let's keep lowering our standards and expectations while at the same time expecting kids to get higher scores on the tests that will determine whether or not the district gets the money it needs to operate during the school year. Good plan guys. You know who gets blamed when the kids don't make the cut, don't you? That's right, the teachers. I love this game! (But, I think that's the MLB's slogan, so I better identify them as a source so that I don't get sued).