Venting with a vented venter

Sooooooo, I finally gave out the address to a grand total SECOND person now! Whee, initiation.

Now it's ...

time to complain about my stupid job!! Which, I admit, is patently horrible for a PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHER to do, and to voice about their "chosen" profession, but ... well, gee, sometimes it's true.

What GETS me is how some people have these horrendously ANNOYING children that spend the day jumping around, putting their dirty greasy hands on me, and on my stuff, and other children, pushing other kids around, scribbling on the desk or floor or paper or shirt with pencil or crayon or spit or blood, talk and interrupt incessantly, crying and crowing for "help" with their work when they are just needy and refuse to do anything unless someone is standing over them supervising their every demanding move ... and ... THESE CHILDREN ARE STILL ALIVE!!

AAAAAUUUUGH!! I can't stand it sometimes. How can the parents stand it? How can they live like this with these hyperstimulating little people and not do something more PERmanent about it? Ugh.

So I have decided that I am HELLBENT on forming these rampaging little reputation-which-precedes-them hellions into stable, contributing, non-dysfunctional citizens of society at large. IT MUST BE DONE!

I just can't forget that 90% of the class is actually comprised of quite cute and bearable and decidedly wonderful individuals who come to school, try hard, and make me enjoy what I do.

Like another teacher that I work with said, "Teaching is the easiest job I've ever had." (Whoo, 182 teacher duty days per year!) But for me, teaching is the ONLY (full-time) (long-term) job that I have ever had. I don't know anything else.

But I do know that I am darned if I am going to move grade levels or classrooms or schools AGAIN (5 grade level changes in less than 7 years, people - along with 2 districts, 4 principals, 3 schools, 5 classrooms, major curriculum changes EVERY year - I have never ever ever taught with any modicum of consistency or stability, frekkinfrekkerferfrek'ssake, and I have definitely had MORE than my fair share of troubled, "special needs" (haha, P.C. terms strike again!) children.

And now it's in a classroom with no air conditioning and full sun on two sides since I have the corner classroom, and having moved all my stuff practically BY MYSELF a week and a half before the new school year started from the "Oh-didn't-you-already-know??-They-found-asbestos..." old classroom infested with 1) hordes of ants, 2) swarms of termites, 3) colonies of cockroaches, 4) corners full of spiders, and 5) random crickets interrupting my painstakingly crafted lessons. On writing paragraphs. In kindergarten. Because this what is required of me whether I agree with it or not. Gah, poor 4-year-old kindergarteners who don't know how to hold a pencil, much less tie their shoelaces in less than 20 minutes, and have never ever held a pair of scissors before, and when asked to find their nametag on a desk can't, and can't even tell you their names because mom just calls them "son." Haha, not even kidding. Do you THINK I could MAKE this stuff UP??? *cue consternation*

But at least I'm not still trying to teach algebra to first graders! Just to second graders!! Tres fun, teaching parts of speech and sentence diagramming to 7-year-olds.

Pics of Europe (the REAL fun stuff) comes next time. :)