When Teachers Scream, Does Anyone Hear?

Mamacita has forgotten more about kids, schools, education and teaching than most of you will ever know.

As the school year winds down, we thought we would remind you who spends more time with your kids than you.

Mamacita:

Teacher’s unions are the devil. Public schools, which were once the lifeblood of our nation and the reason many immigrants came here in the first place, have become a joke with no satisfactory punchline to wrap it all up.

Teacher prep in college is a joke, too.

Here in Indiana, we now have a Transition to Teaching program for older people, long out of college, who have been working out in the real world, who want to become teachers. They bypass all the stupid busy-work, take a couple of teen psychology courses, do an internship and then student teaching in a public school, and they get a license.

It’s wonderful.

The School of Education sat back on its haunches and howled in protest but this time they did not succeed in removing the program.

To think that an adult could find incredible success in teaching without taking ten courses consisting of “everybody draw a card and whoever gets the tens are the class problem makers” while they take turns teaching a ten-minute lesson complete with six pages of lesson plans? Unthinkable.

Heh.

I do think every teacher should have a grounding in psychology of young people, but the baby shower games we could all have done without.

I say, let a pro take the psych courses, spend some practice time in a real classroom with a teacher who doesn’t resent the fact that the student teacher is going to get a license without taking all the years of crud all the other teachers had to take, and give him/her a classroom where he/she can share that wealth of knowledge and experience.

Too many teaches have never known any life outside of a classroom, first on one side of the desk and then on the other. Too many teachers have never been out in the real world, done anything, been anywhere. Life in an ivory tower might be easy, but it does not equip anyone to give anything back to the students.

I also think that often the teachers who were naughty little thangs themselves, make the best educators later on. There were few behaviors my students could exhibit that I hadn’t already seen, been there, done that, or otherwise dealt with. Ho, hum. Try again, Bozo-boy. And of course they did. Who wants to be taught by Goody Two Shoes? She doesn’t know anything.

That was an allegory. I was a good little girl in school. Heh.

Our schools will not improve by having money thrown at them. Money just pays for the latest round of theories and the paperwork thereof.

Good teachers know how to do this. Why can’t we just step back and allow them to do it? Give them back their authority and the power to do something with it. Eliminate the “students” who come to school because the law demands it, and who use that time to abuse, defy, distract, bully, crush, kill, destroy, cheat, smirk, vandalize, harass, threaten, mug, rape, intimidate, and otherwise bring down the planet. And I really couldn’t care less about the letters of the alphabet written in their files that they’ve been using as a crutch and an excuse all these years. And I also think many parents should be laughed out of the principal’s office when they try to make excuses for deviant behavior. There ARE no excuses. Judges should throw their lawsuits out, and laugh at them again.

Families who send their children to school shaking with hunger, filthy, and reeking of smoke, should be investigated and the children removed. Once a child is removed and the family is found guilty of neglect or abuse or intimidation or anything bad, there should be no sending that child back, ever. The promises of such people mean nothing, and the child is usually abused even more because they ‘told.’ Do you really think this child will ‘tell’ again?

I am really sick and tired of the ‘rights’ of abusive adults. They lost their ‘rights’ the moment they laid a violent hand on a child. And why doesn’t the child have any rights in such cases?

I’m digressing, sorry.

The ’system’ sucks and ‘the man’ stinks.

It wouldn’t be difficult to fix it all if we just bucked up and refused to allow the bad people to run the show any more. When did we start allowing this, and why?

Any school that allows an illiterate child to graduate or be promoted, is a bad school. A school that allows parents to intimidate and change the rules, is a bad school. A school that allows a teacher to NOT do his/her job is a bad school. A school that won’t permit a teacher to his/her job is a bad school. A school that will not do whatever it takes to maintain a safe environment is a bad school, and I don’t care if they have to permanently expel half the student population. Get those kids the hell out of there so the decent kids can learn and feel safe in at least one aspect of their lives.

“Oh my, we can’t DO that, where would those expelled children GO?”

Honestly? I don’t give a shit. Just remove them so the decent kids don’t have to deal with them.

Jail, maybe, with Uncle Daddy.

If any of THOSE kids learns a hard lesson and wants to come back to school, let him come on probation, and one strike and he’s back out. No excuses, no reasons, no ifs ands or buts. Behave, learn to read and write, and the kid might be surprised at how many other doors will suddenly open up, leading to things like science and philosophy and history and geography, and maybe the kid will learn that there are other worlds besides the trailer-park world of his parent(s) and arguments in the kitchen about who her baby daddy be.

Sorry about the novel. These things simmer in me and sometimes they boil over.

I mean, a gym teacher who screams “I hate kids” every single day is still there in my building, and a teacher who got in trouble for cooking breakfast for some poor hungry students before giving them a huge ridiculous test, isn’t.

I should have quit years ago, but I really thought if I kept on trying, things would change. I was wrong. That’s a heartbreaker, that is.

Now that we have your attention, read this, by Mamacita. An excerpt:

…there’s a time and a place for everything. Sleeping, eating, rollerblading, driving, leaving home, movies, red wine, golfing, websurfing, and, yes, sex. Try any of these things when you’re too young or too old or too tired or at work or at someone else’s house or ovulating or angry or with the wrong person or just having an off day, well, let’s just say that things won’t go as they should, and that’s an understatement. And to try and persuade or even, heaven forbid, force, someone to do any of these things when they really don’t want to, is to be the opposite of a friend, and worse even than an enemy.

When, then, should these things, and others, be done? They should be done when the time is right, and the place is right, and the people are right. When do we know that? I don’t know. We just know. But what if everybody else is doing these things and they’re making fun of me because I’m not? Ignore them. They’re not you, and they can’t make decisions for you. But, but, but, I WANT them to! No, you don’t. Not really. But, but, but, people are doing these things everywhere. All the coolest celebrities are doing them and they look awesome.

Uh huh. Is this what it’s come down to? Celebrities are our young peoples’ mentors now? Actually, as long as parents give in and give in and kowtow, celebrities rule. Fashion, music, behavior. . . . .besides, many kids nowadays see celebrities more frequently than they see their parents. Kids spend long hours home alone in front of the tv, and lifestyle examples are rampant all over the networks. All of them look like more fun than their parents’ lifestyles.

You know, just like us, when we were their age.

Read it all.

Portions of this post have been previously published. As the school year winds down, we thought this would be a good time to reflect on exactly what it is going on in schools.