I am a mud squirting slug.

As stated in my debut of this locale, I currently feel like sloppy wet flesh bag thanks to many factors in my daily life and I promised you an explanation. So here it is. I really like being active… busy…. involved…. effective. But this is just ridiculous.

One cause of my sluggishness is that I teach fourteen and fifteen year olds in a school of 2400. Not a district, but one single building of 2400 ninth and tenth graders. It is a virtual circus of confused identity, misdirected sexual energies and body odor. My job is hard. It’s tedious and tiresome. That’s why I get two months of vacation a year. But within the past few years, we’ve also started jumping through flaming hoops like a yipping show poodle in a clown suit to please the peanut gallery we formally call the government. But then you also have the powers that be. Those who have the official job of conjuring up brainless deeds for you to execute which detract from the job you’re trying to do for some purpose that you couldn’t fathom even if you had the intuition of Confucius himself. This year has been the worst. Ever. In all of my nine years of teaching. For instance, we’re no longer allowed to give zeros. Doesn’t matter if the kid sits on his ars and draws his name in gangster font all over the assignment he’s not doing, I can’t give him a zero. Rationale: “It gives the student a sense of failure, seeing that zero. Students will feel as if they don’t have options and that there is no hope of being a success.” Seriously?!? On that rationale, can I skip work and keep my job? I don’t want to feel like a failure but I really don’t want to be here. On that note, I’d also like to get paid for being gone. Oh- and keep my health insurance. Does this mean I am successful?

Needless to say, I feel like a little emaciated pack mule teetering on the rim of a menacing gorge carrying Louie Anderson on his 45th trip of the day to the candy store.
I can’t discipline a student. I can’t give him a zero. All must make the team. No one can be held personally responsible. I can’t fail him for not showing up, not doing work, or being truant. You can sell drugs under my tables in class and get assigned 45 days of In-School Suspension and I have to make up alternative assignments for everyone of those 45 days to make sure that they are still “successful” just so they can get out on good behavior twelve days later. What are we preparing our kids for? Prison?