Last year I kept having these dreams where I would be teaching in a class room and the students would keep multiplying until I lost control and eventually blew up at them.
A few minutes ago I had the opposite kind of dream.
We were all in school meeting (where all the students and staff get together to talk). It was the first day of class, but we were being watched by some district dude who wanted to make a name for himself.
People at first were following the normal procedures -if with just a little bit of reminder to raise hands... and then all of a sudden students just started getting up and leaving.
This was really weird and it left about 5 teachers and 10 students left in the large room.
We didn't have to talk, we just went to go get them.
I went room to room and reminded students that we were in class and they needed to be back in that room immediately. It took me about 5 minutes to make the rounds, but many of the students were new and seemed to have a hard time understanding what was going on. When it appeared that everyone was back in the room, I decided to take charge (not unheard of -especially in summer school this year). The district guy complimented us on getting the students back so fast, but he didn't truly get that we had lost control. 15 seconds into my "You can't just walk out of class" lecture, a student turned on a huge wide screen tv and started playing video games. I stopped him, told him he needed to leave for the day, but he refused to turn the game off (though he left). I had to have another student turn the game off, and in the lengthy process I watched a group of 5 sneak out the back left. Then it seemed more on my right had left, and by the time the video game was shut off I had once again only about 10 students.
This time the staff talked, hurriedly we decided to try again, but there was this really loud music coming from down the hall. Someone said it might be the grunge club practicing, but when I got to that room it was more kids on video games. I told them to turn them off and leave for the day (they did so). Then another room -same problem and it kept going this way. Each room had a group of 4-5 playing video games and I had to kick them out for the day... which they didn't care at all about.
On the way out the building one of them snarkily said "sweet so no homework" and I responded sternly and with quite a bit of shaming "You don't even know whats going on!" he responded "Why should I care?"
and walked away.
I got disgusted and walked back into the main room after seeing that the remaining 10 students were in the lab in their next class. This class was led by a guest teacher where as all the classes with regular staff were empty.
As I walked back into the pasture (the bigger room) it was full of people repairing things. The district guy was yelling at my boss, and my coworker came over and said something about how he wanted to co-run the school to ensure that we were getting results. Of course this wasn't going to happen... but it all felt so hopeless... I knew that if we didn't have enough students we would be shut down. I also knew that not having students wasn't our fault and that the district guy was just taking advantage of the situation to hurt us.
One of the workers was a girl I used to know name Bri, and I kept standing near her to get her attention but she never looked my way.I spent like 5 minutes trying to do this and then concluded I had better things to do with my time.
I walked back into the office to think up a game plan for how to fix the problem, and then woke up.
I had gone to sleep wondering why I was feeling slightly disillusioned with teaching. I love my staff, I love what the school stands for, I love our methods but over the summer it felt like we just couldn't win.
Me and this other co-worker were in charge so it felt like my responsibility... but in the end we lost about 13 students because they just wouldn't show up and do the work. Many times we talked to them about the importance of showing up, about the importance of not skipping, about the importance of actually turning in work... but none of it mattered. They weren't ready to be in school.
Now going back we have about half the number we need by Oct.
Its hard to know what to do with that. How do you keep a good program alive if the population it serves is too lazy, or too selfish to give back?
And this is what has been on my mind lately. My coworkers and I have been giving our all, and we are not even getting by. The students seem ungrateful, selfish and ignorant to their reality (they would rather play videogames than have responsibility). Even when they are working its often times only because they feel trapped, rather than feeling supported... and this summer in the last few days I talked to one of the graduates whose opinion I trust. He said he didn't feel like the staff had done a very good job of really getting to know the students during summer school and spring of last year. I agree... but its because we are already overworked and exhausted from doing all the things that the students don't see (like try to keep the place running).
How do I get back to a place where I
A) Truly get to know the students, put them first etc.
B) Don't resent them for their adolescent disregard of everything.
C) Don't feel exhausted to the point of being pessimistic about it.
or I guess D) find a way to do all three magically?
Maybe for all its 40 years this program is not sustainable in this society... so then what?
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