Rant about Work

I hate my job. I can't stand what I do. I LOVE children...so why do I hate coming to work?

Well, let me tell you:

1. First off, the administration is a crock of bull. They have lied to us, yelled at us, demeaned us, and made us feel as though we have no authority or worth in the building. They expect us to do an awful lot for them with nothing in return. There are no consequences for negative behavior. Students are allowed to kick each other, fight, curse, call people names, and even attack teachers (as in previous years) and don't even get sent home the day of! Ms. Brown, the assistant principal, talks down to us--as if we are little children. We can't even get the basic supplies that we need in order to do our jobs. If the copy machine runs out of paper, then we are tough out of luck. We get blasted for making "too many" copies. If we made the kids copy the work that would take up WAY too much of our teaching time & we'd never get anything done!

2. Which brings me to materials. We are deprived/limited on the materials that we have at our disposal. We need paper. We need desks and chairs. (Yes, this is TRULY a problem!) We need resource materials to help us teach the material because our text books are written on a 7th grade reading level and our kids can barely read on a 4th-5th grade level. We need time to plan. Yes, planning time. I NEED some time during the school day to get crap done. I cannot take it all home & stay sane. I spend at least 2 or three days a week wasting my planning time in meetings. Our paper is hoarded and guarded. We only get 7 reams put into the copy machine a day. There are 500 students in this school. That means that for the entire school each kid should only have 7 pieces of paper a day. Homework alone can be 2-3 pages. Then add in Interactive Notebook pages, study guides (which are required by some students' IEPs), and other class activities and yea, it just doesn't work. If we just wrote all of the assignments on the Smart Board & made the kids copy them, it would take up all of their time to do the work. Many of the kids don't have pencils, scissors, or glue--and when we ask the school to step up and help out, we get "later...we ran out..." more excuses.

3. There is too much politicking. Every freaking person in this building has a freaking hidden agenda. Nobody can just BE. Every time you turn around, someone is "checking on you". We can't even go to the bathroom without someone keeping track of us. We are monitored and watched like babies, never trusted to just go in our rooms and do our jobs. The communication train doesn't move and people who have information don't give it out for fear of getting in trouble. We need to know what's going on.

4. The kids are bad. Literally, they are worse than any other children I've ever worked with. In Girl Scouts, in After School day-care in VB, in all of my student teaching and practica--these kids are just worse. They lie, steal, cheat, sneak, and don't even bat an eyelash. They have no problem selling someone else out just to get what they want. They have zero ambition to do anything. Many of them don't even care if you call their parents. (Because the majority of the parents are just as ambitionless as their children.) I have kids who are given an opportunity to redo a test they flunked & they are sitting here staring into space. They won't even TRY to figure it out. (It's an application based math problem.) I get so frustrated having to tell them the same thing day after day. They don't know how to behave & it is impossible to teach them how to act. I get so tired of the telling them over and over and over again to be quiet, to walk in a single file line, to just do what they are supposed to. I just get SO frustrated with them. I try to tell myself, their just kids. They are only 9, 10, and 11 years old. But, then I think of myself at that age & I would NEVER have acted the way they do. I was SCARED of my teachers in the fifth grade. I would do whatever they asked without question. I might question it with my parents---but never to my teacher's face.

5. There are bugs in the school. They can't seem to get rid of them & we've had them for 2 years now. I hate bugs. I hate seeing roaches. I live in fear of bringing them home with me. I can't have a cup of tea on my desk without checking inside every time I get a sip.

6. People don't do their jobs. Our cafeteria lady has been the monitor for like 50 years or something ridiculous. She doesn't take the time to learn the kids' names & she calls at them like this, "Hey Boy..." "Little kid..." "Little girl..." Which I think is degrading. She doesn't allow them to talk at all. She spread the fifth grade around the whole cafeteria, so they aren't even close to each other & expects them to eat in silence. ALL THE WHILE, she is sitting on her fluffy duff talking & yacking away with the assistant cafeteria monitor. Then 5 minutes before our lunch time ends (some kids having just barely gotten out of line) she has them start clearing trays & wiping down the tables. She lines them up & puts them out at least 2 minutes before MY lunch is over. THEN, she has the other 2 fifth grade classes line up at the same time! They come to lunch 5 minutes after my class. So, for 5 minutes, (while my kids are having their restroom break), the other 2 classes stand their unattendend. She OFTEN puts kids out in the halls. The cafeteria monitor is not the only one though. the SPED teacher who is supposed to service my one SPED child only pulls him for like 20 minutes a day to "make up" my assignments that he has failed. She doesn't actually TEACH him anything. She isn't in here to see how I do things in order to make sure she is showing him another way to learn something. The specialists don't all do their jobs either. They are supposed to work with small groups of children. BUT, they are the ones going around "checking on" others.