No Rest for the Wicked (No Punishments For Them Either)

This one is depressing and dark, and I'm sorry.  Feel free to skip this one and go hit up LOLcats or something.

As a high school teacher, I can only punish good students.

If a student breaks a rule in school, there are a number of punishments that the administration can mete out.  Lunch detentions, after school detentions, saturday school, in school suspension (ISS,) out of school suspension (OSS,) and finally, if behaviors are severe and recurrent enough, expulsion.

Detentions are fine in theory, as they take away a student's free time, but increasingly, parents intercede and prevent students from serving them, or else students just don't bother to serve them, since all that happens to them as a result is they get ISS or OSS.

These are the two most commonly assigned punishments at my school.  ISS is especially valuable, as it does not show up on our record of out of school suspensions, which are factored into school grades here in Florida.

ISS involves a student spending the whole school day sitting in the ISS room, with nothing to do but any classwork the teachers provide.  OSS of course, means sending them home for however many days, and is usually reserved for serious offenses like smoking, possession of drugs, or fighting.  Usually fighting.

So the major forms of punishment we rely upon centers around one thing: making a student miss class time.  In theory, this is indeed a deterrent, since students must then work twice as hard to catch up when they return.  But in reality, it's complete bullshit.

To begin with, many of the kids causing the troubles do not care about their grades.

I need to clarify this point, because some of you bleeding hearts may not grasp the solid fact of this.  MANY KIDS DO NOT CARE ABOUT THEIR GRADES.  AT ALL.  I don't mean that they are unmotivated, or don't try hard enough, or have a hard time seeing the goal, I mean they simply do not give a single shit about whether or not they pass or fail a class.

Sometimes it's just certain classes, like electives.  I have kids who will make a weak show of passing their core classes with minimum effort, but see electives as a personal insult.  Others are simply blasé about the whole GPA thing and figure if they get a class they don't like (like Theater I,) they will just fail it and try again with a new elective course next year.

But there are a whole bunch (and I mean a shockingly large number,) for whom a diploma holds no interest whatsoever.  Some are the children of illegal immigrants, and believe that they will never be able to get a job that requires a diploma, and therefore see no reason to work hard to obtain one. And as tragic as I find that (and it absolutely is not true,) I only wish this were the biggest group.

Because there are also just some kids who are wastes of space.  I know that as a teacher, I'm supposed to talk about how every kid deserves a chance, and we just have to work harder to help those who don't get the guidance at home.

But there comes a time when you have to accept that some people are assholes.  Think about the assholes in your life; did you think those walking piles of personality flaws only gathered into a surly mass when they hit nineteen?  No, our personalities are well on their way to completeness by freshman year.  And some never develop much beyond that.

I offer the same learning opportunities to all my students, but some kids just slap aside the hand I extend towards them.  The official story is that I'm just not a good enough teacher to overcome their life experiences at home, in society, and every other factor that has shaped them into the sullen little shit they already are when they slouch into my classroom on the first day of class.

I guess I just suck like that.

So I have kids who have not done a single performance.  Ever.  Or a single piece of homework.  Ever.  They turn in the quizzes I hand out (i really can't figure out why,) and so they end up with like a 34% or a 25%, or a 12%.

If a kid does not want to work, I cannot force them to.  And I have long since burned out trying to play catcher in the rye and save each one, begging, wheedling and cajoling them to work.  At this point, I just want them to fail quietly.

And yes, I know how horrible that sounds.

But teachers know that phrases like "no child left behind" are bullshit.  Some kids won't move forward, and you have to teach your class using the principles of triage.  There are kids that can be saved, and kids that will drag the whole class down with them.

Some men just want to watch the world burn, and some kids just want to text all period instead of ever taking notes.

But when a kid disrupts class, keeping me from teaching the good kids, the kids willing to work and learn, I have to maintain discipline.  But how?

That's not a setup for the next paragraph, I seriously want to fucking know, HOW?

I can't hit them.  I can't use my pointy, pointy words to make them cry (but dear God how I could if I was allowed to,) I basically can't affect their lives at all.  And you know what?  That's not my job anyway.  It's their parents' responsibility.

But what do you do when they won't?  I detest calling parents these days.  Beyond the fact that I have little time in which to do so with all my other responsibilities, it has become so demoralizing.  First off a majority (and I mean majority, as in more than 50% of the time with no hyperbole,) of the parents do not speak English.

Now I am not one of those "Learn English or Git Out!" types, but if neither of us speak the same language, this is not going to be a very productive call, is it?

But then you get an overwhelming number of parents who not only don't support you (I count merely apathetic "whattaya expect me to do?" parents in the win column these days,) but actively oppose you.  They see you as the enemy, the Man (being a middle aged white male is no help to me in this,) and immediately go on the defensive from what they perceive as an attack on themselves, by way of their kids.  So when I have a conflict with a kid, I get to call home and get rewarded with another fucking conflict with the parent, so they can then form a unified front against the outsider.

It does not thrill.

And that doesn't even count the issues with the administration, who are, shall we say, somewhat inconsistent in their handling of situations.  But the less said on that subject in a public forum the better.

So I go through the motions, and some days I get lucky and go to sleep without dying a little more inside.  But those days are fewer and farther between these days.

So a warning to you good students.  If you care about your future and worry about your grades, don't act like the bad kids, because YOU at least, I can punish.

The rest of you?   Smoke em if you got em I guess, because you are beyond the scope of the system.