Post: I Teach Thugs
Posted by Horrified on 8/28/08
If you are one of those teachers with rose-colored glasses
concerning student misbehavior, this post won't be to your
taste.
I teach high school students at a charter school. Tomorrow
concludes our first week. Our students are drawn almost
100% from the ranks of juvenile offenders on probation. I
am coming from a public school that drew mainly from
middle-class families.
The students are unbelievably ill-behaved. They don't
work, they don't care, they smell, they come in stoned,
they roam, they cheat, they steal, they curse teachers,
they throw spitballs, they destroy any and all supplies
and free breakfast foods furnished them, many of the girls
are pregnant, so on and so forth. Out of 150 students, I
would say less than 10 read above the fourth-grade level.
Do they have the capacity to improve? No, because they
have no interest in improving.
I'm not thinking I'm going to be lasting too long. The
director sees only dollar signs and the teachers are
unable to have a student suspended or expelled, due to the
ADA money. Nor can students be given even a 10-minute
detention unless 3 instances of the same behavior occur,
and if a teacher writes a student up, the director writes
the teacher up. Last year 10 teachers (for 2 of the
classrooms) cycled through, some lasting only a day. I
didn't know this when I took the job. The student body was
also misrepresented to me. The teachers who stay are
uncertified and I guess they have nowhere else to go.
The director spouts fuzzy feelings about how "damaged" the
students are, often citing primary-school teachers as
the "culprits" in "crushing" the students and turning them
into gang members. There are students at this school who
have committed murders!!! But to her, it's always someone
else's fault..."they made the students shoot...they made
them drink...they made them stab..."
So far, I've been called a b*tch, racist, whitey, Anglo,
and some unprintable things. I have never encountered such
racism as the STUDENTS display. I began the week not even
knowing the type of student I had -- and I began by having
a reasonable, open setting -- immediately abused. The
students feel that NO RULES WHATSOEVER apply to them, and
the director backs up this attitude. It turns out her
thuggy relatives are attending the school as well.
Just venting, I guess. I find these students appalling.
Anything nice they see as weakness, and they know we have
no "big sticks" in our arsenal. The other teachers drive
old "beaters" due to the amount of "keying" and denting of
their cars. The students drive Hummers, Cadillacs, Lexus
sedans, Excursions, and so forth.
It seems an insane situation to me.
Posts on this thread, including this one
- I Teach Thugs, 8/28/08, by Horrified.
- Re: I Teach Thugs, 8/29/08, by unfathomable . . . but here's a sliver of hope.
- Re: I Teach Thugs, 8/29/08, by Pecos.
- Re: No, you OBSERVE them - & I hope you get out of their way, 8/29/08, by And I thought "Hard Times at Douglas High" was bad!.
- Re: I Teach Thugs, 8/30/08, by Aaron.
- Re: I Teach Thugs, 8/30/08, by mb.
- Re: I Teach Thugs, 8/30/08, by Kookoo.
- Re: Thoughts on this thread , 8/31/08, by L. Swilley .
- Re: Thoughts on this thread , 8/31/08, by firstyear.
- Re: I Teach Thugs, 9/01/08, by Tomi Evans.
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