Faemom

Becoming a teacher shifted my view on education. I was always pro-education, starting back from exiting Catholic school. I knew it was a hard thankless job. But now I see all the success and flaws.

Parent/teacher meetings have changed drastically. If the teacher knows I’m a teacher, they use education jargon and don’t dance around issues. They know I get it. Heck, my first parent/teacher meeting as a teacher was with Tornado S’s teacher, who ran up and gave me a “teacher hug.” She had had Tornado E when I was in teaching school.

But this also means I want to call out teachers for their stupid ideas. Like Tornado A’s 7th grade language arts teacher.

Why are you teaching “Midsummer Night’s Dream?” Why? They are not old enough for Shakespeare. Do you know how many dick jokes are in that play? Helena begs Demetrius to treat her like a dog? Did you talk about that? OH and she didn’t pronounce their names correctly! Tornado A pronounced one of the names incorrectly while telling me about the play, and when I corrected him, he told me his teacher insisted that she was correct and yelled at a kid for correcting her.

I live in fear of being wrong, so I checked the names. I was right. She was wrong. What the hell?

She went on to teach The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. I’m not 100% against teaching this in 7th grade, but that book has child abuse, domestic abuse, parentization, alienation, and alluding to sexual assault. I don’t think this woman went into any of it. I reread the book while Tornado A was reading it. Usually I do this to help my kids with their essays and projects; this time I did it because I wasn’t sure the book was appropriate for 7th graders.

I could bore you with the details of one of the worksheets about the book. Seeing that my studies were in English, I’m a teacher, and I’ve taught the damn book. But I will complain about one thing. If you’re going to teach the book alludes to a story in the Christian Bible (and I’m almost 100% sure you are wrong), at least use a version of the Bible that matches the background the characters. The Catholic Bible is not the same as the King James Bible, and if you don’t know the difference, don’t teach it.

This is all a long winded rant to get to the main project I had issues with. This woman assigned the students to write a book of vignettes. 10 vignettes in the style of the chapters of The House on Mango Street.

My first issue. My son did not know what a vignette was. Odd. But then I got texts from his friends’ moms asking what is a vignette. This is the beginning of losing my mind. Naturally I explained what they were and gave examples.

The book of vignettes in the style of The House on Mango Street. Their vignettes had to be based on their lives, which leads me to wonder if the teacher didn’t know that The House on Mango Street was a work of fiction.

Also 10? Ten stories?

Tornado A was in a phase, which I should probably blog about, and so it was hard to sit him down to work on this project. That did not have very good instructions, did not have clear expectations, did not have a rubric. And my kid could not replicate Cisneros. Because he’s 12.

So I showed him this blog.

I read to him posts. And then he asked for posts about him. I read him those.

Tornado A: You’re kind of good at this, Mama. You’re kind of funny.

Yeah, now that I reread this posts, I kind of agree with you.

So we got to work. We hammered out 4 stories. There was no way of Tornado A being able to replicate his voice in writing while typing. At his age, I had years of writing stories for school and for fun. He didn’t. So I asked him to talk, and I typed.

And you know what? 12-year-olds are hilarious.

“I like preparing for Christmas and helping my grandma, but she yells all the time. She yells at me to pick up my shoes. She yells at me to pick up my toys. She yells at me to pick up my dirty laundry. She yells a lot.”

That’s comedic gold. And he doesn’t know it.

So he takes his stories to school and is proud of starting early. Some stories are a page; some are three pages. The book literally has a chapter that is 3 paragraphs long. “And Mama, you’re good at writing!” Yeah, I know. And that teacher, that woman, tells him and the class that each vignette has to be 500 words. Five Hundred Words. Are you kidding me? Ma’am, have you read the book you are connecting this project to? This is college stuff. I wrote 5,000 word short stories for college. Five Hundred Words for Ten Stories. Are you out of your goddamn mind?

And I go to school, and I tell these teachers that I work with. The whole English department knows. They’re all shocked. “Hell, we couldn’t get our kids to write 1 story of 500 words.” Exaggeration, but yeah. I mean, Christ, we all know this is too much.

But she’s the boss. She’s the teacher. I don’t know how to talk to her about this. I know how I would talk to a colleague. Hey, Cheryl, one of your kids told me about that I assignment you’re having them do; can you explain it to me better? Uh-huh, hmm, uh-huh. You know what would be better? Focusing on 1 amazing story. Reviewing it, editing it, working with a group. I’ve got some ideas that may really work to make life easier for you.

But as a parent? What am I going to say? You’re giving my kid too much work? Your assignment is bullshit?

So we did. Sort of. I played dirty with the rules. We messed with topics that complied but twisted. I did the college thing. 480 is close enough right. 475. Oh, we’ll write 11 stories! Well, Tornado A wrote a whole story that I make him do more than what is required so that worked on two levels. 5000 word count for the whole thing. Probably a little more. Who’s counting?

She is! She checked the word count on each damn story?! Are you kidding me?! Who has time for that?! I don’t! And I’m also an English teacher! She checked the word count of every damn story of every kid! My dude, do you need a hobby? Help me understand what standard, what skill, you are trying to teach.

Luckily this turned out to be the rough draft. But she wasn’t clear in her guidelines about due dates and rough drafts. She wanted a cover page, a table of contents, and a dedication page. So at least that was done. But I know my standards (because I’m a nerd), and none of this is in the standards.

Every story became 500 words. I did more lifting than I would usually because this is hard for a 7th grader. And this isn’t teaching him anything. And this is dumb.

But somehow Tornado A found his academic groove.

Tornado A: This was fun, Mama. I liked working with you. I liked working on the stories. Now I know why Tornado E and Tornado S want to study creative writing in college.

Me: They what now?

I would like to end it here. But then that woman wanted to teach To Kill a Mockingbird. In 7th grade. I teach To Kill a Mockingbird in 9th grade. They are not ready for it in 7th grade. She was going to teach it in the last 5 weeks of school. It takes nearly 9 weeks to teach it in my class. Luckily she realized that she didn’t have enough time. So she was going to teach Lord of the Flies. Which is another 9th grade book. But then she realized she only had 4 weeks. So she taught “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and I wanted to scream because that is an 11th grade text.

And this teacher will be teaching 8th grade language arts. I am going to lose my mind this year. Pray for me.