Texas

This is my first year teaching. For the last five years I’ve worked as a journalist and decided to change careers. The year has been a roller coaster. I teach ninth and tenth-graders in a suburban city, in Texas. Perhaps the most shocking things I’ve been exposed to involve the stupidity of not only the students, but also the parents and administrators. I will try to share stories with you on here when I can, using this as a column. I’m not a religious man, but now I spend every night praying for the future of this country.

Story 1: On the first day of school, during my forth class period, I had a bastard get into my lunch while I was greeting his classmates at the doorway. The bastard stole a Kashi Bar out of my lunch sack. I confronted the bastard, and sent him to the office with a referral. This is when I learned immediately about school politics. The bastard spent about 20 minutes in the office before being sent back to me. He was sent back because I didn’t follow the district’s discipline matrix, which goes as follows: 1) verbal warning 2) teacher detention 3) phone call home 4) referral. So, although this bastard stole something from me, I did not contact his parents, give him a warning, or assign him a detention (which I’d have to monitor in my room after school).
When the bastard came back to my classroom after his short office visit, he proceeded to walk in and told me I shouldn’t have sent him to the office and that he didn’t steal anything. When I told him other students saw him steal it, he told me, “Suck my dick.” Wonderful!
A few weeks after the incident, the bastard was arrested for breaking into a cellular phone store. Because he was here illegally, he was deported. I still have sweet dreams about this clown falling off a train trying sneak back into the country.

Story 2: I had a whale stay after school one Friday to serve a detention. She was there because she was disruptive when I was absent and a substitute was in class. After serving her detention, the whale left with another student and said she was her ride. The next morning I was doing Saturday tutorials at the school to help out struggling students when an angry whale mother burst into my room and asked me where her daughter was. I let her know that the baby whale left with another student and told her the story. Mama whale became irate saying that it was my responsibility to watch her leave and that baby didn’t come home that night. Granted, mama whale was told what time the detention was ending before her daughter served it and was given a week notice.
After leaving my room in a rage, mama whale went to the police department to file a missing persons report. I felt bad about the situation, so I began to call other teachers describing the student that baby whale left with, because she was not in any of my classes. After two hours of phone calls, I found a note in my trash can from the night before with baby whale’s name and another student’s first name. Using our dated technology, I was searched through our student database for a girl named “Hailey”. I spent about three hours calling various Hailey-parents before reaching a mother who said her daughter came home with some girl she’d never met before and that she’d spent the night. I placed mama whale in contact with the horrible parent and reunited the whales. This was about four hours of work searching for this girl and locating her; I headed home feeling good about myself.
Monday morning came, and I was called into the office and verbally reprimanded by my principal for allowing the girl to leave. Mama whale had complained to the principal after I spent my Saturday morning locating her daughter.

Story 3: I’ll keep this short. We were reading Julius Caesar a few weeks ago, when our sophomore class valedictorian asked me if they called him “Caesar” because he fainted and may have suffered from epilepsy.

Thank you for your time.