Teacherly Woes

Every year, I forget how much I hate the week after Thanksgiving at school. It’s like childbirth—you forget the pain. (Okay, I don’t really know about the childbirth thing. Both my kids were C-sections and I had epidurals.) Anyway, I don’t think about it again until the next year when the phone calls (and now emails) begin. Why is it that so many parents and children don’t worry about grades until the week after Thanksgiving? It’s like, “Wow, Christmas is almost here. That means the end of the semester is almost here. Oh my God, we have to get that 23% you have in English up to passing in the next 3 weeks!”

Children who have been digging a hole since August, who have received two progress reports reflecting their failing grade, whose grades are posted weekly by student number in my classroom, are flocking to my desk. “Mrs. Reed, how can I pass your class?” Mommies and daddies assure me that they are going to start monitoring their babies very closely to make sure that they complete these last few assignments, but really, their children have told them how completely unreasonable my expectations are, and clearly I am very mean.

Now, of course, parents have access to this thing called the “parent portal.” I am required to keep my gradebook on the server at school, and parents can, via Internet, access all of the information in it relative to their child. This means that they can see EXACTLY how their lamb is doing 24/7. Honest to God, it was the worst thing ever invented. It feeds the perfectly ridiculous notion that parents should be taking full responsibility for monitoring their child’s progress, and then they wonder why the kids don’t take any responsibility for themselves. I have access to the same thing at my son’s school. I gave him the access code. Hey, it’s his grade, not mine. I already did high school; got a diploma and everything. Anyway, the kids, the parents, everyone knew these cherubs were failing. What’s with all the phone calls and emails?

I’m not allowed to tell a child that he/she cannot pass. I say, “What the heck. Sure, turn that essay that was due three weeks ago in for half credit by Monday. What? You didn’t read The Scarlet Letter? Hey, good luck with that essay. Oh, and don’t forget, we’re starting the Huck Finn essay Monday. You are up to chapter 31, aren’t you? No? Chapter 4? Bummer. Have you read the independent reading book that you have to do a speech on as your final? What independent reading book? The one I assigned in August. The one I’ve been reminding you about all semester. I take it that means you haven’t read it. Well, I need the Scarlet Letter essay Monday, the Huck Finn essay the 15th, and the speech when it’s due.” ‘Nuff said.

But just for the record, if you have a 20% in any class at this point in the semester, you cannot pass. I just won’t say that to you or your mommy. Grow up.

And if these phone calls weren’t enough, I’ll bet I get one or two tomorrow about today’s discussion in class. We’re about to compare and contrast Huck Finn to the ideal transcendentalist. We just finished that cataclysmic scene where Huck chooses to go to hell for the sake of Jim’s freedom. He says he figures he was born to be immoral and do despicable things like free slaves. I was drawing a parallel between this and a statement by Emerson in “Self-Reliance” that says, “’…if I am the devil’s child, I will then live by the devil.’ No law can be sacred to me but that of my own nature.”

I teach just down the road from three mega-churches, a massive Catholic church, and a huge Mormon church. I know that if my kids are going to have a statement like that in their notes, I had better make it very clear that Emerson is not promoting Satanism. I explained that he was calling into question the morality espoused in the churches of his time, as was Twain, because the Bible was often used to justify slavery.

Most of my cherubs just write down what I say. My third hour questions everything. They can drive me crazy sometimes, but I happen to love this particular quality in them. “What do you mean the Bible justifies slavery?” one asks. I explain that part of it was a particular interpretation from the Old Testament that I wasn’t super clear on myself but that had to do with the children of Hamm and dark skin being God’s mark. In addition to that, the Old Testament clearly permits slavery and even lays out the rules for the taking of slaves.

Well, one of my favorite critters (I know, I’m not supposed to have favorites, but she’s smart and belligerent, and I have a soft spot for that kind) says, “That’s whacked. That’s seriously screwed up!” Another child assures her that that’s the OLD Testament, and that that part of the Bible is just a historical document. Christians don’t obey any of it any more.

“Well,” I argue, “Leviticus is used over and over again to condemn homosexuality. There are no proscriptions about it in the New Testament.”

“Oh, no, Jesus said many times that marriage was between a man and a woman,” she says.

Across the room, somebody says, “Why don’t Christians follow the Old Testament anymore?”

The girl next to her says, “Because Jesus died on the cross, so we don’t have to do any of that stuff anymore.”

Yet another girl, totally innocent—she really wasn’t trying to start anything—says, “So you can just not do the whole Jesus thing and just do the Old Testament and still go to heaven?”

You would have thought she’d suggested that people eat babies, instead. “No, no, no! You HAVE to believe in Jesus. The Old Testament doesn’t work anymore.”

“Now, wait a minute—“ I say.

She rolls her eyes and says, “Well, the Jews…” The tone of her voice, the whole subtext, was “Well, you know how those Jews are.”

And in my mind, I hear the voices on my voice mail. “Mrs. Reed, what the hell kinds of discussions are you having in your English class?”

So I explain that interpretation of the Bible varies from denomination to denomination and that I am certainly in no position to stand up there and tell anyone the correct way to interpret it. All I wanted to do was make sure that no one went home and told their parents that Mrs. Reed had told them all to be the devil’s children.

I doubt that I succeeded.

Whew! That was a long post. I think I’ll head over to W’s blog and look for reasons a woman might be freaked about getting married.