For about the past 24 hours I was sure I was about to call it splitsville with this place. Were the kids nuts? Of course, but that's hardly ever the issue. I'm just so disgusted by the inconsistencies in rules and relations with students. I don't want to divulge the details of one of my particularly horrendous encounters (because I'm always worried who may get their hands on my tirades - again, delusions of grandeur), but suffice to say I don't want to be undermined by adults who are looking for thirteen year old friends. Also, I was talking to a friend last night and realized I haven't even bothered to write a lesson plan since the middle of November. He was mildly horrified, but at this point it is a waste of everyone's time. I never know if my co-worker is going to be here, which means I don't know if I am going to have one or two classes (they can always remember to give me his classes but never to thank me). No assembly/fire drill/random school survey is ever told to us in advance. It's fly by the seat of your pants day everyday. I don't mind being flexible, but the kids would benefit more if I was able to plan ahead of time. But more than anything I am so sick of seeing these children be allowed to refer to everyone and everything as a bitch. I - almost unfortunately - haven't had it directed at myself too regularly lately, but you can literally hear it coming out of someone's mouth all day long. I'm sick of bending my tolerance and knowledge of "how things should be" to fit the situation. I'm sorry, but poverty doesn't allow you to run your nasty mouth up and down the halls of a school building.

I know you don't come to read this for the complaints, so I will try and keep them at a minimum. Yesterday my class that likes to learn (they all have names - my football class, "we'd rather do the questions" class, class of mutual disdain, etc.) and I talked about the state of the union. While every other subject is being hounded to do constant MSA prep, we had the following conversation sequence:
"Did any of you guys watch the State of the Union last night?"
"Oh, is that that thing that came on after American Idol?"
"Did you see anything worth noting."
"They made a big deal about that woman sitting being Bush."
"That is Nancy Pelosi (insert my explanation of her)."
"Don't you mean Nancy Kerrigan?"
"No, she's an ice skater."
"What else did you see?"
"I saw that black man that is running for president."
"Barack Obama."
"Didn't he do cocaine?"
"Yes (insert my discussion about people's image of a president)"
"Clinton smoked pot (insert discussion about the legalization of marijuana)"
"Bill Clinton's wife is running for president."
"Hillary Clinton."
"Isn't that Hilary Duff's mother?"
"Um, we better get back to our work."

Also, later they were reading by themselves and a student called me over.
"Yes?"
"Isn't this word supposed to be rights (writs)?"
"No, it's writs."
"Writs? Aren't those crackers?"

Now I'm back at JHU. Ready for a final semester of incomprehensibly useless five hour wastes of time. Wheeeeeee.