Week, Bro.

 Today is the 8th day of isolation.  In terms of isolation venues, it's pretty good. I've got a queen sized air mattress, a couch, a tv, my computer, and about 500 books if I feel like reading.  In fact, I have been reading.  Not every day, but every day for the past four days or so.  The problem was that I was reading a book called Whose Names Are Unknown by Sanora Babb.  Apparently, they never published it back in the 30s or whatever because it was too much like The Grapes of Wrath. However, in recent years they decided to publish it.  To say I didn't like it is an understatement.  The book was barely 200 pages, and I've been reading it since July or something.  It was just so boring. However, since I had nothing else to do I figured now was the time to force myself through it. I got to the end, and it just ended.  Not really compelling.  

Then two days ago I started Without You, There Is No Us by Suki Kim.  This one was about the author who posed as a missionary so she could teach English in a school in North Korea for the sons of the more elite in the country.  I basically finished this one in two days. I found it really interesting to get a peek inside such a closed off place. Since I finished that today I've now moved on to my next book, Birds Art Life by Kyo Maclear. I have to say that in the first 13 pages I've read so far I'm not so sure it's going to be something I enjoy.  However, it's very short, so my hope is that I can power through it while I'm still in isolation and don't have much to do so that I can move on to the next book.  Really all these books are part of the book club that I'm in, that I'm really behind on.  The book I just started we are supposed to be done with next week.  My hope is that I can get on schedule and do the next book on time, but we'll see.  I haven't really been one to join the discussion so it's not like I'm missing much.

In the week I've also done a ton of cleaning and rearranging of things in my office, as well as some things on my computer also.  I also was able to do some updates on my computer to extend the life of it a bit longer, which is pretty good since I got it in 2012. I've also gotten ahead on my grading, so that with report cards coming out this week I'm not frantically grading.  Or perhaps I am frantically grading but it's not really an imposition because there's nothing else for me to do. I can't watch tv or hang out with my family except on video calls, and those only last so long because they're only so much to talk about when you're staying in the same 400 square feet. In fact, I haven't been off this floor in 8 days when I got home from getting my Covid test. It's going to be weird to be upstairs in a few days.  In fact, I've got three nights and two days left until I'm free. Or about 56 hours really. 

The end is near!

Burn Out

 What do you do when the job you wanted your whole life, you don't want to do anymore?

Today was a rough day when it comes to my job. We now have five teachers with confirmed cases of Covid, and so the decision was made that we can no longer keep a school running with that level of teacher loss, so the solution is that we have to go to a virtual format until next week when teachers are again able to return to the classroom.  The thing is, when you have Covid there are two options for you. Either, you work through it virtually and retain your pay, or you take leave and only get a percentage of your pay.  Never mind that you have a deadly disease that makes you feel exhausted. Never mind that you the only reason you are sick to begin with is because the school.  Never mind that you also need to isolate away from your family so the emotional toll is also very high. Never mind that you've been going through this shit for 20 months and it's already a lot.  Never mind that your staff is constantly having to amazingly shift gears between these different formats and have not had a normal moment of teaching in nearly two years.  Never mind that you've worked for six years and taking a single sick day in all that time Fuck all of that, you're working. No time off for you.

This is probably a large reason why my satisfaction with my job is so low.  It's exhausting to be constantly in a state of worry about all these kids everywhere, fighting with them about masks, distancing, on top of the other normal student behavior issues.  Plus, these kids haven't had a normal school year since they were like 8th or 9th graders, so they don't even know how to act. Everything has just gotten so exhausting and it's hard to make it through the day, much less a week or whole school year.  It's only the beginning of the 8th week of school and I'm already as exhausted in a way that usually doesn't happen for much after in the school year when there's a glimmer of hope that it doesn't have much longer.  We're still three weeks from Thanksgiving. It's weeks until we get some recharge time.

That being said, I'm also just kind of not sure what to do about teaching anymore.  I used to feel like teaching was a job where I could make a difference and do something that matters.  I think that may be true somewhere, but I don't know that it's really true.  Most of them don't do any of the work, and as far as I can tell they don't seem to have any interest in learning just getting their check mark and moving on. There's such a negative view of education that's been building for years now with attack after attack on education. It's expensive, it's to get a job, it's a waste of time. And on, and on, and on.  It's really demoralizing and I don't know if it's really even worth it.  There's so much stress, so much nonsense, so little of it is what I went in to teaching for.  I don't feel like I make a difference at all. I don't think I'm doing anything good. I don't even know.  What is the point? I could be making more money elsewhere and making a difference for my family instead.

I'm just so tired all the time. Perhaps some changes would help all this, and the world getting back to a reasonable point might make it not so bad. But right now it's a struggle.

Cabin Fever?

 Today is the fourth day of isolation to keep the family from catching the Rona.  Yesterday, given that I have lots of time I decided to do some office reorganization that I had been planning but haven't gotten around to. The biggest thing is that quite a while ago I bought a new monitor, since my other one is so old that I got it at a CompUSA.  That being said, it still works and I wanted to set up a two monitor system but my giant hutch does not allow for such things. So, I had a plan that might take down the hutch, move the components other places to retain the storage.  Well, since I have time I decided to take it down.  My office has this lovely shelf around one side of it, and the cabinets fit perfectly on them, so that went as planned.  The other positive thing was that the corner part has a piece of board that comes down in the back creating a massive L-shaped piece, and that back part comes off making it easier to store. The downside is I'm not entirely sure where to store that piece as it is very large, oddly shaped, and the only space it could have worked is too thick so it's not possible. 

As I was rearranging I had to go through the many keepsakes that litter my desk. The top of a hutch is a great place to display and store these items as I don't have enough shelving or display cabinets to cover them all.  The downside on that is they all get covered in dust.  However, as I'm moving some of this, I had a thought about how things that once a lot of value change over time and become less valuable.  Part of that comes from changes in relationships, but also as we go and our identify evolves, sometimes those things are tokens of an identity that has shifted. For example, 20 years ago being from Virginia was a large part of my identity, but I moved from Virginia nearly 25 years ago, so it's not really a large part of my identity anymore, it's rather more of a fun fact.  So now, my rock from Virginia, while I enjoy it, also isn't something that is like super special in the same way.

At the same time, I'm old and realize that who knows, in 25 years my family will have to throw all this stuff out because it means nothing to them. Is there any point in keeping anything? I mean, of course they become memory touchstones, but eventually even that isn't true. They become things that remind us we did things, but those memories of the things fade.  Like, I was watching an old home movie and had no memory of any of the things happening for the most part.  There were a few parts that I recall because of photos and conversations, but most of it had been lost and the items from the trip simply reminded me that I went on the trip. 

The past is a funny thing.

The Cellar Dweller

 Let's start with the good.  So far, thing have been very mild. No one else has gotten sick. I have a comfortable space to isolate in. I'm able to work from home so I'm not losing any of my pay.

That being said, I have friggin' Covid and I'm not pleased about it.  

How could this happen?  Well, school.  It's the only place I go. It's also not able to socially distance, especially in the hall ways.  Half the student body is not vaccinated. I'm forever yelling at them to pull up their masks. Oh, and I get lunch duty where I have to walk around a lunch room with hundreds of unmasked, unvaccinated children where there is a high level of community spread in our area.  We currently have at least one other teacher as well as five students who have tested positive. I also know that there were students with coughs and some sort of illness in my room. Surely, it's possible that I got it somewhere else right?  Not likely.  Generally the only time I go anywhere is on the weekends, which consists of occasionally going to the grocery store, though usually Becky does that and I stay home with Sal as I have school work to do.  I have been to a few stores over the past two weeks, but it's unlikely that is where I got this as I was not in any of them long, not near the same people for long, so the exposure likelihood is that this came from school. 

I always knew that if I got it, it would be from school.  That's because for the past 19 months we have been cautious and considerate of those around us. We have stayed home, we have not gone to restaurants, we have not gone on vacation. We have avoided large gatherings, and limited our gatherings to vaccinated people, usually outside with the exception of our family dinners (which everyone is vaccinated, and many test before coming over).  We have gone without for nearly two years to keep the unvaccinated, like our child, safe. It's irksome that after months of precautions, to now get it. I was supposed to get my booster next week, which probably would have avoided this outcome.  Sal was going to get the vaccine as soon as it was available in a few weeks.  We were almost to a level of normalcy, and to get it now is really insulting.

A while back I had a rather unfocused post about what we owe each other.  Well, this is the prime example of that. I am in this situation, not because I was reckless and foolish. I'm in this situation because of those who failed to get vaccinated. I'm in this situation because of those who refuse to wear masks. I'm in this situation because too many people think that their experience is the only thing they have to consider and any level of inconvenience for them is too high of a barrier.  Meanwhile, I got Covid because of them.  Because they wouldn't socially distance, wouldn't wear their masks, wouldn't get vaccinated. Because they just do whatever they want. No inconvenience for the,

Well, getting Covid is a huge inconvenience.  The most severe inconvenience being hospitalization and death.  This is not something I'm worried about for me, as I was responsible and was vaccinated.  However, my live is now utterly inconvenienced for 10 days.  I can't go to work, so I have to try and adjust my lessons for a sub.  This inconveniences every student I have, and the people I work with because now someone has to cover my class.  I also have to stay isolated from my family so they don't get sick.  This inconvenienced everyone in my house.  I can't spend time with them. I can't put my daughter to bed. I can't have dinner with the family. I can't see them or be around them. I have to stay isolated in the basement. I also have no taste or smell, which can last up to six months or even longer.  While this happens, my family is down a member, who can't help do things around the house. Who can't help take care of a child, cook, and do all the chores.  It also inconveniences them in that they want to see me.  Tell a six year old that she can't see her dad and see how well it goes.  Further, they now have to worry that they caught it. So for the next 10 days my daughter can't go to school because she's not vaccinated, and my vaccinated family have to look out for symptoms and test after 5-7 days to see if their vaccines worked.

People wants to go on about how it's their choice, and it's personal, and no one would tell them what to do because it's only affecting them.  Well, you selfish dimwits, it's not any of those things. It's not personal. You're going to get it from someone else, and you're going to pass it to someone else.  You getting sick is going to affect many other people, which in turn is going to affect many other people.  There is no such thing as a personal choice when it comes to public health.  There's no such thing as a personal choice when your personal choice has major consequences for other people. 

Get the damn vaccine, wear your fucking mask, and shut the hell up about your personal choices. No one else should pay the price for your personal choice.

So, What Do I Owe Ya?

It's a well established fact that the internet is the worst possible place that has ever existed. Think of all the horrible things that it has brought us: pop up ads, click-bait listicles, not to mention the forums being used to destroy the republic.  But also, social media.  Social media is the worst. It's fully of stupid people connecting with other stupid people. In the 1900s, stupid people had to physically go out and find other stupid people t spread their stupidness. Now, thanks to social media, the stupid people don't have to go anywhere, instead they take their stupid memes and share them so other stupid people can see it and share it. It's like Covid in Florida, but for stupid.

One of the things the internet made that I hate most is the meme psychology and interpersonal advice that spreads like herpes at a nursing home. It takes the stupidity of self help books, and puts it into bite sized turds that are easily shared on the internet.  It's a self help books, only it's lazier. At least self help books require you to read something more than a picture with a dozen words on it. Some of the worst examples of this is the concept of toxic relationships, which is a valid idea, but has been memes into anyone who may make you unhappy or disagree with you is toxic. Another related memeified idea is cutting out these toxic people. Like, yeah, actually toxic people you should cut out, but your aunt makes you made does not make them toxic nor does is validate your choice to cut them out forever. But of course, as the next meme will tell you, you need to protect your mental health. Which of course means anything that makes you sad can't remain. The memes told you that you could.

However, the one that has irked me the most is idea that you don't owe anyone anything. This one is pervasive and applied to all sorts of things. You don't owe anyone an explanation. You don't owe anyone your time. You don't owe anyone respect. You don't owe anyone anything. To quote another meme, talk about toxic.  

The idea that people don't owe anyone anything is a perfect illustration of why the world is in the state that it is. This idea that you doesn't owe anything to anyone leads to a pernicious self centered outlook on the world. It's why you have people refusing to wear masks or get vaccinated. These people don't believe they owe anything to anyone. It's why people act like assholes in traffic, all that matters is them, they owe nothing to anyone else. Its why people feel that it's ok to just ghost people, cancel on plans, and act in a way that doesn't consider anyone else. Because they don't owe anyone anything. I mean, it's about them. This idea gives permission for selfish behavior and permission to become the victim if anyone has a problem with your selfish behavior. It gives a blank check to inconsiderate and rude behavior that is beyond reproach.

The truth is, you owe people a lot.  We live in communities, we live with other people, we have relationships and families. You owe these people things. You owe them your time. You owe them your understanding. You owe them the benefit of the doubt. You owe them explanations. You owe them your support. You owe them just as much as they owe you. Each relationship we have comes with expectations and behaviors that we owe each other because we can not have these relationships if we believe we owe them nothing. We owe each other everything, and this obnoxious ultra-individualistic and self-centered outlook that you owe nothing to anyone is truly toxic. Like so many of these memes, it's the kind of outlook that a young teenager might believe, and results in adolescent egocentric behavior. Often times I feel people who use this know it's not true, and know that they are really just deflecting after behaving badly and being called out for it. Perhaps they internalize that idea, and play the victim.  Perhaps I'm wrong and people truly believe this, but I guess I just think too highly of others that they can't be stupid enough to really believe things so unreasonable.

Our society needs us to owe each other, because that owning reminds us that we are community of people who must come together. It reminds us that there are those outside of ourselves that must be considered too. It is the basis of kind and warmhearted interactions, and reinforces compassion and empathy. The American myth of rugged individualism that brings us down he road of thought that we owe nothing to those around us has created some of the worst aspects of our society today. However, our lives are not our own, they are part of a larger community, and we owe it to those in our community to consider others, explain ourselves, give, thing long term, hear feedback, put others ahead of ourselves, serve, and be compassionate. 

So, what do we owe each other? Everything. So, let's grow up and stop pretending that we don't.

What Happened to the Original Plot of the Movie?

I am a history teacher, so therefore it would be safe to assume that I teach history. I mean, you would think that would be the case, but really I'm not so sure. This year I was excited to make the leap to high school, and pleased that I would be teaching U.S. history as well. I really wanted to get into a public school, but that wasn't going to work out. Luckily, my company merged with a company that runs high schools, so I had the opportunity to move up. This all seemed like good news going into the summer, and my biggest worry was that the drive would be a little bit longer.

We are about to finish the fifth week of school, and the entire thing has been a huge disappointment. There are a number of reasons that this job has been a giant let down. There was a lot of chaos at the beginning where there were constant changes, poor communication on those changes, and just a general lack or preparation somewhere in the process of starting a school year.  All of those things are well over my pay grade to worry about why they happened or how to fix them, but they contributed to the massive disenchantment with my job.  

However, the biggest point of friction and dissatisfaction has been with the thing that I thought I would be doing every day, which is teaching history. In that area of my job I feel like our system is a complete failure.  The system fails students, it fails the goals of social studies education, and it fails the teachers who want to teach their subject, but the system has led to huge incentives for students to not do any work whatsoever and no incentive to worry about the content of our classes.

When I first met with my principal she told me that we used standards based grading.  This didn't worry me much because at my last job we had something that I thought was similar in that each assignment was linked to a state standard in social studies. It's a more intentional way to track progress. I knew that students had multiple opportunities to take assessments to show growth and learning. This all seemed fine and I would just have to get used to the new tech systems and adjust a little bit here or there, but a pretty minor transition.  However, that is not what I've experienced. The standards that they are being graded on are not social studies standards. For example, in the first semester they have two standards, standard one is perspective, standard two is cause and effect.  Basically, the entire class is based on being able to interpret sources, generally primary sources. Can they identify the perspective of an author. Can they identify the main idea of a source. Can they explain what a specific key word or phrase in a source means, and explain how that key word or phrase supports the author's argument or main idea.  

This is not a social studies required standard. I could do this with Harry Potter. I could do it with a comic book. I could do it with the script to the Karate Kid.  In our instances, we are using speeches generally, but the point is, this skill does not require any real history do learn to do these things. Sure, we're using historical documents, but it doesn't need to be that.

Now, this isn't necessarily the worst activity to teach students. In fact, I've been doing variations on this for years. Reading and interpreting primary sources is important, and a skill to practice.  So, if that's the case why are you crying like that person who wanted everyone to leave Brittney alone?

Well, here's the first problem, reading and interpreting primary sources is REALLY HARD. It's also not every fun. We are reading things from two hundred years ago, and teenagers generally really struggle trying to understand what they are saying, much less being able to figure out their main idea.  Does this mean they shouldn't do it? No. Like I said, I've been doing it for years.  However, the problem is that the entire class revolves around this. This is what they are being graded on the entire semester. This is the skill they are trying to practice every day.  This is the central activity, and the history becomes secondary to all of that.

This brings us to the second problem.  In order to be able to do all of the analyzing of these sources, you must know the context.  Ok, so that means you must teach the history in order for them to understand the documents. So I see how this plan can work. You create a skill to repeatedly test, you teach the context, then they perform the skill.  In theory, this could work. However, the way things are set up 80% of their grade is based on doing the skill, 10% of the grade is "moral focus" which is their participation in the class.  The last 10% is on the content. There is no real immediate incentive to actually learn the material, to learn the history. If you think you can do the skill, there's no need to do the work, no need to do really participate too much because 80% is enough for most people to be happy with their grade.  Further more, no assignments get grades, it's all just feedback. You grade it, but it doesn't affect their grade at all, except perhaps their moral focus participation grade. Further, those moral focus grades come later, it's a long term planning thing, and I'm not sure if you were away, but teenagers aren't the best with long term planning. In fact, we've been told that multiple times in our summer PD sessions that the brain of a teenager is not fully developed to be able to judge those type of things and plan that far ahead, yaddayaddayadd. Yet, we have a system where students have to think about the long term implications of not doing their work and how that will effect them in January when the semester is over?  This is lunacy.

We've created an entire system where there is no incentive to bother learning any history as long as you can identify perspective, or the main idea of a document.  If that's the case, why are we hiring any social studies teachers at all? This is a literature/reading skill. An English teacher would just as easily be able to do this. Yet, it seems to me giving the world and the way that our society has no idea about anything historical or civics related, that the teaching of history and social studies is more vital now than any time in living history. Meanwhile, every day I have to try to overcome the massive incentives students have to not bother worrying about my class or the content I'm trying to teach them. The content is secondary, the consequences are months int he future. 

I try to remember that I'm not in a public school, where nonsense like this isn't the standard. However, I feel more and more like schools are actually failing. Not because they can't do the job, but because they are choosing to do absurd things like this.