#covid generation

[animentality]

[invincible-selfxmade-punk]

It has been that the worst week I have had since I taught in the hood. I am so sick of this covid generation who are the sleaziest, most self absorbed, rudest, most assinine, idiotic bunch I've ever had the misfortune if having to educate.

Every day I hear them calling each other gay, calling each other furries, calling each other black boy as a put-down, calling each other black monkeys and they put down, making pornographic moans at the top of their lungs in class in the middle of discussions or when I'm trying to teach, singing in the middle of class whenever the thought hits them, having no idea what courtesy or kindness or respect is and not wanting to know either.

I had a 10 year old boy in the sleaziest voice imaginable offer me a piece of his big banana and something sticky to go with it. I reported it to the principal but of course nothing happened and the asst principal actually found it incredibly amusing.

When nothing was done I got so angry I confronted the kid myself and told him if he ever spoke like that to me again I would be sicking my husband on him. And then *I* got in trouble and was told not to say anything that would make his parents mad.

I have a kid who thinks he is Magic Mike and wants to dance around the class shaking his privates at everybody including me. When I have told his mother this she tells me but it's so funny when he does it at home and his sisters find it so entertaining.

It is not entertaining when this kid who is taller than me is shaking his junk in my face when I am trying to lecture.

I can't use any type of videos because either they are made fun of because they are too cringey or I have Magic Mike dancing to the music and everyone's looking at him instead of the video.

They can't play kahoot or Quizlet because if I forget to put on the random nickname generator then I get names like: bigdaddy69 or urmomisgay.

These are 10 year olds.

I have one class where I have yet to teach a fully lesson because I spend 25 of the 45 minutes repeating the words 'stop talking' and 'get quiet' and yet the instant I open up my mouth to try and teach again everyone begins to talk.

I live in constant fear of snapping one day and screaming "Shut the f*** up!!" & losing my job.

The most the principal will do is come in in a very mousy voice tell them "You need to respect yourself and others."

Meanwhile they are spitting on each other, saying things to each other that we get them shot if they were to say it to a stranger on the street, saying the most racist, sexist things you can imagine and nothing is being done.

I am so burnt out.

The parents refuse to buy school supplies so the school has to provide them and the students treat them like disposable garbage. They have decimated two huge boxes of markers by disemboweling them, throwing them at each other and then leaving them on the floors with the tops off, or stealing them. And I have gone through about 700 pencils since August because they never keep them or keep up with them. They borrow them they immediately ripped their erasers off and throw them at each other and then either they are left on the floor for me to trip over, they are taken and never returned, or they are broken and the next day every single one of the 90 students show up again without a pencil which I have to provide them.

I feel dirty when I come home.

Nothing I say is being heard. I'm not teaching , no one is listening, and to do this for 90 kids a day, everyday, when all you are is a verbal punching bag is beyond my ability to deal with.

[invincible-selfxmade-punk]

"YOU'RE TRAINED TO TEACH 6th GRADE, BUT HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO TRACH 4th GRADERS WHO ARE ON 1st GRADE LEVEL!?

YOU DIDN'T PLAN FOR THIS?! WHAT ARE YOU, STUPID??"

An educational tome by me, a follow-up to the Smash best seller:

"YOU'RE NOT TRAINED TO DEAL WITH EMOTIONALLY DISTURBED KIDS, AND YET YOU CAN'T CONTEND WITH 25 5th GRADERS PER CLASS WHO SAT OUT KINDER THROIGH 2nd AND ARE ABOUT AS SOCIALIZED AS A PACK OF HYENAS? WOW, YOUR CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT IS SHIT!!"

[invincible-selfxmade-punk]

There have only been a handful of times in my 7-year teaching career that a student made me so instantaneously Furious that I honestly thought I was going to lose control and either say or do something I would regret. The first time was 4 years ago.

I told a fifth grade boy to sit down and he looked me right in the eye and with a snide voice said

"OK, BOOMER!"

The other two times were today. For the last two weeks we have been building up to what I'm hoping is going to be a giant mural over native americans. We first learned about the Native American tribes in Texas. Over the course of 2 days I showed them videos of murals in cities like New York and Philadelphia so they could see what really great murals look like. I explained that whatever they had to draw had to be large. This week we introduced the research component. We gave them a brochure to fill out about their tribe where they had to answer all kinds of questions and draw pictures. Today was the second day of that and as I was giving them more pointers about Google I pulled up art from each of the tribes.

I reminded them that when they were done researching they could start planning a rough draft of their mural on a page of blank white paper and then transfer that over into a giant piece of paper.

The first thing I heard when I told themm this today was

"What's a mural?"

As they researched today I pulled up some recent pow wows on YouTube and played them. I heard several kids be extremely surprised because they thought Indians were make believe or something. They kept saying "oh wow I didn't realize they were real!" " those are real people there ?" "I didn't know they still existed!" "where are they at?"

So then a few kids finished up so I told them to starr a rough draft of what they wanted to put on their part of the mural. Three kids brought me the most absolute random drawings in the world. Trying not to be disparaging I asked them "Can you tell me what this picture has to do with your tribe?"

They pouted and exclaimed "You didn't tell us the pictures had to be about INDIANS!!"

[invincible-selfxmade-punk]

We had rain last night for the first time in about 4 months. And of course the power went out because the power goes out here at the drop of a hat. But luckily it was not hot outside so not having the power was just a minor inconvenience and not enough to bake us alive as it has been in the past.

We have been blessed this Summer that it is incredibly mild compared to other years. And the rain cooled everything off further.

But I'm sure the heat is coming and where my husband works, at Dollar Tree, they haven't had air conditioning in the entire 3 years he's worth there. And no matter how many customer or employee complaints they get, the corporate offices in Virginia will not send anyone down to fix it even though it gets upwards of 105° during the summer here.

I was forced to pass a special ed student who had not done any work in my class for two different grading cycles. He would have failed with a 56 for the year but I was strongly advised that unless I wanted some kind of a lawsuit I needed to pass him. Which is normally what they say to us ?, but this year the head of the SPED Department said f*** that, if they fail they fail .Just give them the grade they get . So I did just THAT.

In years past, we were told no matter what grade they get in your class, change it to a 70 so they pass.

But on this kid it wasn't a question of ability it was the fact that he was not going to work and no force on Earth was going to make him do anything.

As far as Injustice is at work go though that is an extremely minor one even if it does get on my absolute last nerve as a teacher.

However they did not insist that I pass the kid who could not read or write, so at least that was a small victory but he's going to be passed over to the next grade anyway as he has been since kindergarten because no one cares.

We now have 3 days of inservice. It is standard to come back and have one day of in service to clean up our classroom verify our grades and do our finish the multitude of paperwork we have to do. We keep a running spreadsheet of every student's grades and I think I put some grades in the wrong columns so I'm going to have to go back and redo a lot I think on that today. But what we will be doing on Monday and Tuesday is anybody's yes. I would guess that maybe we are being trained on some new thing that everyone in education is hot for right now. Because you know every year a new trend comes along and they either want you to learn a new software or a new teaching style or something and just as you finally Master it they completely abandon it and get really excited about something else.

Whether or not the first thing worked is irrelevant.

This was absolutely the toughest year that I've had since I started teaching. Even teaching kids who were sentenced to get their GED and didn't want to be there was easier than teaching these 5th graders. From everything I've seen the fourth graders coming up are wonderful and sweet and kind and I hope they don't change drastically over the summer.

"The tour was over, I survived"

[invincible-selfxmade-punk]

I survived my end of the year teaching evaluation!!

Thank you Lord God Jehovah for a new principal.

There is a huge difference between focusing on what you have accomplished and making you feel completely worthless for what you have not accomplished yet.

Thank God this principal did the former option.

I can go into testing tomorrow with slightly less anxiety.

[invincible-selfxmade-punk]

I had a really bad meltdown today in 8th period. 5th & 8th are my 2 worst. I'd already had my department head come in and help me out with 5th.

In 8th I even have an aide and between the two of us we still cannot control the class. There are five boys in there that simply wreak havoc every day. Today I taught 2 sentences and that was as much as I got. The rest of the time I spent telling them to be quiet.

Finally after the 20th time ---- and trust me having to tell them 20 times to get quiet is very normal and a daily occurrence--- I just lost it.

Half of the class did not even take notes on Friday. The half that did, didn't bother to put their names on the notes.

And these notes are not traditional notes these notes are the type where you only fill in one or two words per sentence-- the type you would normally give special ed kids but I am giving it to everyone because that's how bad the kids are this year.

So after spending the first 25 minutes of class trying to get them situated with their notes, handing them back and trying to figure out what notes belong to who because most people did not put their name on them, I said something about we will pick up where we left off yesterday.

The entire class screamed at me: YESTERDAY WAS SUNDAY!!!!

And that was it. I burst into tears and had to have the principal come for the last 15 minutes of class.

When I worked in my hometown the school that I got sent to was, when I had grown up there, the best school in town. Now it is where the children of drug dealers, gang members, thugs, and convicts go, because it is right down the street from a prison, and across the street from a crack den apt complex.

I expected constant disrespect and misbehavior from those kids. Which I got and more. Part of the reason I walk with a cane now is because I was tackled in the hallway by 2 4th grade boys attempting to jump a third which I stood in the way of, which messed up my back and hips. I had one kid stabbed another kid and my first period class and which I had two AIDS aside from myself and I still could not control them. And the kid who did the stabbing only got one day of in school suspension. And that was it.

So I pretty much expected it from those kids.

These kids come from decent homes. I would wager most of their parents make twice what I do. And yet the constant disrespect this year, the constant refusal to work, and the absolute apathy for anything but tik tok makes them right on par with the baby thugs I taught back home.

[ambicephalic]

Title:

The quarantine generation

Origin:

The background is from a photo I took of a puddle I found on the edge of the parking lot at my dentist's office! Behind those few trees was a chain link fence and an apartment complex.

Description:

Is it just our kids? They never leave their rooms and they don't talk to anyone. Is this a covid generation thing?