Fear and Loathing at Taco Bell

We were sitting at Taco Bell over by City Place and there are a lot of signs on the doors that say "Work Here."  Considering the economy, I see that as a hopeful thing. Minimum wage has gone up quite a bit in the last couple of years and although still small is bigger than it was when I started working at two bucks an hour.  

I like to watch people.  I see the couple come in with their two year old.  He's very happy that there is a balloon tied to the high chair they pick out for him.  His mother is showing delight about the balloon and the child is also delighted.

I'm munching down on my double decker taco.  I've had an awful lot of fowl lately and want some mammal to gnosh on.  Mmmmm BEEF.  Even the bean helps beat that fowl taste out of my mouth.  Anyway, I'm munching down on the aforementioned double decker taco and I see this young woman walk in the front door.  She's got her hair in a sock bun.   She has a tattoo that stretches above her clavicle.  She's got on converse sneakers with no laces and is carrying a Coach bag.  She walks in and she's got this HOSTILE expression on her face like she is some kind of MAJOR bad ass.  I see this look on the faces of the students at my school.  I'm interested so I watch her.  She's walking the "I'm going to kick your ass walk." She goes to the counter and she gets a drink and she apparently asks to talk to someone.  The shift manager comes out and I don't hear the conversation but apparently she is seeking a job interview and wants to make sure that she comes at the right time.  The manager tells her to come a week from Saturday at nine.  She repeats it to him and SMILES beautifully. 

She turns around and she's a teenager again.  She has a smile on her face, she says "thank you" several times.  She looks as though she has some hope.

This makes me think a lot.  I see that "Hostile" look at school every day.  I didn't grow up that way.  Is that tough look based on fear?  Are these children really afraid more than hatefully ugly? 

Why are they afraid?  Are they afraid of me? 

R.I.P.

Ode to Jorge

It didn't have to be that way
People told me
That you were brilliant
Sometimes there were glimpses . . .

Mostly, I didn't see that

I saw
The pain, the fear, the longing

The justification

The wild and wooly animal like foraging
for a cigarette butt, for a drink, for whatever could take the edge off.

You scared me more and more. I think I felt your fear.  I heard it inside my own head. 

The reduction to such base instincts.

So gifted, the tales tell.  Sometimes we could sense that you were hopeful
but the downward spiral of fear dragged like the unstoppable force of a maelstrom

Swirling around and round and around again until the time

the hands of the clock stop turning

yesterday

And what is YOUR definition of SLANG?

I was walk down the hall and I smile at people. I figure that's better than "glancing daggers" at the people I pass.   I look around and take in the plethora of youthful exuberance and I look around in time to hear and SEE the word "M*****F****R" come out of a child's mouth. 

The brakes on my heels squeal and I turn to him and sadly my smile has gone and I say "Sir, that is unacceptable."  He gives me an evil look and says "What?"  I say again that his language is unacceptable.  He tells me he "didn't do nothing." 

I have a bitch button, and the quickest way to push it is to lie right to my face.  At this point, I  noticed that he was also wearing a hat inside (against the rules) and ask him to remove it.  He tells me I'm getting on his nerves. 

I asked him if he understood that the use of profanity in public can get him a pricey ticket, let alone the use inside a school building.  He also has no ID. 

I'm trying to find the teachable moment here.  He needs to take the hat off, he needs an ID and he needs to not use profanity at school....Fortunately, an administrator happened by and she was able to explain to him in very small words that HE was creating a problem by having an unwilling attitude. 

God Love Little Jimmy.  He got it.  He repeated back "I'm not supposed to cuss in the building?"  He finally understood that I didn't want to throw down with him.  It was amazing. He DID actually have some manners in the end.  He said, "Thank you Miss." 

What is kind of challenging to me is that this child has no sense of what is appropriate.  How can one get to high school without learning that it's not good to cuss at school? 

The Ubiquitous Apostrophe

I was going through the line at McDonalds near my home and I saw a really nice sign advertising for experienced Store Manager's.  This hit below the belt because I've been acquainted with the franchise owner for 35 years.  I know he knows better. This makes me wonder if he "delegated" the responsibility to someone for having the nice (obviously) expensive signs printed.  This also makes me wonder if the copy went to the printer like that or if the person who set up the printing added that apostrophe.

It seems as if I have a new "language" pet peeve every year.  Last year it was liberry and liberrian.  The year before it was "on tomorrow."  This year it is mine's.  That's just wrong on so many levels.  What creeps me out even more is that there are people with masters degrees in ENGLISH that say "Mine's are like that."

What is horrendous is that there are teachers that are MODELING this usage for their students who are not so swuft.  This is equivalent to "ye olde nail on the blackboard."  It grates uncomfortably.  I cannot imagine that ANY person with a college degree in English would say "Mine's are (referring to personal possessive)."

The adding of an "apostrophe s" to plurality is getting so prevalent in the language that it seems as if educated people no longer make the distinction.  I've caught myself doing it a couple of times which makes me want to scratch my eyes out of my head (in the tradition of Oedipus) so that I cannot see the transgression. 

People tell me I'm a grammar Nazi.  This brings to mind Godwin's Law which provides me some amount of amusement.

I understand casual usage and vernacular banter.  I do speak Southern.  I speak some varieties of Hick.  I still learned proper language usage.  I do not claim perfection, but I claim top 2%.  I know my they're from there from their.  I love games like Kingdom of Loathing because one has to pass the Altar of Literacy in order to participate in the chat feature.  One encounters this....

As you approach the Altar of Literacy, you see the faint outline of a human figure standing in front of it.

"Hello," says the figure. "I'm the ghost of the English language."

"At this time, you are not allowed to enter the chat. This feature is reserved for those who are members of the Order of the Literate"

"If you wish to gain access to the chat, you must perform a series of tasks in order to prove that you can be trusted with the privileges and responsibilities of the Order."

 One finds this....

"Next, you must complete the following sentences..."

When they get [there|their|they're], [there|their|they're] going to put on [there|their|they're] mittens.

[Your|You're] nuts if you think I'm going to polish [your|you're] armor for free.

"Finally, you must answer this fiendishly difficult trivia question: What color was George Washington's favorite black horse?"

What is horribly sad is that there is a "cheat" page that exists to pass the Altar of Literacy. 

What I learned from the Master Degree Possessing English Teacher is that there is now a software program that does all of the APA formatting for anything one writes.  What I remember from my time in grad school is that I had to painfully construct all of my citations.  I thought that was part of the territory.  So now there is a 28 year old English teacher with a higher degree who says "Mine's are like that."

Mine's timbers can collapse leading to catastrophic structural failure. My legs are heavier now than they were when I was 14.  Precious metals are often found in mines. 

What do you think?

I live in the hood

I live in the attendance district for my school.  I am invested in the success or failure or the students in MY neighborhood.

My dog is racist.  I did not teach my dog to be racist.  The children who travel down my back alley who are mean and nasty to pets in the neighborhood taught my dog to be racist.  I am sure there are children that don't deserve the censure of my German Shepherd but there are children that have earned that same censure. 

My dog goes CRAZY when some folks are walking down the alley.  This is not a neighborhood where folks need to travel in the alley unless they are avoiding public view.  In my neighborhood, folks avoid public view when they are breaking into things/houses/cars/ etc.....

I love my big boy German Shepherd. He loves me too.  He hollers big time when his proximity alarm goes off.  He doesn't bark just to be obnoxious. He barks when he wants to warn people off.  He would eat someone who was ugly to me.

Thank you Prince.  You are the best puppy dog ever. 

Sweet Dreams

I am SO excited.  A lot of my "grown" angels are coming to town for Thanksgiving.  We are hooking up for lunch and I will get to see several that are three and four years out of college.  I am incredibly proud of all of them.  We have a book editor from New York.  We have a mother of three (including twins) from Florida. We have the owner of a Fed Ex route, We have a learning specialist who has expanded from her math teaching days.  They are wonderful humans and I am blessed to have had the privilege to teach them all.

I don't think it gets better than this.  Not in my world.

Where do We Go from Here?

At this point, I think that everyone is confused.  Teachers generally want to help students to succeed. WHY would we do this job if we didn't like kids? 

How can we REALLY help them?

Some days are happy

Today was a nice day....My kids came prepared and were willing to talk about their work.  We put it all out on the table.  We have to talk about what we've done.  We have to criticize our own work and the work of our peers.

We have to talk about our own work.  We have to tell what we've learned from the current project.  We have to say what we have learned and say what we would do different.  We then have to talk about another student's project.  We have to admire something that someone else has done.  We then have to tell a peer what we would do differently. 

It's not okay to say that someone's work stinks.  It's not okay to say that we would finish the project because some folk's projects are not finished. 

We learn to learn from our projects.  We learn from mistakes.  We learn that sometimes we don't work fast enough and that most of our peers are already done with the project. 

We learned a lot today. Critique days are helpful on so many levels.  Today... we learned to learn. 

We are fortunate. Life is good.

I've had an Aneurism, I'm Dead, Your Stupidity Killed Me

I had such a bold idea.  I think I can revamp the education system doing something that makes sense.  Hold a child accountable for mastery.  If a child doesn't pass first grade then they need to do it over.  If a child doesn't pass first grade then they also need a massive amount of testing to discover if they are learning disabled or have such profound learning differences that they need additional help.  If a child doesn't pass first grade the second time, then there need to be profound remedial steps taken.  The parents need to be intensely involved at this point.  If they are not willing then the child needs to be placed in the care of people who care enough about the child to intervene and assist the child to do better in school. 

However, Texas says....

The rules included the provisions that no student could repeat the same

grade more than once or repeat more than two grade levels during the elementary grades.   So, since 1984, Texas has promoted children without sufficient skills to pass elementary school.   Dang.  Get this, they can only be retained one year in middle school or junior high.

SO, a child can fail first grade.  Little Angel repeats the grade but because he has failed it already he can't fail it again.  So Angel fails second grade and he repeats it.  Because he has already repeated it he can't fail it again.  As Angel is ten in third grade he can't fail again in elementary.  SO regardless of Angel's performance in third, forth, fifth and sixth grade HE CANNOT BE RETAINED.  So Angel is 14 in 7th grade. He fails.  He is retained again.  He's 15 in 7th grade but because he's already failed it once he can't take it again.  So he's 16 in 8th grade and THEY can't FAIL him so he ends up in High School and he's actually never really ever passed a grade of school and he's 17 years old in 9th grade. 

Now the high schools are held accountable because they couldn't make that 17 year old 9th grader pass that test....The high schools are held accountable if a student doesn't graduate with his "cohort."  SO Angel gets to 9th grade and he's never really ever passed a grade and he's 17 and he can't really read so he is very nearly a grown man and he doesn't want to admit that he is deficient in some way so he gets aggressive and he doesn't want to participate and he wants to tear stuff up because he is disenfranchised and he's almost grown so he has to show out and he takes away from the educational experience of the kids that are going to school to learn. 

How about if a child doesn't pass first grade that we test them every which way but loose?  If he doesn't pass first grade the second time we send that child to a remediation center that deals with children that unable to learn a first grade curriculum after two years.  We don't shove that child into the mainstream to disrupt and detract from the education of the children that DO get it?  If we do this on the early end then maybe the rest of the system will take care of itself.  If the children that are two years behind are helped on the early end then the rest of the years will benefit. 

The ADA requires that students are educated in the least restrictive environment. 

If my 14 year old daughter has to be in the same classroom with an 18 year old man who has never honestly passed a grade then SHE is restricted by him.  

Role Model

I had a conversation recently about Role Models.  Who do our children look up to these days? Seriously? Last year I read Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank: A Slightly Tarnished Southern Belle's Words of Wisdom a rather sassy look at fashions for six year olds.  I see tiny girls at WalMart wearing Playboy bunny shirts and shirts that say "I'm hawt" and shorts with handprints on the seat.

What happened to tiny girls being tiny girls? I see some of the girls in the  hallway at school and somewhere they got a memo that dressing like a hooker is a good thing.  They want to wear stiletto shoes and clomp around school looking like hippos on toe shoes.  That is NOT attractive.  They may think that makes their legs look longer.  It just makes them look graceless and silly. 

Who are they looking to? Where are they seeking things that help them define self image?  Obviously, from popular culture.  They are watching explicit videos and think that if they look slutty enough the boys will like them.  Teenage girls take pictures of their breasts and "sext" them to a boy hoping the boy will like her.  Does she KNOW that he will forward that to everyone HE knows?  No, because she's bereft of role models.

I had to ask myself this question.  Who were my role models?  I didn't have to go looking on TV or videos.  I had the REAL DEAL right in front of my face every day.  My father died when I was small and I got shifted around a bit between relations.  (Sound familiar?)  I had a strong mother and two strong grandfathers and two stronger grandmothers and I didn't need to see any hoochie on TV to give me guidance.  My grandmothers were scary-strong.  They could face down poisonous snakes armed with only a hoe and did more than once as I recall.  They sang loud in church and they took care of people that they didn't have to.  They both dealt with HARD headed husbands for more than fifty years.  They taught me that it was BAD to lie and that it was GOOD to be kind and BETTER to be kinder to difficult people because they needed it more.  They were SMART and they taught me that learning was a good thing because the more I could learn, the better my life would be. 

I learned to love books and learned that they grow more precious with rereading.  I learned how to make things.  I learned NOT to ever say I was bored.  I did that once and got to polish every piece of silver in the house.  I don't think I've ever been bored since.  I learned to play piano because my grandmother showed me Middle C on the piano and showed me what it looked like in the hymnbook and told me to figure the rest out. It was a VERY large puzzle. 

How could I do better?  I may not be glamorous.  I don't really care as that is very superficial.  I may not be rich.  I don't measure success by dollars.  I look at the people that I see every day and I am grateful to know them and grateful to love them.  I see challenges every day and I'm grateful for that because it keeps life interesting.