Cherry trees are blooming in the courtyard between the seventh- and eighth-grade halls. The other day, I walked the kids that way to lunch: it’s out of our way, but I thought I might enjoy some fresh air. Perhaps they would, too.
“Mr. Scott, can we walk through the blossoms to lunch again?”
Now, we do it every day. At their request.
Monday after break is always a bit of a mystery. No one really knows how the kids react; for that matter, nobody really knows all the adults are going to act. Some of the kids are reluctant to go back to school. and it shows in the apathy some of the adults are more reluctant to go back and it shows in their snarkiness having spring break. This relatively late in the year is also tricky. We’re into our final quarter, but with benchmark testing, in the beer, testing, access testing, probably some math testing for some students field trips, field days, half days, and like we really only have about seven weeks or so of school after having a week off it’s difficult to get motivated for seven more weeks. It feels like an afterthought
For me, with this being my last year at Hughes, it hits a little differently. Some of the kids were routing; some of the kids were focused; most of the kids were somewhere in between. The day slipped by relatively uneventfully and I returned home a quarter as of course 45 days long. I closed my car door and said aloud, “44.” 44 more days in Greenville County schools 44 more days these kids. 44 more days to wrap up 17 years. So both a little sad about it and quite excited at the same time.
It was, of course, the first of many last, and I’m glad that I am aware at this point that this is the last time I’ll be doing some of these things. The honors kids are finishing up little roaming and Juliet papers for all. I know that may be the last time that I run through the particular assignment with a group of students. After next year, I will have the option of going back to English, but if things go as well as I’m hoping, I don’t know that I’ll want to. In English 8, we will soon be starting The Diary of Anne Frank, and that would be the last time we run that unit. We read the play, and we act out most of the first act in class. While I’m not sure how much they learned about English and how they learned a lot about the holocaust a lot about the horrors of living under Nazi occupation, and since they are the same age, they learn a bit about themselves as well. It’s always been one of my favorite units to teach.
So today was a bit of a mixed bag. It was fun and exciting: it was so exhausting.
This final quarter is also another last for our family, and this is much more significant: this is the last quarter Lena will be living with us during the school year. That ending has come all too soon. It’s a parental cliche to wonder where the time went, but when you’re living at it it’s not a cliche anymore.
The new school I will be teaching at next year doesn’t even physically exist yet. For most of next year, we’ll be operating out of a high school. Today, though, was the groundbreaking for the new facility.
Four sweet, dark-haired, dark-eyed girls crowded around me and asked, almost in unison, “Can we go to the media center during lunch?” It’s Ramadan, and my four Muslim students (three are from Afghanistan and one is from Syria) are eager to avoid even the sight of food while they are fasting. They cluster together throughout the whole day: the guidance counselor purposely made their schedule so that they have almost every class together since they feel safest with each other.
Of course, I agreed for them to go to the media center: growing up in a strange Christian sect that borrowed all the Jewish festivals, I had to fast one day a year during Yom Kippur, though our sect preferred the translated name, the Day of Atonement. I have a slight sense, then, of the challenge my Muslim students face, though only a very slight sense: we didn’t go to school or work on the Day of Atonement, and it was only one day. I can’t imagine what it would be like to fast all day and to go about one’s regular schedule at the same time, so I’m certainly sympathetic to the difficulties they face this month.
When we got back from lunch, the girls were waiting at the classroom door. They came into the room and immediately asked if they could go pray. “If we don’t pray while we’re fasting,” one girl explained, “it doesn’t count.”
I looked at them quizzically: “Why didn’t you pray while you were in the media center during lunch?”
“It was too early,” another of the girls explained.
The skeptic in me wondered if they will start asking questions at some point. Would a truly good god be so upset that you prayed a few minutes early? Would a fair god be obsessed with females’ modesty in clothing while ignoring males’ modesty? Would a wise god really be all that worried about what animal you eat? These were the same kind of questions I asked myself years ago, and when I dallied in Catholicism a few years ago, I didn’t find resolution to these issues; I just temporarily stopped thinking about them. But once they’re there…
Since I made it official that this will be my last year at Hughes Academy, I have noticed a change in how I view things. “Don’t check out these last few weeks,” Kinga said to me. I replied that this was the last batch of students I’m sending to local high schools, and I want my reputation to remain intact. Several teachers have told me that they can tell who my students are after the first major writing assignment. I don’t want that to change this final year.
Still, my stress levels on some things have declined greatly. Today, for example I saw a kid with his hoodie still on, and I told him to take it off. He said he was going off to PE and would take it off afterward. I knew it he is not supposed to have it at PE, but in the end I just let him go. Karma will catch up to him, I thought sure enough, an hour later, I saw him standing in the hall, being dressed down by the principal for wearing his hoodie.
Another example occurred last week. One student was extremely disrespectful with me, and this disrespect came immediately upon being told that he needed to vacate the hallway and make it to class. I’ve had encounters with a student earlier in the year, and none of them have been pleasant. I can only imagine how much chaos he brings to the classrooms he attends. I thought that perhaps I should write him up. That would be a mild blessing for his teachers because a day without his problematic behavior is like a day of vacation. You can get things done that you couldn’t get done otherwise. Still, in the end, I decided it was just not worth my time. I’d have to call his mother, and I’d have to find that phone number by going to this teacher or that teacher and tracking it down. I wouldn’t have access to it myself. All that being said, I just decided it was not worth my time.
Tech-free day — which means students couldn’t use any technology. And they had to look up a couple of unknown words…
For many years, the end of the school year was something of a relief. I had completed another year of instruction; my students were moving on to bigger challenges; and I would be able to rest for a while. The school year was always a challenge, but it was never anything insurmountable.
Then a few years ago, every school year started to feel a little more like the myth of Sisyphus. I was rolling the boulder up the mountain year after year, but at least when I got to the top, even though I knew it would roll back down, I always had some satisfaction that I had indeed pushed it up the mountain to begin with. Over the last few years, however, when I reached the year’s pinnacle, when I have pushed that boulder up the mountain one more time, I stand there, waiting for it to roll back down. Instead of turning my attention to summer break, I just watch the boulder tumble back down the hill as I think, “Well, I’m just going to have to roll it back up again next year.”
Part of that was a function of exhaustion, I’m sure. Yet part of it arose from the nervousness I felt, and I believe all teachers feel, as one year ends, and the next one begins. It’s been the same worry every single year: What else are we going to have to do next year that just feels like jumping through a hoop?
In short, I’m tired of jumping through hoops to provide data for people at the district office who need to produce something that justifies their six figure jobs. Reports and charts require data; we teachers provide that data. Lately, it’s all I feel I do. I’m sure it’s somewhat debatable how accurate that description is, but it is how a lot of teachers feel today not this in our school, not just in our district, not just in our state, but all across the country. All teachers are tired of the increasing administrative requirements, the increasing data analysis requirements (often analyzing data of questionable value to begin with), and the increasing number of silver-bullet computer programs and websites, which don’t solve problems, but usually only create more work. Teachers are tired of those who hold the purse strings dictating how things are going be done when most of those making legislative decisions have never been in a classroom to begin with. Teachers are tired of “solutions” which are nothing of the sort, but rather simply legislation controlling the one thing that we as a society can legislate about: teachers.
Teacher are leaving public education in droves these days, for the aforementioned reasons and likely many other others. I am afraid that I have decided I must join those ranks.
Effective at the end of the 2024-2025 school year, I resign my position at [this school].
I leave [this school] with a certain degree of sadness, to be sure. I have taught here for so long and created such a reputation for myself that it is quite difficult to give all that up. Students coming to my classroom know what to expect. Students who have older siblings whom I taught arrive expectations based on stories their older brother or older sister told them. Parents who have talked to the parents of former students greet me with smiles on Meet the Teacher night and tell me they are eager for their son or daughter to receive the challenge, which, according to my reputation, I am able to provide. Former students come to see me regularly, and it’s always a delight to talk to them. In leaving [this school], I leave all that behind. It is a sacrifice I don’t make lightly.
However, I believe I have accomplished everything I could have accomplished at [this school], and it is time for me to move on. Other challenges await, and I am eager to take them on.
This content is private.
When you go for your first interview in years, it might be a semi-stressful event. After all, you’re out of practice.
You haven’t done this for so long you might not prepare properly. You might forget the name of the teaching model the school uses, and on the way to the school, you might have to refresh your memory at a traffic light.
You might have forgotten the stress of wondering if you’re going to be on time: you left with plenty of time, but who knows what delays await you, especially on Southern roads. It could be road work; it could be a traffic jam; it could be awful roads; it could be someone going ten miles under the speed limit.
You might have to schedule the interview just at the tail end of your day, and in an effort to be a little subtle about things, not come to school dressed for the interview but attempt to make the switch on the way. A service station bathroom? Too long. GPS says I only have eight minutes to spare. Traffic lights for the shirt and tie; remote corner of a grocery store parking lot near the school for the pants.
You might have to go to the restroom when you arrive but decide there’s just not the time (even after checking in with the receptionist), and besides, it’s not that urgent.
You might have forgotten that you’re not strictly (or even nearly) wearing dress shoes because you’ve gone all in for zero-drop shoes and don’t own a pair of formal zero-drop shoes, and you realize you probably should have bought some. In the meantime, you try desperately to remember not to cross your foot on your knee.
You might find yourself talking too much and have to tell yourself to shut up. “It shows your passion,” you might justify later. Perhaps your right.
First interview in seventeen years — went alright. We’ll see.
Today we covered 3.1 — Tybalt kills Mercutio, Romeo kills Tybalt, and the prince banishes Romeo.
“When you get to the third act of a Shakespeare play,” I’d explained to the kids yesterday, “everything changes.”
I’ve always especially enjoyed the lesson we do for 3.1. The kids select various divisions of the scene, read and discuss those divisions, and then prepare a tableaux vivant to summarize it. Kids who get the latter part of the scene quickly call me over to check their understanding.
“Wait, Tybalt is dead? How did that happen?”
“You mean Mercutio is gone? What?!”
My answer to all such inquiries is the same: “When you guys present your tableauxs, you’ll see.”
I’ve been working at the same school since 2007. The end of this year will mark the seventeenth full school year I’ve taught there. I began in a room at the end of the eighth-grade hall; at the end of my first year, I was moved to the top of the hall, put on another team, and given my first English I class to teach. I’ve been in that room ever since. Sixteen years in the same classroom.
At this point, by my count, there are only four teachers who have taught at that school longer than I. Two are retiring at the end of this year. I would be number three in seniority. I know one of those two teachers is planning on retiring after next year, and so I’d move up to number two.
In a lot of ways, that’s an admirable goal. It’s a rarity in today’s world, though. Changing jobs every few years seems to be the rule and not the exception. Still, I always thought that there was something rewarding about sticking around and mastering a position. And there’s something in me that thinks it might be a real kick to reach that point: no one has taught here longer than I.
But what happens when the requirements of supervisors (in this case, people at the district level) make it difficult to continue teaching in a middle school with a clear conscience? What happens when you start to feel complicit in the systematic over-testing of students? What happens when the amount of stress you feel from jumping through all the hoops the district puts in front of middle school teachers begins to overshadow the joy of the job itself? You pull out your resume, which you haven’t updated in well over a decade, polish it up, write a cover letter, and start applying for jobs at high schools.
The Boy and I headed out for a walk after dinner. We took the dog, we chatted about school, keyboards (as in computer keyboards — a recent interest of the Boy’s), district band tryouts (tomorrow evening), and random topics (as if that list weren’t random enough). It was another of those “how many more times do we do this?” moments. The Girl didn’t go with us because she had gone to her boyfriend’s house to watch a movie with him.
Everyone’s role slowly shifts.
In the South, we don’t know what to do with snow. When it falls, everything comes to a halt. There are long lists of closures and delays on every local website — first and foremost, schools. Our district posted this today ahead of snow that’s suppose to start around noon tomorrow:
Greenville County Schools will have an eLearning day Friday, January 10. Schools and office buildings will be closed. All activities, including athletic events and field trips, are canceled on Friday and Saturday. The District’s ICE (Inclement Conditions Evaluation) Team evaluated the forecasts, and the decision was made based on the predictions and timing for snow and/or ice accumulation, which may result in unsafe road conditions, downed power lines, and loss of electrical services.
Because we are an approved eLearning district, this day will not have to be made up and instruction will be provided through Google Classroom. Students will complete eLearning assignments later if they are unable to participate due to power outages, lack of internet service, or other barriers. Once operations resume, school personnel will begin rescheduling events as appropriate. Please check local media, the district website, and the district’s social media for the latest information on school closings or delays.
I have mixed feelings about this: elearning days are seldom very productive because so many students, for whatever reasons, fail to log in and do the work. Teachers almost always give light work during that period because they know so few people will show up. Knowing this, a few more students decide not to show up.
But at least we’ll be able to play in the snow. In theory.
First day back of the new semester. Being with the kids again reminds me of why I continue teaching: it’s an incredible feeling to realize my job is simply to help a bunch of really great kids. Did everything go perfectly? Of course not. Were there some magnificent moments? Of course there were.
Could I have used another few days of break? Of course I could — but not from the kids. Not from the kids. From the paperwork, meetings, and bureaucracy.
Today was our first day back in the building. It was, mercifully, a teacher workday. It’s a good way to begin the new semester: I had time to do some serious planning in the morning, and I worked with the Special Ed teacher who co-teaches one of my classes to figure out some effective ways of simplifying a terrorizing, difficult text that’s in our textbook. That’s how I spent my morning. I could have used the afternoon to prepare some of the materials we’d planned on using and to create some differentiated (i.e., simplified) versions for some of my students who are still learning English. (I’ve got seven students in one class alone who speak very limited English, including one who speaks almost no English. She needs a specialized English class for absolute beginners, not anything I can give her. But I’ll be damned if someone is going to be in my class and not learn something, so I make special mini-lessons for her that I squeeze in here and there. Otherwise, she works on Rosetta Stone.) Still, we didn’t have that time.
Instead, we had a Clifton Strengths Finder session. Earlier in the year, we were asked required to take a survey to help find our strengths. Each question had two activities and you were to pick which one you preferred and to which degree, and there was a neutral option in the middle. For example, it might be something like this:
Imagine it’s time for dinner. What are you more likely to do: pick the restaurant or decide to stay home? What an idiotic question! It depends. How tired is my wife? How tired am I? How much money do we have? What do we have in the refrigerator? What time is it? What plans do we have after dinner? I picked neutral.
Another one: Imagine you’re speaking to community leaders. Are you the “let’s get started now” type or the “No, I don’t eve want to do that” type? Again, that depends. What am I talking about? How long am I expected to speak? To what end am I giving this speech? Do I even support the cause? Is this something likely to affect change or am I just a figurehead speaker? I picked neutral.
A third example: Imagine your boss asks you to work on a big project. Are you a big picture person or do you need details? Once again, it depends. What is this project? Do I feel it’s in my scope of expertise? Will I be working on this alone or with a group? If it’s with a group, what role will I be playing? What is the timeframe for this project? What is the budget? I picked neutral.
A final example: Imagine you’re receiving an award. Would you want individual recognition or would you insist on recognition of the team effort. Bet you can guess where I’m going with this one: it depends, damnit.
Almost every one of the questions was like this. I picked “Neutral” over and over and over — for most of the 190 questions. (Yes, 190 questions. Are these people insane? Does district administration think I have nothing better to do with my time than read 190 poorly-conceptualized questions?)
Just before break, I got an email from the district office politely requesting me to take the survey. I did take the survey. We don’t have your data results. (New Year’s Resolution: I am so sick of hearing the word “data” that I have sworn I will not use it myself at all in 2025. I hate that word now, oh how I detest it.) Well, I know I took it. But we don’t have your results — the session won’t be as meaningful for you if you don’t take the survey.
When I logged back in, I saw a message: “We were unable to tabulate your survey because you selected ‘Neutral’ too frequently.” Well, that’s what I get for thinking. I explained this in yet another email. Can you please take the survey again? Fine, I’ll take the survey.
For probably 175 of the 190 questions, I randomly chose any of the options other than “Neutral.” In fact, if I’d thought about it, I would have had one of my students come in during planning and pick them randomly for me: it was such a hassle because the survey software was so poorly programmed. Sometimes the “Submit” button worked the first time, sometimes I had to click it twice. Still, for about 15 of the questions, something caught my eye in the wording or the responses, and I actually answered those questions truthfully.
Today, we got those results back. Strangely and somewhat unexpectedly, the test results put my four top strengths as just the ones I’d choose for myself. Two thoughts about this: first, how did it do that? It was literally 92% random selections. Second: why did I spend all that time taking a survey when I already knew what the results would be?! I could have looked at this chart and told you most of my strengths would lie in the “Strategic Thinking” block, and four of my five “strengths” were in that quadrant. The only outlier was one in executing: I have a “restorative” strength — I like to fix stuff and solve problems. No, I don’t. I don’t at all. I prefer to think things through carefully and avoid the damn problems in the first place. That’s my priority.
This is one of the biggest contemporary frustrations with teaching, and it seems to be nationwide: the powers that be require us to waste so much time on just such things as today’s nonsense.
Everyone has returned home; K returns to work tomorrow — the 2024 holiday season is over. The timeless magical period of Wigilia and Christmas and all the time preparing for it disappears, and the worries that for a few days we put out of our minds come crowding back in.
I woke up this morning thinking of school. The students are great — the best group I’ve had in years. The amount of micro-managing and mindless paperwork has increase so much over the last two years that it has me dreading a return. I’m left in a stressful quandary:
It’s a difficult decision that I’ll have to make very soon, and it entails a conversation with my school’s administration that I don’t really anticipate gleefully.
L is still recovering from surgery. It will take a couple of weeks. It’s still stressful to us all, though. It’s “Worry 2” instead of “Worry 1” because we know it’s temporary. She’ll recover; she’ll be able to breath better; her sinuses won’t be giving her constant headaches. So it’s a short-term worry — hence, “Worry 2.” But it’s our daughter we’re worried about: even when it’s a seemingly unfounded worry, we can’t just shake it off.
We have a leak in our roof. It might be under warranty from the company that replaced our roof a few years ago; it might not be. We won’t know until the company comes out and looks at it. But we’ve been on the list for over a week now. It took them forever to start the work in the first place. I’m not confident we’ll see anyone here for a long time.
And it’s supposed to start raining tomorrow afternoon and rain through the weekend.
I’ve got it tarped, but not sufficiently for a heavy rain. The location of the leak and the shape of our roof make it difficult to tarp. And we have no idea how long this will last.
Do we just call another company and take the hit?
Do we call insurance (they suggested calling the company that replaced it in the first place — a company the insurance adjuster had recommended, for the wrote our current roof)?
We have elected as president a narcissist who’s a convicted felon who tried to retain power by overthrowing the democratic process, a man who is, in every possible sense of the idea, completely unfit for the office. And some very worrying people will likely have an influence on him. People like Curtis Yarvin:
Yarvin, who considers liberal democracy as a decadent enemy to be dismantled, is intellectually influential on vice president-elect JD Vance and close to several proposed Trump appointees. The aftermath of Trump’s election victory has seen actions and rhetoric from Trump and his lieutenants that closely resemble Yarvin’s public proposals for taking autocratic power in America. (The Guardian)
When Trump takes office in a few weeks, it could conceivably lead to the end of America as we know it. Sure, the Republicans said the same things about Biden, but those fears were based on baseless conspiracy theories and good-old-fashioned hate-mongering. The people surrounding Trump aren’t being conspiratorial about anything: they’re saying it all aloud. They’re not holding their cards close: they’ve laid them all out with the Project 2025 manifesto and rhetoric people like Yarvin are saying.
Given the post-election period and Trump’s preparation for a return to the White House, Yarvin’s program seems less fanciful then it did in 2021, when he laid it out for Anton.
In the recording of that podcast, Yarvin offers a condensed presentation of his program which he has laid out on Substack and in other venues.
Midway through their conversation, Anton says to Yarvin, “You’re essentially advocating for someone to – age-old move – gain power lawfully through an election, and then exercise it unlawfully”, adding: “What do you think the actual chances of that happening are?”
Yarvin responded: “It wouldn’t be unlawful,” adding: “You’d simply declare a state of emergency in your inaugural address.”
Yarvin continued: “You’d actually have a mandate to do this. Where would that mandate come from? It would come from basically running on it, saying, ‘Hey, this is what we’re going to do.’”
Throughout the 2024 campaign, Trump promised to carry out a wide array of anti-democratic or authoritarian moves, and effectively ran on these promises. Trump has suggested he might declare a state of emergency in response to America’s immigration crisis.
Trump also promised to pursue retribution on individually named antagonists like representative Nancy Pelosi and senator-elect Adam Schiff, and spoke more broadly about dispatching the US military to deal with “the enemy within”.
Later in the recording, Yarvin said that after a hypothetical authoritarian president was inaugurated in January, “you can’t continue to have a Harvard or a New York Times past since perhaps the start of April”. Later expanding on the idea with “the idea that you’re going to be a Caesar and take power and operate with someone else’s Department of Reality in operation is just manifestly absurd.”
“Machiavelli could tell you right away that that’s a stupid idea,” Yarvin added. (The Guardian)
This is, of course, a worry that leaves me thinking, “This is all out of my hands — I can do nothing about it,” and yet. And yet…
So when the holidays are over, it’s not just a return to “normal” life. It’s that with a few additional stressors (not even all mentioned here) thrown in. We’ll get through it all, but it doesn’t diminish the stress levels.
Every now and then, a student will challenge me to a chess game with much braggadocio and bravado.
“I’m going to beat you so bad, Mr. Scott!” comes the claim. “You don’t stand a chance.”
My response is usually simple: “Perhaps.” There are plenty of thirteen-year-old chess players in the world (probably in the county) who could, indeed, thrash me. When facing an opponent for the first time, I prefer humility. Usually.
What I was thinking, though, was anything but humble: “Perhaps. But remember, young one, I have worked with you for quite some time now. I know how you think. I know your critical thinking abilities. I know how much patience you have (or in this case, don’t have). I know how easily (or not) you make connections between seemingly disparate passages of the text. I know how well you infer. Very strong chess players do all these things better than the average person; you do most of these at about an average (or even below average) level. Also, to beat me, you’ll need to know chess theory better than I do, which requires study and focus — two things you don’t always excel at. Therefore, taking all of this into consideration, it’s highly unlikely that you will beat me.”
Now, thinking all these things, I often just play along with the trash talk: “Buddy, I’m going to kick you so hard your grandmother is going to feel it.” The most brutal trash talk I do is when, after a couple of moves, I just give the player my queen. “I won’t be needing that.” Among those who have a basic understanding of chess, this always elicits hoots and laughs. One student might run over to someone not watching the game and recount excitedly what I just did.
I thought about that today as students in my last period class struggled mightily with making claims for an argumentative writing assignment with which we’re concluding the semester. I thought I’d set everything up perfectly for them to see some connections that would lead to good claims. We were annotating the text for things illustrating the narrator’s family’s poverty and the acts of kindness they perform and in turn receive. I made sure students saw two passages:
Here we have two acts of kindness that directly contribute to the family’s survival. Yet none of the students could make the connections and inferences necessary to come up with a simple claim about this: “The family receives basic needs from the actions of others.”
The co-teacher in the class, seeing the same problem, started searching online for some sentence stems to help them with their claims. When working with struggling students, sentence stems (also known as frames) help students orient their thinking and direct their writing.
“Since claims can be so varied,” I told her, “I doubt you’ll find much.” She’s a great special education teacher and a real advocate for all students: she didn’t give up. Still, she found nothing.
“I just don’t know how to teach these kids such basic critical thinking skills,” I said. I’ve tried logic puzzles and similar ideas, but I’m just not good at that. I feel that’s teaching skills (inferring, categorizing, comparing/contrasting) that most kids have learned years ago. It’s something an elementary teacher would be trained to teach. Not someone who studied secondary education.
It’s from classes like this that the “I’m going to beat you badly!” chess claims emerge. One such kid kept bragging while I set up pieces, and he put his class materials away. He sat down across from me and said, “Okay, so how do you play this game?”