we'll just make him feel bad

yesterday i gave out detentions to kids who are not handing in their work and have not been habitually. we have to give 24 hour notice, so of course i get notes back from parents saying that they do not agree with the detention and there is no way their kid is not handing in their work. good job showing your kids to take responsibility. i also had a few kids not show up for detention all together. for those kids: today's class = writing word-for-word out of the textbook for 70 minutes. what i found out later: that qualifies as corporal punishment. that and making a student write something over and over. like if i made them write "one of the reasons our educational system is in the toilet is because there is no fear of punishment or being made to do something you really don't want to do." this, of course, is juxtaposed with teachers who whisper ever so gently in their students' ears that they will "break their neck if they open their mouth to say something like that again" just quietly enough for no one else to hear, and can calmly deny ever saying it if it comes up later. and yes, a teacher told me that yesterday. and yes, he is one of my favorite people and wears fantastic shoes and is the most feminine male we have on staff.

yesterday i also walked out of my room to see two huge, gross baltimore police officers patrolling the halls. i caught stride with a kid, we both looked back kind of befuddled, and i said "what are they doing here? don't they have anything better to do?" and oh did he giggle. the security guard that likes my boobs later came into my room and i asked him what was up with the po-po. turns out some kid called north avenue (school headquarters) saying there was some riot at the school and we were in lockdown. not true. i asked "why would you do that?" and the security guard's response "because half of baltimore is made up of assholes. you didn't know that?" turns out there were helicopters flying above the school, although you never would have known that had you asked a teacher if anything was going down at the school. we just see police officers strolling through the halls like storm troopers with bad haircuts.

the awesome moment of the day: we're listening to the afternoon announcements and some kid's letter to obama is being read and it makes no sense and is super boring and at a point says something about a "victorious win." that's when one of my students asks "but how could you have a win that isn't victorious? that doesn't make any sense." well done, sir. i laughed quite hard and then told him that the bush victory in 2004 is the only example of an "unvictorious win" that i could think of.