Sit down

Ok friends that have actually been reading this...........I am about to apologize for the following rant. I am almost incoherent with rage, frustration, amazement. I want to rail at the almost studied ignorance of .................people. I feel beaten, abused, taken advantage of and rendered impotent. I have made no secret of the fact that the whole teaching world is definitely NOT my type of gig. I believe that teachers are the one of the most downtrodden group of people at times. BUT they are amazingly capable of turning on their own with the least amount of provocation. And the administration ................well.................. I wouldn't want to be in administration, no power is worth the lobotomy that goes with it. The latest in the saga that is WSHS and our specialty Center for the fine and performing arts is that our class sizes are too small and we will have to cancel some of these classes or combine them with others in order to have the numbers meet a 15 or 20 student in a class ratio. ONLY the electives are being held to this standard. We are a specialty built on electives. We are the only school in the county with a full dance program; that also happens to have a working partnership with GMU's dance program. Our creative writing program is huge and the topics covered, and the level of intense study dedicated seems on par with some college level courses. We have a computer graphics lab and 3 full time art teachers. A brand new music technology lab and 2 classes in piano. And then there's the theatre stuff. You all know how I am about kids. I don't look at them as "kids" per se. when I was interviewed I was continually asked what new things would I bring to the program to make it more rigorous and fully rounded in a theatre education. The senior theatre students are being asked to do college level work. And now we are being told that they are "just electives" and we need to have 15 or 20 people in a class(say..... directing...where they are required to direct a one-act lasting a minimum of 20 minutes, max 45 minutes to be performed at an evening performance with outside rehearsals, auditions etc, etc.) . Or that there aren't enough students in Dance 3(juniors), so they will combine Dance 2 and 3, or 1 and 3 to make up the numbers. Or they will just cancel the classes altogether...........never mind that students who had to audition to come to our school that are required to take these classes in order to graduate with a CFPA distinction, that have transferred from other schools........ are NOT getting the classes they signed up for. They are "just electives", we have to concentrate on raising our test scores and balancing the budget. Believe me, I understand about budgets. I get no money from the school for anything. If I need to do anything that requires money I had best be selling some tickets. That is the only way we make any money. If we don't sell tickets to a show, we have no money to buy supplies. My own department wont even let me buy something because it's theatre related and they need to save all the money for the english classes. If I want a tv/vcr/dvd thing for my students I will have to buy it myself. But all the other teachers in language arts can request one and their requests will be honored first. "just borrow one if you need it" Well, that would be fine in most cases if the classes I was near had tv's that were in good working order, OR were not already being utilized. But it isn't about tv's. And it isn't all about me (for a change;). It is about support for a program that we had no say in it being a part of this school. It was mandated by the school board years ago, and NOW we, the teachers, are being told (I feel) that what we were hired for is not important and has no real bearing on the students that we are supposed to be teaching. I am not an insensitive idiot (all the time), I may not have a "calling " for teaching like some of the people I work with, but I have this job and i will take it as seriously as any other job I get. This is wrong. It's wrong on many levels, but mostly on the level that it assumes that our students are idiots just taking these "elective" classes to fill a 7 period schedule. And that all we do in our classes is "hang out". Yesterday I had a student working on a project for the set for Wizard of Oz. she had out her calculator and some graph paper and at one point looked at me and said "I can't believe I'm using the pythagorean theorem to figure this out, but it's helping. Who knew?" So I'm asking my kids to "hang out" in class to get their A?

I know at the beginning I said I was incoherent;) There's so much more in me that I can't type fast enough, my mind is whirling. And there is also the part of me that is 5 years old just throwing a tantrum that life isn't fair. No, it isn't. But why does it need to affect so many at once? It is so wearing to constantly hear that what I do isn't really important, it isn't "real teaching". What is real teaching? I'm not asking for accolades. I don't really expect them. But why diminish the students along with me? How did it get here to this point? And where are we that test scores dictate what a student can choose to pursue?