11 things i don’t understand about schools

I have a lot questions, 11 things that i don’t understand about the schools?

 

1. why do we care so much about capital letters, i don’t like typing them, they require me to hit another key

 

2. why do we require students to write a certain number of pages on a given topic, in my opinion the less pages that i have to read and still get your point the better ( this is in fact how it works in the real world)

 

3.why are we obsessed with complete sentences, i just want you to show me that you get it, i don’t care how you show me, write a sentence, do bullet points, draw a picture, sing a song, write a poem, I don’t give a rip as long as i get it

 

4.when i write a question on the board like, my favorite part of the day is :____________________ , i really just want you to fill in the blank on your piece of paper, why do we want them to write out the question. i made up the question i know what it is , i don’t need to read it 127 times . That’s 889 words that i don’t want to read, and if we do this type of exercise everyday, thats 164,465 words in one school year, which according to google is 365 pages, that is a lot of wasted time folks, and that’s just one question, imagine if i decided to do something crazy like ask 10 questions one day. so please, do not rewrite the question

5.why oh why do we still follow mla , chicago, and any other crazy formatting. i don’t care if you indent your paragraphs or double space, put one space at the end of a sentence or 10. when i want to know where you got your information from, i would love to know the title of the book, the author and the page number, and i don’t care if any of it is underlined, italic, bold, or has a period after it. frankly i don’t care when it was copyrighted, and i care even less about what town it was published in. if for some strange reason i feel a need to know that information, i can google it faster than you can figure out how to put it in the proper format on your bibliography

 

6.why do we feel a need to memorize formulas, and our times tables, at one point this was necessary, but guess what, we’re all walking around with a tiny genius in our pocket. let me ask him. instead teach me how to know what to ask him, and how to do the things that the genius named google can’t do for me. like how to change a tire, how to figure out what is wrong with my car, how to invest my money, how to work my way through a problem.

 

7.why are we so terrified of social media, while at work we can’t use any social media and are not allowed to check our home email. first of all, we can do all of that on our phones if we want to, and there’s no way that work can track that, and why are we paying someone to track it in the first place. just because i’m not on facebook doesn’t mean that i’m doing anything. i could be sleeping, wandering the halls, or eating lunch for the third time today. And if i was allowed to use facebook or twitter, i just might tweet that i’m eating lunch for the third time today, and then you would know that i’m not doing anything work related

8.we hate cell phones, i mean we really hate them. if we see yours , we’ll take it, and give you a detention. yes, i get annoyed when a student pulls out their phone and i’m talking, but that has nothing to do with the phone and everything to do with respect. let’s separate the two, let’s teach them that they need to be respectful, and not that cell phones are evil, because they aren’t.

 

9.why does everyone get an email warning that there will be a fire drill, or lock down drill that day. the warning makes it no longer a drill and more of a pretend walk through. when i know ahead of time of said drill, i don’t allow students to leave the room, i carefully keep track of each one, making it simple to take attendance during this so called drill. we never do them when the entire student body is in the hallway changing classes, or during lunch. to me the drill should take place with no warning and at the worst time possible. that’s the point of a drill right. to figure how to deal with a horrible situation before it’s actually taking place. sorry folks but i don’t think that a fire or a gunman is going to care that all of the students are switching classes, and we aren’t prepared for that.

 

10.we have a strong desire to keep students in school all day no matter what the cost. here’s an example. a senior during her last semester wanted to do a physical therapy internship, but she didn’t get it, so she then opted for a indp study in bio, which didn’t happen, moving on, she requested to have an indp study in anatomy and phys ( a class not even offered) she was then directed to see if she could join my sculpture class, that is already over the max number of students, so I say no, well then how about an indp study in something like jewelry or photography. ( i don’t take indp study students unless they’ve already taken and excelled at all of the classes that I teach.) at the end of the day she landed a gig where she’ll be doing laundry and grocery shopping for the foods class. So we went from an interest in pursuing physical therapy to being a maid, all in a few hours. If she’s met all of her requirements then why not set her free, and let her go home?

11.school board meetings, i avoided them for quite some time as most people do, however contract negotiations were not going well, and we were asked to attend the board meetings, so i did. The board sits at a u shaped table, i don’t remember how many people there are, but no more than 12 or 13. at this u shaped table each seat has a prominently displayed name plaque, plus everyone knows each other. so i was quite amused that as the meeting started they felt a need to call attendance, the president began, john… present…. ( note john is sitting right beside him, and somehow it’s almost a surprise when he says present) , matt… present…… amy…. present…… ashey………. silence…..ashley…. silence ( now i’m wondering how many times we’re going to call ashley, we all can see that seat with ashley’s name plaque is empty , and we all know who ashley is and what he looks like and it’s clear that he isn’t here, ) but one more time… ashley… at this point someone finally chimes in and says, oh ashley isn’t here, he couldn’t come tonight and he sends his regrets, the president continues down the list until he’s called everyone’s name, the only thing that would make this better is if he would call his own name and respond… present. The room is silent, but he bangs his gavel several times anyway, i guess why not. perhaps if i was cool enough to have a gavel i would walk around banging it on things myself, and saying can i please have your attention to a room full of people that are already quiet and staring at me.

now it’s time to share. each person gets a chance to say pretty much whatever they want. there’s a report that the wrestling team won their match last night… thrilling. Now every person that speaks following this announcement will congratulate the wrestling team, even though no members of the wrestling team are present. Really, if this took place in any other setting, people would think that you were seeing things, and take you to the dr.