phonaesthetica Keeping the beast in the sock drawer since 1974.

A kid in 2nd period (I call him Tiresias because he is blind but intuitive, not to mention girly) laid it out for me in one sentence today:

“Ms. S., if they don’t get you for something technical, I think you’ll be a teacher for a long, long time.”

Tiresias is dead-on-balls accurate. I got into education by default — ask me about my LSAT score and why I fucked it up! – but I could be a lifer if they don’t get me for something ridiculous on standardized test day. People’s Exhibit A: The Great Bubble-Sheet Ben-Gay Clusterfuck of SADIM Testing Week, 2010, when I was long-term-subbing at Our Lady of Maximum Discomfort Middle School.

SADIM is not the test’s real acronym, but it should be.* Like all standardized tests, it’s riddled with inaccuracies and biases; not particularly related to effective teaching; and limited in terms of measuring learning or ability — but it determines whether students in our state graduate from high school, so we prioritize it and do the best we can.

SADIM was the be-all and end-all of human existence at Our Lady, where I worked with a quartet of women I called Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft. They lived in terror that some 12-year-old might use an answer sheet to bubble in a skull with a snake slithering out of the eyehole, and they weren’t wrong. Adult jobs were on the line. We had a minor mixup  – two kids’ booklets were switched by mistake –and every adult in the room (including me) was required to give a “statement,” which mostly involved ass-covering and blame-shifting. None of these women ever smiled. It’s the most hostile place I’ve ever worked, and I once had a temp job counting bags of money for a televangelist with a camera trained on my hands.

I didn’t think I was going to make it ’til May. Every time I got paid — $775 every two weeks because I’d chosen to spread my checks** out over 12 months instead of 9 –my eyes cried all by themselves.

Anyway. Cheney was a reading specialist who rendered children physically rigid with fear. Half-dead from heart surgery and diabetes (she was about to lose her right foot), Cheney used her dwindling chi to huff and puff down the halls on her walking stick (clump clump WHAP, clump clump WHAP) demanding that teachers count and re-count their allotted SADIM testing restroom passes.

“If you run out of passes,” she wheezed at me, “that’s IT for the restroom. Understand? THAT’S IT. When the kids bring the passes back, sign them, note the exact time, AND LOCK THEM UP. FAILURE TO LOCK UP THE PASSES MAKES US VULNERABLE TO A STATE AUDIT.”

I had to administer SADIM with Rumsfeld, the school psychologist. Rumsfeld was beautiful, which made her constant “fuck-you” expression even more jarring. She hated me. I can only assume virulent homophobia. Being in the same room with Rumsfeld was the icing on the train-wreck cake of this panicky, Pinter-esque scene, so my neck seized up. I went to work anyway, since being absent on SADIM day was grounds for immediate dismissal. But, because I’m not a masochist except in my romantic relationships, I took some self-care measures such as Ben-Gay, hot tea, and a little stretching. At the break, I received the following e-mail from Assistant Principal Cheney:

Ms. S,

I had some students come share some concerns with me today. They expressed that they found the room to be very distracting for testing. Please make sure to do your best to keep their environment free from such things. Some of the concerns were:

·         The tea kettle in your room was steeping and was very loud. Please make sure your water is heated before testing begins.

·         You were stretching and students were laughing because of it. I understand that you had a recent injury, but you need to be discreet about stretching and taking medication.

·         You were using an ointment or something minty. Students found this odor to be overwhelming. Please do your best to avoid using anything with a strong odor during testing.

SADIM is an extremely important time for everyone, especially for 8^th graders. We want to make sure we keep the testing environment distraction free. Please see me if you have any questions.

Thank you.

Later on, Ashcroft stopped me in the hall — no easy feat because she was partial to wobbly hooker shoes with egregious cutouts and bows — and we had the only human interaction I ever experienced at Our Lady.

“I’m so glad I’m retiring,” she said. “I feel sorry for new teachers, because this stuff is getting worse. You might be OK, though. You deserve to be OK.”

Ashcroft wobbled off, swatting at a fly that wasn’t there. I felt perversely encouraged. I hadn’t realized how much I needed another shot of perverse encouragement (encouraged perversity?) until today. That Tiresias, he’s pretty all right. I gave him 10 extra credit points and a granola bar. It was all I had on me.

*Soulcrushing Anxiety Demonstrably, Inherently Masochistic or Sad And Desperate Idiots Mutiny.

**I originally mistyped this as “cheeks.” Which would be more accurate.