phonaesthetica Keeping the beast in the sock drawer since 1974.

Dear August 2013 self,

So, girlfriend, you all rested up from summer vacation? No? You taught summer school? Damn. Well, I hope you did something chill like Literature in Film (Cameron Diaz Bad Teacher-style) because the 2013-2014 school year is ON for the next 180 days. Do yourself a favor and implement the following sanity strategies, courtesy of your exhausted, feverish April self; the self sitting in front of the computer in her underwear, counting the hours left in the 2012-2013 school year (82.5, plus Senior Breakfast and Graduation:

• Be a hardass about cell phones on the first day of school. The first kid you catch using their phone in class? TAKE THEIR PHONE FOR THE REST OF THE DAY. If you don’t, you’ll be fighting those phones ALL YEAR LONG, and by November, the kids will be egregiously texting two feet from your face. Buy a lockbox; take the phones; stash them in it. What you didn’t fully grok your first couple of years teaching is: It’s not enough to post a rule; you have to enforce it. Tirelessly.
• Be whine-proof. Kids want to whine? They should join a European soccer team.
• Late work loses 10% of points for each day it is late. The only exceptions are residential drug rehab or the violent death of a first-degree relative. The minute you make an exception for one kid, the other 175 will smell your weak blood in the water. “My computer crashed, Miss,” they’ll say, like you’re some kind of moron. “Miss, I’m just really stressed out right now.” Giving in doesn’t prepare them for adult life. When was the last time anyone gave you a break?
• Limit bathroom passes. I know you hate being in charge of when other people go to the bathroom and you never want to say no — you resented having to ask when you were a kid — but they’re taking advantage. People with active bladder infections and raging cocaine addictions go to the bathroom less often than your students do.
• The first time a group does more socializing than working, warn them. The second time, reassign them. Do not apologize; do not explain. You don’t need them to like you — just to respect you. In fact, it’s better if they don’t like you at first. Less room for disappointment; more practice for the top-down management style of the real world.  We’re not a self-paced charter school in the strip mall, or a groovy Waldorf edu-farm with goats and conversational-Esperanto classes and shit. Sorry.
• Load up your AP class with serious, rigorous academic reading and writing during the first week of classes. Load it up enough so that the kids who don’t want to do AP work; the ones pushed into AP by parents or counselors or boyfriends or girlfriends, will beg to switch to a regular section. 35 kids are registered for your AP class. This is too many. Your goal is 26.
• 18 years old is not as grown as it thinks it is. It comes in a large, adult package, but in general, 18 = emotionally 15 in girls and 12 in boys. Remember the farting contest last month?
• Nine months is a long time for a kid. You’ll have students who start out paragons of academic integrity and social maturity, and end in a counseling-office mess, so don’t trust easy. And don’t make  hard-and-fast judgements about kids who start off like jerks. Because at least a few of them will surprise you.
• Four percent of the population are sociopaths — they literally have no conscience. This is a comforting statistic when trying not to take other people’s behavior personally. And, yo, that’s not even counting the vast array of personality disorders and sundry addictions that 21st century American flesh is heir to (plus food additives, toxins in the water, and quick-cut video graphics). Whatever’s happening to the bees is happening to the kids, too. Ditto re: the fish with ambiguous genitalia.
• You are vulnerable to emotional manipulation, especially when it’s intentionally subtle or if the manipulator lacks the self-awareness to know s/he is being manipulative. Work on that. I don’t know if your insurance will cover working on it, but you could at least call up and ask the guy about co-pays.
• When a kid wants to talk to you — really talk, not whine, manipulate or complain — stop doing whatever else you’re doing. The grading or emailing or whatever it is can wait. Listen to the kid. Give the kid your eyes. This is what you are here for.

Have a good year — and remember, 79% is not a B.

Love,

Your May 2013 self

What inspires me about teenagers is their passion for justice and rights; their belief that the way things should be is the way things could and will be, with the right punch-kick combo of mountaintop outcry and moral certitude. What irritates me about teenagers is their Jesuitically complex, dedicated hunt for any loophole they can find in The System.

I see it every day with school rules. “No hats in the building” whips them up into an indignant frenzy, as does “No cell phones out on the desks.” I re-iterate these rules, oh, I don’t know, 58 times a day. Now that they know they can’t wear me down, they’ve begun experimenting with Reasons The Rules Are Stupid and We Shouldn’t Have To Follow Them.

“What if you’re 18?” one kid asked, looking at me like he’d really backed me into a corner. “They can’t stop you from having a cell phone out if you’re 18.”

“I turn 37 on Friday,” I said. “I can’t have my cell phone out either.”

“What about personal freedom? I’m going to write a letter of protest!” he said, and took out his phone to start composing it. He didn’t have any paper, though, so I gave him a sheet.

The other day, I had to hand down a new school rule: No earbuds in ears during class time, not even if you’re reading silently to yourself. They lost their shit.

“We think BETTER with our music!” they howled, and they may be right — something does seem to be happening vis a vis the evolution of the human brain in terms of multitasking and attention splitting* — but it doesn’t matter. It’s the rule. I have to enforce it or I lose my job.

“It’s only five hours a day,” I said. ” You can handle it.”

What I’m trying to say, I think, is Get used to the system. It’s bigger than you are, and fighting it will only wear you out. For every rule that you don’t like; for every requirement that you resent, I have a meeting I dread, taxes I don’t want to pay, and a ration of shit to take from someone above me. If you want a free and independent life — which, in our society, means staying out of poverty — you have to decide carefully which battles to pick, make sure they’re worthwhile, and be ready for the consequences as well as the joys. You have to stay in school, fly low, and beat the radar. Sometimes the only choices life offers are (a). Compromise; (b). Acquiescence; and (c). Defeat. There is no (d). None of the Above.

That’s one of the saddest things about being an adult; not liking any of the choices open to you. Knowing that the world is going a particular (pornsick, mysogynistic,unjust, wasteful) way, and that you don’t have individual power to turn the tide. You can protect and nurture yourself as much as possible — build a network of like-minded friends; start a community center; boycott the homophobes at Target; get into guerrilla activism and fuck up an offensive billboard. But you can’t just…make it all be different right now.

I miss knowing I could.

*Thumbs are evolving into a sleeker, faster incarnation too. We can’t send billions of text messages a day and not see some biological revamping within a few generations.

Me: “So, I really like your son! He’s a good student and a good person, which is even more important.”

Mom: “Thanks! He’s great at home, too. He’s been doing a lot of cooking lately, and he’s always trying to help us organize the house.”

Dad: “He’s really into clothes.” Pause. “He made us change outfits before we left tonight. He said we ‘weren’t going out like that.’”

Me: “Yes, he does have great taste in clothes, doesn’t he? And a very cool haircut.”

Dad: “Sometimes I wonder if he might be…gay.”

Mom: “He’s a metrosexual!”

Dad: “Honey. He bleaches his shoelaces.”

When I walked into the library at 3:30 today, Amy the school librarian waved her hands to stop me from going into the copy-machine room.

“Don’t go back there!” she whispered. “Don’t!”

Oh, I thought dully. It’s a hostage situation. Hopefully, they’ll resolve it soon so I can make my copies. I’ll go do some grading while they deal with the gunman or whatever,  and then I’ll come back. That way I won’t have to get up at 5:30 tomorrow to prep for class.

I accepted the hostage situation calmly, and turned to go.

“Bye, Amy,” I said. “See you later, I guess.”

“Leave your copies, though!” she chirped. “I just didn’t want you to have to futz with the machine this late in the day. You know how it gets hot and jams up.”

P.S. Here is the best excuse I got for laziness today:

“I’m really cranky and tired ‘cuz my mom messed up my birth control. She got me Seasonale instead of Seasonique. How am I supposed to deal?”