I get an email at 2:18 p.m., one minute after the official
end of the school day, that my schedule for tomorrow is going into the toilet
because we're going to spontaneously do a fifteen-minute activity with the
entire grade. I'm all for fun and
giggles, but this interruption happens as I am going into the final three days
of teaching a unit, and I literally cannot spare the "fifteen" (when
they say "fifteen," they actually mean "forty-five")
minutes to do what can easily be accomplished during lunch.
After going from zero to tantrum in less than five seconds,
my frustration explodes. Grades close
Friday. I have some students in the
borderline zone, and now I have to scrap the unit that might have been able to
bring these kids out of the breakdown lane and back into the passing lane. I let fly, and for those who know me, you
know that means every swear word I have ever been taught in multiple languages
is spilling endlessly, tirelessly, and eloquently out of my petite but powerful
mouth.
Later, on the way to the grocery store (because I actually
found all my little lists and turned them into one giant list), my blood
pressure starts to come down. Why am I fighting this battle? Why am I trying to educate kids and get
students to pass when it seems like all we're supposed to be doing is patting
them on the back, telling them how wonderful they all are, and handing them all
trophies?
It suddenly dawns on me that I am Donald Sutherland. Stay with me here, folks.
You see, I am one of those who "stays awake." Remember the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers?
Yup, just like that. I see
people's minds snapping all around me, drinking the Kool-Aid of No Child Left
Behind and the National CORE Curriculum movement and the national PARCC test
that says your kid in Massachusetts needs to be as smart (or as dumb) as the
kids in Idaho, and vice versa. It
frightens the hell out of me, and I have been swimming, swimming, swimming
against the rip tide that says, "Don't give homework to the kids, make
sure you teach them in a way they really learn, don't teach traditional
methods, don't expect them to memorize anything including times tables, and for
the love of God make sure they all pass that damn state test!"
Well, today, I drowned.
That's right, my SCUBA tank full of ambition totally exploded today in a
major crash and burn that lasted about an hour.
And now … I'm done.
Bring me the clown nose and the calliope with the monkey
dancing on top. I have joined the
circus. I'm like Mr. Dark's Pandemonium
Carnival parade in Something Wicked This
Way Comes. I have traded my sanity for the dream of complacency. My brain has been infected and an alien,
mindless automaton has taken its place.
Grades close soon, but until they do, my classes are going
to play games and run wild and sign our names to things and do word searches
and color pictures and make nose pinchers and throw paper snowballs and pretend
we actually have a curriculum to finish.
I will be happy. I will be
compliant. I will smile my plastic,
etched-on smile.
I have been invaded by the anti-achievement spores, and I am
Matthew Bennell (Sutherland), and my colleagues who are still left standing
next to the Kool-Aid with full but untouched cups are the few Elizabeth
Driscolls (Brooke Adams) left.
I'm sorry, my dear but gullible friends; I am too tired to
fight it any longer. My brain has been
snatched. I cannot give a shit anymore.
