This is a super-outstanding rant by a middle-school English teacher about the frustrations she is facing in her profession. I don't know how to transfer Facebook videos to TYWKIWDBI, so I'll just embed this screencap and add the link here and hope that readers of my blog will venture over to Facebook to listen to her for 2 minutes.
Addendum: Her school has apparently forced her to take down her TikTok post or lose her job. Fortunately the Facebook one is still alive, so view it while you can. It may be doomed.
I found myself emotionally charged along with her tearful, increasing-volume, phone-shaking rant. Wallace Stegner's "On Reading Trash" leapt to mind. I find the same, or very similar, to be true of cinema. Thanks for this share, Stan.
ReplyDeleteAs an 11-year old, I was just starting high school (as grades 7-12 are referred to in Australia), and my mother bought me one of her favourite books. I still remember it was 1,160 pages long because up to that time, the longest books I had read were only a couple of hundred pages.
ReplyDeleteI read it immediately, and the subject matter was extremely adult, to put it mildly. There is murder, massacre, genocide even… there’s degenerative & stigmatising incurable illness, as well as the despair associsted (up to and including suicide attempts)… the person who passes for the “protagonist” is morally dubious at best, and commits a sexual assault within the first couple of dozen pages of the book…
Mum bought it for me because she also thought it was important for near-adolescent kids not to be insulated from adult content, all of this stuff is important to understand. Shoving it under the carpet is causing harm to children and rendering them vulnerable to everything they’re not being allowed to read about. Forewarned is forearmed. You only need to look at the effect that reducing access to sex-ed classes has had with regard to childhood pregnancy & sexually transmitted disease as an obvious indicator that isolating children from being educated about the danger empowers that danger.
As an 11-year old, I wasn’t the least bit damaged by that book. I was too young at the time to fully “get it”, and I actually recognised that and figured I’d try again when I was older. At 16 I finally got around to it and mum was right, excellent book. She was right about a lot of things. Access to content “too mature” for me never harmed me in the slightest, and helped me understand some of the grit and hazard in the adult world I was in the inexorable process of joining.
Excellent. Thanks for the comment, JIm.
DeleteThomas Covenant?
DeleteI hadn’t planned on naming the book, but I’m compelled to confirm an astute guess!
DeleteI like Donaldson’s writing. It was certainly challenging book as an 11-year old, i got through by perseverance at that age, but at 16 it seemed to turn the pages by itself.
I really like Donaldson’s poetry, which he peppers throughout. There’s an evocatively described expression of grief by a person mourning his murdered family and friends. I don’t know if it has an official title but the opening line is “my heart has rooms that sigh with dust”. My singing teacher was so taken with it when I recited it to him that he felt compelled to set it to music, which he composed.
It’s funny how tiny tit bits like a poem mainly serving as an incidental plot device can have surprising macro effects in the long term. My mother buying me a decidedly adult book when I was 11 resulted in my becoming enamoured with a poem, which decades later i still remembered well enough to recite in full, which resulted in the listener of my recitation composing a brand new musical piece to accompany it. If you’d told my mum that her Christmas present was going to cause a new song to be written >25 years later… actually, I don’t know what she would have said. I’ll post-facto tell her now and find out!
When I was in junior high school (grades 7-9) in the '70s (in West Orange, NJ), occasionally we received catalogs to order paperback books. Not only did I order and read a lot sci fi/fantasy (Bradbury, Asimov, Bester, Simak) but also books that probably would be banned today, like "Nigger: An Autobiography by Dick Gregory " (his first) and "Johnny Got His Gun" by Dalton Trumbo. Also, the librarian gave me Jackie Robinson's autobiography to read. (In case you're curious and fwiw -- according to my sister's genetic testing, we're of eastern European/Ukrainian descent.)
ReplyDeleteI read “Nigger” in 10th grade, 1972. Went on to read Gregory’s “Myth and Rhetoric of American History”
DeleteI saw he was speaking at the local college and dragged a friend with me to see him. My friend thought I was nuts, but went with me anyway.
I don’t know we were the most “enlightened” people in the audience, but I would bet we were the only 16 year olds.
That may not be true at all, but it was a huge influence on me and when I joined the debate team as a senior in ’75 I got a lot of mileage out of Dick Gregory.
I rummaged a bit around on the socials of this wickedwomenauthor, and wow is she eloquent and a fantastic writer and speaker. Something is seriously wrong in society that a talented person like her is an underpaid school teacher.
ReplyDeleteIn a half-decent world, some school would be thanking the muses on their bare knees that they were lucky enough that she had her teaching job as a side-hussle to spread her love for beautiful language, while mostly focusing on creating awesome literature.
But here we are, with her being underpaid and constrained by a narrow-minded school principal.
I can only hope she finds a way to unleash her talent and teaching abilities. Let her soar.
https://www.tiktok.com/@wickedwomenauthor/video/7675495370377514271
DeleteOh look, she's had to take her post down or she'd be fired.
"In a half-decent world, some school would be thanking the muses on their bare knees that they were lucky enough that she had her teaching job as a side-hussle [sic] to spread her love for beautiful language, while mostly focusing on creating awesome literature."
DeleteIn a fully-decent world, neither a teacher nor a school would view a teaching job as a "side-hustle" while the teacher mostly focuses on something else. Teaching is a profession that you dedicate your working life to. You live and breathe it. You lie awake at night wondering how to make a lesson better, how to energize apathetic students, how to get parents involved. Your "free time" is often spent with other teachers (especially new teachers) discussing lesson ideas or classroom management issues. You spend several hours a week grading assignments and assessments at home because you and the students need and deserve immediate feedback. And you don't complain because this is what you signed up for and you are awed by the realization that you are entrusted with the futures of 120-150 children every school year. Side-hustle? Really?
Leslie Simon may create awesome literature. As with other forms of art, that is up to the consumer to determine. And she may be an awesome teacher. I have no basis for rendering an opinion on that (and I assume, neither does anyone else commenting on here). Creating awesome literature does not make one an awesome teacher, and vice versa. I can only hope that she does not view teaching as a "side-hustle."
In a fully-decent world, neither a teacher nor a school would view a teaching job as a "side-hustle" while the teacher mostly focuses on something else.
DeleteSome of my best high-school teachers were part-timers. My maths teacher was a garage owner. Always showed up with dirty fingers. My economics teacher dabbled in local politics, became an city councilman and later an alderman some years after I graduated. Both brought incredible real-world experience to the classroom. Without being obvious.
I reckon few in the classroom knew what they did outside the classroom, which is to say few of the maths problems dealt with cars, and even fewer economics problems dealt with politics. But both knew very well what part of the curriculum was useful for us and what parts could be glanced over because they had no real world significance. Both had incredible experience, and barely prepared classes. They knew what to do and could think on their feet.
Some of my worst teachers were life-long teachers. They only knew what was in the book and nothing else.
Really, if you've taught a class a few times and sorted out your rough lesson plan, you know what works and what doesn't. Rinse, repeat and keep it current.
Teaching is a profession that you dedicate your working life to. You live and breathe it.
You could say this about any profession. Few people live this life. Nuns are rare.
And you don't complain because this is what you signed up
Ah yes, the argument that no one ever gets to complain because you knew what you signed up for. That's how the world stagnates.
Teachers in the US have every right to complain loudly because they are horribly underpaid, and are generally not given the resources to do their job well.
you are awed by the realization that you are entrusted with the futures of 120-150 children every school year
It's a job, not a religious calling.
It is exactly this attitude that prevent education from being seen a serious profession instead of a higher calling. This attitude is exactly why wickedwomanauthor is being ignored by her principal. He probably thinks she should just shut up and teach her classes because she knew what she signed up for.
Just to clarify, when I stated "you don't complain." I was referring to doing work at home. That is considered part of your job and no one wants to hear you complaining about it.
DeleteAnd I completely agree with your comment below in response to Anonymous. Grievances in the work place should be kept in the work place, not aired on social media.
Codex@Nepkarel
DeleteI like your argument above. It does relate to books and libraries, many of which are underfunded as well. What kids can no longer get from school libraries they get at public libraries where they also can't get everything they should.
Watched a senior ask for fine exemption and told by a library system under pressure to "read less". General war on books and education.
The "Do not publicly say anything bad about the school or system" rule has been a standard thing for years. Is there any wonder why the USA has gradually lost touch with any sense of meaningful education? At the beginning of each school year, faculty are warned to be careful about social media use. Why? Avoid confrontation by those who reduce the job of teaching to babysitting. Maybe we need those robot teachers after all...
ReplyDeleteIt's not that crazy of a thing. In general, you should keep work fights at work and not hang the dirty laundry outside. No employer appreciates that. That's also why many employers remind their employees to be careful about their social media output. This all makes sense.
DeleteNow that gets hard when you're obviously right and cowardly bureaucrats prevent you from doing your job. Which is too often the case in education.
Codex
ReplyDeleteAny interest in a post on words no longer meaning what people think they mean?
Eg. Teens are nostalgic for vinyl records.
No. I'm swamped with potential blogworthy material. Not seeking any more.
DeleteUnlike the economy, this is real trickle down.
ReplyDeleteWe see the effects in higher education as well.
Since I started in 2007 fundamental math and reading skills have been on a steady decline.
I was used to them not being able to do simple algebra, and expected it. Which is sad in a science class.
But increasingly students are unable to process complex/compound sentences. Even many of my "good" students are able to follow, but do not UNDERSTAND directions and procedures.
It's really disheartening.
I've downloaded the video from Facebook in case you need a copy of it if it disappears.
ReplyDelete