Bless me, Fucker, for I have sinned--

Oh great and ignorant prickweenie, I understand now why you are angry with me. I shall publicly list my transgressions here, for public censure, as an explanation as to why I was informed this afternoon that you are GUNNING FOR MY JOB.

* I don't enforce tardies. I shall be honest here. Tardies are always a puzzle to me. I don't necessarily acknowledge the existance of time, personally--I totally get why my students don't feel it passing by. If my back is turned and kids walk in while I'm writing on the board, I don't care. If I'm leaning on the door, talking to kids or watching the sun when the tardy bell rings, well, that clot of students walking in with me doesn't seem tardy. I mean, they came in with me, right? If I'm late because I ran to the bathroom, well... well, you get the picture. I don't enforce tardies. I often don't notice them. This makes me a bad person, and is apparently one of the reasons you are GUNNING FOR MY JOB.

* I allow eating in class. I also facilitate this heinous action by bringing pop-tarts for them when they are hungry. I am a bad person, and this is apparently one of the reasons you are GUNNING FOR MY JOB.

* I don't confiscate ipods or cell phones. I should--it would make my life easier if I did. But this allows for classroom chaos, and this makes me a bad person, and this is apparently one of the reasons you are GUNNING FOR MY JOB.

* I accept chaos. I live in it. I write in it. I create in it. I deal with it. 95% of the time I write the agenda on the board. the other 5% of the time, the kids still know what we're doing. 85% of the time, I can nag them into silence. the other 15% of the time, I have to bully with referrals and phone calls to mommy. MOst days I forget which EXACT journal entry which EXACT class is on at which EXACT time. I deal with it by asking the kids. I accept that this makes me a bad person and is apparently one of the reasons you are GUNNING FOR MY JOB.

Now, Fucker, I understand that you have it in for me, and I shall endeavor to clean up (at least to your eye) the most heinous offenses against all that you stand for, but I've got to tell you, I don't think it's going to matter. Because, after thinking hard and reflecting upon my sins, I've come to the understanding that the most egregious and most unforgivable of all of my sins is the one that doesn't look good on a report, and it is this:

I have refused to worship at the altar of St. Fucker, and I always shall. I shall never believe that recording tardies is the be-all and end-all of what an educator should strive for. I refuse to accept that classroom discipline is better or worse if you let them eat during class. I refuse to accept that taking their stuff is the way to teach them to deal responsibly with it, and I refuse to accept that perfect understanding is contingent upon perfect order. In fact, I reject perfect order as the only path to education--for at least half the population, perfect order is frightening, and stifling, and incomprehensible. Let's face it--there are only two jobs that don't allow for a five minute arrival window. ONe is the job I work now. The other is in food service. There's not a single well-paying job that doesn't give a fifteen minute break for a trip to the vending machine. Most of them allow people to eat at their desks. Keeping track of your stuff is part of life. Most jobs give windows for personal phone calls, a little bit of music in the work place, and using a hand-held internet device. A lot of jobs encourage this. Walking into a situation, assessing it, and responding to it is the hallmark of any good worker. Just because you, Fucker, have only worked in a classroom for three years and are incompetent with your own species does not mean that the rest of us have, in order to lick your holy Fucking feet, forgotten what it was like to be young, and human. In fact, a couple of us in front of the classroom freely admit that we are not gods. This is what you dislike about me, Fucker, and this is not going to change.

I accept that this dooms me--being fired or transferred is probably in my stars. (The transfer would actually be preferable, Fucker, but if you fire me, I get to collect unemployment, and then I have two years to really get a jump start on my writing career. Your choice.) Anyway, Fucker, you should also know that your refusal to allow alternative forms of personal worship dooms you also. Rome managed to survive for a millenium or so because when they conquered nations, they allowed the people to keep their own gods. Do you know what doomed them? Christianity--the laws enforcing of theological idea that there really was only one god. This is like refusing the admit there is a moon in the sky, simply because people worshipped it. Refusing to admit that these feelings and human behaviors and qualities are there in no way diminishes the fact that they exist. It simply gives people fuel for insurrection.

Now I am neither a leader nor a martyr. I will not be the spark that lights this insurrection--but I will be tender to the fire. The ancient Easterners had it right when they suggested that one form of energy cannot survive without another. You will rid yourself of my pleasant, harmless, feminine form of chaos, and the hard, angry, masculine form of chaos will consume your little world--I can not predict how, but I know that every form of government has seen it happen. You have frequently said that you don't want to know about the history of this planet you rule, and I laugh at you, Fucker. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Just because you don't admit that the history is there, does not make it any less true. And I will laugh at you when it happens, because I am not an all-forgiving saint, just as I am not an unforgiving Fucker.

Can you hear me laughing, Fucker? Don't worry. You will.


*I'll get to Julie's meme tomorrow--my department head told me yesterday that my Principal really is out to get me, and that even if I 'clean up my act', he still wants me gone. Then he told me to have a nice weekend. "Right."