Teachers Had It Easy
I am a second-year History teacher in Baltimore. Yes, the same city where the HBO show The Wire is filmed. And No, the show does not exaggerate about the terrible state of the public schools in our city.
I watched the movie Chalk after another teacher friend of mine told me about it. The movie was somewhat funny, as I can certainly identify with the frustrations of the first-year History teacher. Like him, I also had to debate to myself whether or not I wanted to return after my first year teaching. I did return, but am seriously considering wrapping it up after this year, as this year is much worse than last year, which I didn't think was possible.
Anyway, after watching the film, I think the teachers in the movie had it way too easy, with no reason at all to complain.
For example, the History teacher gets upset at the student whose cell phone goes off in class, and throws him out of the classroom. In my opinion, I think the fact that he only had one student whose cell phone went off, and who then apologized for it, is a good thing. How about trying to teach a class in which you hear somebody's cell phone going off every ten minutes, and then try to deny that they have a cell phone when I go to confiscate it. I take the cell phones, keep them until the end of the day, and then the very next day the same thing happens again. I even had one student tell the principal herself that she was not handing over her phone. And this guy throws a fit over one student!? Wow! I wish I had it that good.
Another example is when the gym coach gets upset at the teacher for allowing a student to run into her classroom a few seconds after the bell had rang. I think the fact that the student was actually running to class so that he would only be a few seconds late should have been seen as a good thing. Try teaching at my school, where students don't run, but lallygag through the hallways so that they end up being five, ten, or fifteen minutes late for class. To punish them, I send them to their administrator to receive a late pass before entering in the hopes that the administrator will reprimand them. Instead, they just return one minute later with a pass, showing that there was no reprimand.
To me, these teachers had it easy, and had no reason to complian about anything. I would like to see someone make a comedic mockumentary set in a school where the school police have to break up gang fights and arrest someone everyday, or where there is a fire drill each week because some crazy student has set a fire inside the building, or where students are caught having sex in the stairways, or where girls go into labor in the lavatories, or where teachers leave work to find that their cars have been stolen.
To complain about a student running to class a few seconds late, or about one student whose cell phone went off in class seem hardly like a big deal to me. But then, maybe I'm just too jaded from working in a school system that could pass for a criminal system.