Doing Time in the Public School System
by Dreaming about working on a California pot farm gave one Georgia school teacher faith in her profession.
Part of me wants very badly to move to northern California and work on a farm that grows medicinal marijuana. A friend of mine recently returned from such a job with enough money to support his free-wheeling lifestyle for one year. Even though I’ve never smoked a day in my life, I find something endearing about my friend’s stories of the fully certified Rastafarian doctor who believes that almost every ill from an odd rash to mild depression can be helped with a little bit of legally prescribed ganja. Just thinking about the possibility makes me feel a little more easy-going myself.
Looking back, I have always absorbed the mood of what’s around me. When listening to a good band jam, my dancing soul floats with the music. When I met and fell in love with my husband, my happiness with him multiplied because of his happiness with me. When the shop where he had invested years worth of savings and a decade of dreams exploded into flames last summer, I felt an onslaught of mixed emotions-his disappointed heartache, my in-laws’ indignation, and my parents’ angry confusion and fear about what the future would bring. I felt so overwhelmed by that incident that I ventured the closest I’ve ever come to seeking therapy and drove an hour away to visit a metaphysical counselor in the city. I researched different healing centers and appropriately found one called The Phoenix. There, a hunched woman with white hair and tired eyes ushered me into her candlelit office and assured me that I was building my life on a foundation of love that would always support me. When we began our conference, a heavy rain kneaded the dirt outside her window into rich Georgia clay. The storm abated as our meeting progressed, and I exited The Phoenix feeling better, somehow.
Right now, teaching language arts at a rural middle school floods my system with a new blend of pain and wonder. Products of what my husband has deemed “The Jerry Springer Generation,” my students are the most reactionary people that I have ever met. If one of them speaks out of turn, at least one other must comment. This comment is met by a snide remark from a third student. The cycle continues, and my illusions of control unravel into a cacophony of grunts, shouts, and whoops. Conversation eventually collapses, and the students are on their feet gyrating to the rap music that plays on repeat inside their minds. When the students tire, they turn to me in panic. Suddenly, they all need to ask ten questions a piece, even though the answers are all written plainly on the board.
Liked it
-
-
-
-
-
-
Post CommentHolly Jarrell
On March 10, 2008 at 5:27 pm
My mind really started churning as I pondered the “reactionary generation.” How very true. In fact, I was stunned at what a complex and authentic characterization of this middle school class manifested in such a short piece. Not monsters, not innocents, these children are “products” endowed with both elements of ignorant flippancy and well-meaning curiosity.
The title made me chuckle, but when I came to the end, I wondered if the dream of working on a marijuana farm gave the teacher “faith in her profession,” or if it was moreso faith in her students, who despite being gridlocked into standardized chaos, can calm down, listen, and learn from the teacher. If the teaching was only made bearable by approaching it as a term of service, this is not distinctly faith in the career, perhaps?
Quite lovely and think-worthy commentary!! I will be anticipating the next snippet of pensive life-revelry! (strange term but I don’t know how else to describe the mix of contemplation and lightheartedness).
Holly Jarrell
On March 10, 2008 at 5:28 pm
My mind really started churning as I pondered the “reactionary generation.” How very true. In fact, I was stunned at what a complex and authentic characterization of this middle school class manifested in such a short piece. Not monsters, not innocents, these children are “products” endowed with both elements of ignorant flippancy and well-meaning curiosity.
The title made me chuckle, but when I came to the end, I wondered if the dream of working on a marijuana farm gave the teacher “faith in her profession,” or if it was moreso faith in her students, who despite being gridlocked into standardized chaos, can calm down, listen, and learn from the teacher. If the teaching was only made bearable by approaching it as a term of service, this is not distinctly faith in the career, perhaps?
Quite lovely and think-worthy commentary!! I will be anticipating the next snippet of pensive life-revelry! (strange term but I don’t know how else to describe the mix of contemplation and lightheartedness).
Holly Jarrell
On March 10, 2008 at 5:29 pm
My mind really started churning as I pondered the “reactionary generation.” How very true. In fact, I was stunned at what a complex and authentic characterization of this middle school class manifested in such a short piece. Not monsters, not innocents, these children are “products” endowed with both elements of ignorant flippancy and well-meaning curiosity.
The title made me chuckle, but when I came to the end, I wondered if the dream of working on a marijuana farm gave the teacher “faith in her profession,” or if it was moreso faith in her students, who despite being gridlocked into standardized chaos, can calm down, listen, and learn from the teacher. If the teaching was only made bearable by approaching it as a term of service, this is not distinctly faith in the career, perhaps?
Quite lovely and think-worthy commentary!! I will be anticipating the next snippet of pensive life-revelry! (strange term but I don’t know how else to describe the mix of contemplation and lightheartedness).
Holly Jarrell
On March 10, 2008 at 5:29 pm
My mind really started churning as I pondered the “reactionary generation.” How very true. In fact, I was stunned at what a complex and authentic characterization of this middle school class manifested in such a short piece. Not monsters, not innocents, these children are “products” endowed with both elements of ignorant flippancy and well-meaning curiosity.
The title made me chuckle, but when I came to the end, I wondered if the dream of working on a marijuana farm gave the teacher “faith in her profession,” or if it was moreso faith in her students, who despite being gridlocked into standardized chaos, can calm down, listen, and learn from the teacher. If the teaching was only made bearable by approaching it as a term of service, this is not distinctly faith in the career, perhaps?
Quite lovely and think-worthy commentary!! I will be anticipating the next snippet of pensive life-revelry! (strange term but I don’t know how else to describe the mix of contemplation and lightheartedness).
Holly Jarrell
On March 10, 2008 at 5:29 pm
My mind really started churning as I pondered the “reactionary generation.” How very true. In fact, I was stunned at what a complex and authentic characterization of this middle school class manifested in such a short piece. Not monsters, not innocents, these children are “products” endowed with both elements of ignorant flippancy and well-meaning curiosity.
The title made me chuckle, but when I came to the end, I wondered if the dream of working on a marijuana farm gave the teacher “faith in her profession,” or if it was moreso faith in her students, who despite being gridlocked into standardized chaos, can calm down, listen, and learn from the teacher. If the teaching was only made bearable by approaching it as a term of service, this is not distinctly faith in the career, perhaps?
Quite lovely and think-worthy commentary!! I will be anticipating the next snippet of pensive life-revelry! (strange term but I don’t know how else to describe the mix of contemplation and lightheartedness).
Roger Penney
On March 18, 2008 at 3:10 pm
At last I found how to get to your article. How glad I am that I did so. How amazing that my experience of thirty years of teaching 11year to eighteen year olds, then adults from eightheen to sixty exactly complies with yours. Even in adult education we are surrounded and imprisoned with bureaucratic edicts which tend to prevent education.
Would you not agree that, as I think you have been finding with ‘organic’ that the key may be language. These reactionary and unsocialised youngsters cannot deny their own humanity. Those precious moments when they ask you something! Forget the curriculum, forget the scheme of work, throw out of the window all those assumptions about ‘intelligence’ and literacy and all the other school jargon. We have in front of us unique human beings who have been bludgeoned into despair and depravity by a system of government which is a denial of democracy. You, in the USA are probably nearer to a democratic ideal, Britain once was but we are rapidly losing it and our youth does not know how to talk, it does not know the power of poetry or of beauty. It does not know the power of words, of language, of telling phrases and sentences. It can only make noises and shout to draw attention to itself, “look at me! look at me!” I hope you enjoy your farm, but I hope you will go back to teaching. I also despair of many of our colleagues, they need a sensitive, challenging person in their midst, like a Socrates to sting them into awareness and into life.