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.
On other days, students look curiously at my magazines and peer inquisitively at my photographs of waterfalls, crater lakes, coastlines, and forests. Many shots are purely scenic, but my students know that I took them all myself. In others, I am present-kayaking in the Gulf of Mexico, hiking with my dog through the Tennessee hills, preparing to camp in the back of the old Volvo that my husband and I took on our honeymoon. In another shot, my husband and I, decked out in riding leathers, stand in front of his motorcycle. It is the first picture we took together. Still sporting a full beard and dreadlocks, he looks much different than the clean-shaven, short-haired man pictured with me on my wedding day. My students see both of these posted side-by-side. They also see my husband and I hugging and playing happily with my stepson. Together, these photographs send powerful messages to my students-Adventure is a good thing; nature is valuable; mature love is possible; and blended families can work.
I am coming to cope with my job by looking at it as a term of public service. I must pay tribute to “the grid,” or standardized society, before I can prosperously liberate myself from it. One day soon, on the California farm or someplace like it, I will decorate my space with photographs of my Georgia classroom and the students with whom I shared it. When my new friends and colleagues ask me about my former life as a public school teacher, I would like to tell them: I took the job so I could earn my freedom. I taught my students that, if they so desired it, they could follow me.
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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.