Cranky Teacher

My students are getting on my nerves. They are incredibly critical of late, and living as the idiot-in-residence leaves me more sensitive than usual. Hmm, whiny students, prickly teacher: not the best combination going.

I have a class of seniors who are wonderful; they are bright, they are enthusiastic, they are good at English. (They're the only class that qualifies as such.) I think their textbook is atrocious, so I've made a conscious effort to avoid it; all the texts are gloomy and negative and frankly, I just don't think they'd be that much fun to study.

Only today I got ganged up on because, well, the best way I could translate what they were saying to me is "We haven't had class. We need more class." What I eventually managed to piece together from this is that they feel they don't have enough handouts pasted into their notebooks. All my efforts at cultivating their spoken English are irrelevant because what they want is lists of vocabulary, and a text with four or five comprehension questions following it.

Really, this is what they want.

So as of next week, that's what they're going to get. Gone are my plans for the "Big Fish" unit, the reality TV/faux celebrity unit, the songs. Instead I'm trying to decide if I should begin with the text about apartheid, the text about anti-semitism or the text about life on an Indian reservation. Or there's my personal favorite, the Paul Auster excerpt wherein a little girl in Alabama informs her new neighbor that she doesn't play with niggers. (What really infuriates me is that Paul Auster is from friggin' New Jersey and has probably never set foot in Alabama in his life, but this is how we're being represented in a textbook to an entire country of impressionable youth. GRRRR!)

Twenty-two school days until Christmas. Twenty-two. I can do this.