Second semester today. People wonder how we control students, to get them to blindly do things that don’t make sense–look no further than the first day of a semester. We sign pink schedule forms. Each kid brings each form around to all teachers, they sign them by their respective class and subject, and, at the end of the day, we collect all the pink schedule sheets from kids and take them down to the office. The office folk put them in a box and, the next day, or maybe even the same day, the schedules are thrown away.
Okay, I lied. We just sign them now. But up until last year, we went through the above routine. Kids would look at us and say, ‘You have to sign this.’ And I would answer back with, ‘What if I don’t?’ The bottom line is that I haven’t signed them in years because I knew about the end of the day, the box, and the disposal of them.
For the last years at school, we’ve been online. If a kid is in my class, they are online, in my class. It’s not tough to figure. You print what’s online, call roll for a few days, and move along. But, OH, the pink schedule papers. If they’re not signed by every teacher, the end is upon us. It’s hilarious that we convince kids that THIS matters, when it doesn’t matter at all. So it goes.
Two other things–Kim Till returned to North High. It was her first day. She did not return as a secretary, which was her previous job, but as Site Supervisor. She used to be the secretary for Site Supervisor, which is somewhat funny, if you think irony is funny. We had a SS, she was the secretary. He took many days off, so she pretty much ran the office anyway. But when the first SS went on leave, we had an interim SS, and she was still secretary. Then, the old SS came back, the interim went to Torrance High School, and she followed. Long story short, the SS at Torrance came back, North’s position opened up and she got it over everyone who applied.
I like Kim. She wants to have horses at our property in Montana. Never mind that she doesn’t have horses and that we don’t have room for them anyway–it’s a hope and dream. The sad part of the story is that she worked for North High for years, interviewed and received the job, yet, on her first day back, no one was told. There was no announcement, no ‘Welcome back, Kim’ ticker-tape parade. She was back, in an office, and if you passed by, you might have seen her. Late last night, my wife baked her cookies and wrote her a card to have me deliver to her. I did. I also welcomed her back. No ticker-tape parade, though.
The other thing happened during my last class. I wanted to show a TED Talk on my overhead, switched on my stereo to get some good volume, and forgot I had a Spotify playlist going. No big deal–the song that was playing was easily recognized as Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Going On?’ My students started to make strange noises, then there was an absence of sound, then there was a What is This? moment. Yikes. It’s Marvin Gaye. No one knew the song. I had to tell them the artist was black, was popular during the 70’s. Nothing. When I told them his dad shot him, a student said Marvin Gaye.
Do you know what’s going on? Not much. YouTube videos have Marvin Gaye, though.