Just Breathe
11:07 a.m. - 2003-05-06
Oh, my sweet little white box. I love you so.
Sometimes I have trouble deciding what to put in you, however. Today is one of those days. Part of me wants to curse the world, and another part of me wants to let out a hearty laugh and shrug off all my complaints.
I think I'll go with the latter.
I'm tired of this job, but I'm SO happy that I only have a week and a half left. It's not that I don't like the boyz, or teaching. I enjoy both... just not together. "Teaching" the boyz is damn near impossible, because they don't care about learning. One of them only comes to school about four times a month. He's completely illiterate.
I'm not kidding. This 18 year old would never make it through a Little Golden Book.
It saddens me, but there's really nothing that I can do. When I have the class read aloud, I always skip him. I used to try to get him to read, but I ended up reading and he just repeated what I said. The letters didn't make sense to him...I can't imagine how that would feel.
And I don't know where to direct my frustration . Mainly, I want to blame the school system because I hate them. Of course, his parents are accountable too--and so is he, for that matter. But in a town as poverty stricken as this one, it isn't at all uncommon to have five kids living in a house with illiterate parents. (Though more often it is just one parent, because most of my kids don't have "fathers.")
So how can I expect him to care about his education if no one else in his life has ever stressed that it's important? I am a totally insignificant factor in his life. I'm just the white teacher who tells him that he needs to do his work instead of goofing off. Hell, if I was in his shoes, I doubt I'd listen to me either.
Regardless of all the negativity, I'm trying to stay positive today. I'm going to FORCE myself to stay at work for awhile. (I've decided that it might be a little difficult to convince my employers that I've been going to job sites every afternoon...especially since I've only been to one.) Then I'm honestly going to go to a couple of businesses and tell them about the program. With the end of the year quickly approaching, I have to get off my ass and get something done.
I've also got to turn in a report to my supervisor on the 12th...which means I have to get started on it. And my summer classes will be starting soon. I wish my test scores would hurry the hell up...I need to know how I did so that I'll know if I can teach next fall.
There are also a million things that need to be done around the house. A. won't be home until 11 p.m. tonight, and I know he'll want to rest tomorrow, so it looks like we'll have to try and get stuff done this weekend.
Oh yeah, and Sunday is Mother's Day. I've got to go buy presents.
Somewhere in the middle of all this I might need to remind myself to breathe.