Most Involved and Most Pissed Off

Today, I found out I was voted by the Seniors as "Most Involved Teacher." I think this is pretty cool, especially since I teach all 9th graders so usually these awards voted for by Seniors are skewed towards teachers of upperclassmen. But they remember me, I guess, or at least they see me running around like a madman or tottering around with my floating teacher cart and that makes them think about me. There are over 80 teachers at my school so I'm letting myself believe this to be an honor.

Anyhow, It's been the highlight of the week, which is already identifying itself as a bad week despite it being only Tuesday. I'm so angry about so many things going on at my school right now that I feel disillusioned. In the last week, a new vocabulary program - which I successfully elminated from the curriculum three years ago because of its ineffectiveness and replaced with my own contextualized vocab program for the 9th grade - has been added to the curriculum, completely unbeknowst to me. I had to find out that the books would be on sale at the incoming 9th grade orientation at the end of the month via a letter sent home to the parents of these students. My department head sat me down and said, "I'm going to need you to support me on this." Uh, sorry. You don't make top-down decisions that are bad for the kids and make them buy a useless $18 book and expect my support. Screw you.

I fear something similar will happen to summer reading. She says she's looking to us for feedback, but I'm pretty certain she's going to do whatever the hell she wants. I internalize this stuff way too much, and I guess I need to focus on just not caring that much about this shit, and teaching what I want because no one will notice, but I got in the habit of being listened to and being able to develop things on my own and doing what I know works best, and I don't think this is happening any more.

I've never needed summer vacation so badly. I hate being Mr. Negative, becuase I'm usually an optimistic, positive force in my department and my school, but they're bringing me down.

And baseball season needs to end before I drive myself insane some more. My kids today left to get some water. And returned 45 minutes later. My best fucking players so I can't even bench them for these last few games. But, of course, they couldn't find the ice and that's supposed to be acceptable. I can't wait to get back up on this horse of coaching next year once this group of attitudinal seniors is out of there.