Vaping In The Schools

The boys' bathroom smells fruity and sweet. Someone's been vaping in there. Again. Vaping is all the rage these days in schools. It's not quite smoking, so it feels like something schools can't ban. It's also fashionable, cool, and for many kids an irresistible urge. They have the vape pen in their pocket. There's a bathroom with a closed door. Why not take a hit?

I'm the same way with Doritos. I can't blame them.

A couple of my colleagues are up in arms about this "problem." Kids are getting away with something they shouldn't be doing! I nod, but when someone asks, how do we stop them? I shrug and walk away. I just don't care very much. There are people at my school and in my school system who think I should care as much as they do, but really, what's the big deal?

My high school had a smoking area, the fearsome and cold back hall. Kids also smoked in the student parking lot, behind the water tower, and wherever else they wouldn't be seen. Teachers used to smoke at school too, but they got to do it in the offices.

In my first years teaching kids were very protective of two-liter soda bottles they carried. An experienced teacher let me in on the secret that most of the bottles were half soda, half alcohol. Some of the bottles were 100% soda but those kids just wanted to be cool.

There always been smoking (and drinking, and making out, and conceiving children, and...) in the bathroom. Kid get high before, during, and after school. Two sisters arrived at our school stinking so badly of weed we put them in an office with the windows open and the door shut. I pity the person who sat there with them.

The kids I teach lead tough lives. If vaping is the worst they do, I've got no complaints. Of course it's not the worst they do, it's just one rule they break.

Kids break rules. Kids have always broken rules. If we can't learn that, we're idiots.

A guy who ran a school in Providence said, don't write down any rules. Once you do, you can't take them back. It wasn't a place in which anything goes, but instead of rules he wanted us to follow the kids' needs.

At home, my wife and I don't have any rules for our kids that I can think of. Instead we know our daughters and they know us. We established what does and doesn't fly soon as they were born. So far, no vaping in the bathroom.

I've been by the bathroom three times today. The first time it had been vaped. Cherry. The second time it was just the usual dirty, pissy smell. During lunch someone else went in and puffed away. Was that lemon-lime? Whatever. I can't get worked up about it. If I talk to kids about it at all, I'll intentionally sound bored by the whole thing. By next October they'll have moved onto some other damn thing about which people will want to make more rules.

A colleague talked to me about all this today. I smiled. What? she asked. I said it could be worse and recalled an eighth grader we had a few years ago who came out of the bathroom giggling. Was he smoking? she asked. No. He took a dump on the floor and smeared it on the walls.

But you're right, I said. We've got to do something about the vaping.

Recovering Teacher

Looking for a new job has intimidated the hell out of me and I've been wondering why. I'm pretty smart, I write fairly well and am well read, I'm not too ugly, I can walk and chew gum at the same time (but can't rub my stomach while patting my head or vice versa), and have worked in challenging schools with really interesting kids for over two decades. I've done adjunct teaching at a couple local colleges and come out with glowing reviews. Why then do I have such difficulty imagining I could get a new job? Why do I feel so unworthy?

It's because of teaching.

There's the claim that teaching is a soft, cushy job. You get your summers off! Teaching kids is considered women's work — for years only women could be convinced to do it &mdash. This hasn't been meant as a compliment. Teaching is classified as something other than real work, whatever that's supposed to be, and there has been a very public assault on teaching and teachers that began before I graduated college, intensified under Clinton, continued through W, became even worse under Obama (who broke my heart), and was really embraced by miserable fractions of manhood such as Scott Walker. The message was simple: teachers suck and deserve no respect or pay. They are everything wrong with society.

Thanks, fellas!

Some of that message has stuck despite my knowing that teachers do good, tough work under intense conditions. I know better than to give the attacks any credence, but they've dragged down my spirit nonetheless.

Closer to home, I got mugged by the performance reviews. One year I was to be evaluated on New York State Regents scores. I teach at-risk kids who don't test well, and needed two-thirds of them to pass.

I had one kid taking it.

She didn't pass. Not even two-thirds of her.

I was rated "developing," the second lowest mark, and put on a teacher improvement plan. I was rated developing for three years straight. The ratings were all bogus, but being told annually that I suck took a toll.

This year, burned out on teaching, I decided to quit. Everyone asked, what are you going to do instead? I shrugged. I didn't know. I couldn't imagine anything for which I might be qualified. I'm a teacher and teachers all suck. Those who get poor ratings on a bad system suck even more. I really felt worthless and depressed. Instead of applying for jobs, I fell further into depression.

Yeah, I blame teaching.

I'm coming out of that depression. I've applied for jobs and had interviews. None of the jobs are in public school teaching. It will be years before I can go back to that. I'm applying for jobs that feel beyond me but which friends assure me I'm qualified. I'm learning to trust them rather than the cruel voice teaching has cultivated in me like some awful parrot repeating, you suck, you suck, you suck.

I've been a teacher a long time. It will take a while to shake off the side effects. Meanwhile, tell the nearest teacher that they don't suck, that they matter beyond their ratings, and that you appreciate them doing tough work you wouldn't ever want to do. I'm not the only one feeling the side effects. I'm not the only one quitting. And I sure hope I'm not the only one recovering from the side effects and coming to believe. We all deserve that.

Cleaning Out

I keep blowing my nose. Wet, snotty, and gross, I go through two and three tissues at a time. My wife says I'm getting the cold out of me, purging myself of the virus. I'm not so sure, but the alternative is to sniff or let it drip, so I blow my nose and blow my nose hoping she is right. I have to clean it out of me one way or another.

In my classroom I saw a stack of folders and paper on one shelf, more piled atop the filing cabinet, and still more near my desk. I picked up the first stack and began filing. Half of it went into the recycling bin (which I'm pretty sure gets dumped into the garbage, but what can you do?). I did that stack, the one on the filing cabinet, and the one near my desk. I pulled old files out of the filing cabinet and cleared two shelves behind my desk. The recycling bin is chock full as is the garbage can. The room is a little bit cleaned out.

My plan at the end of June was to simply walk away from the classroom. I don't have much there anyway. All my things fit in my messenger bag. I'll wipe the computer drive, close blinds, lock the door, and leave the keys. Stuff on the wall will stay. The books will remain shelved in the classroom library. Student computers will lie dormant. Old textbooks, unused in my nine years there, will continue to gather dust. My standing desk will remain up on cinder blocks. I didn't think I would clean out much of anything.

Today I did more cleaning out than expected and it felt good. I got rid of things written by students no longer attending the program. I purged ancient curricula and threw away the three-ring binders in which they have slumbered for a decade. And that was that. There isn't much else to clean out. I still have forty days of work there that I'll ride out like the cold lodged in my nose and lungs. Time is the only thing that will make it better, but every so often it makes sense to clean things out, blow my nose, and try to breathe more clearly. That way I walk out of this place at the end rather than running or, heaven forbid, striking a match and setting the bridge on fire.

Already I'm kind of walking away and where I'm going is becoming clearer with every bit of cleaning I do inside and out.

College Costs & Ideas

I was lucky and made some good decisions about college. The lucky part is I failed out of Clarkson. Three semesters there cost just over $21,000, a paltry figure today but overwhelming then. I had a grant or two and my parents absorbed the majority of the bill. God bless 'em. On the way home from failing out with all my stuff in the back of the station wagon, I sat nervously waiting for Dad to go off on me. Instead, he said, "the next school is on you."

So it was. I went to Onondaga Community College for two semesters, total cost $1,340. I paid out of pocket. Then I paid for SUNY Oswego without incurring much more debt, maybe a couple thousand dollars. I got into a graduate school that, for one out-of-state student (me!), waived tuition and gave me a teaching fellowship that allowed me to make money while attending full time. Within five years of graduation I had paid it all off.

My kids shouldn't have to depend on luck and penny-pinching. It's in everyone's best interests that children be educated and come out of school as something more than indentured servants.

Elizabeth Warren is talking about debt forgiveness. She'll be labeled whacko for that (Americans can't allow women to voice ideas without first belittling the women and the ideas) but the idea makes sense. College and university have become ludicrously expensive and not because professors and adjuncts make so much money. The system is broken and needs a radical fix.

I'm suspicious of free college tuition. I was more engaged when my money was involved and tuition is only a fraction of total costs. I don't have the solutions, so I'll vote for someone who is thinking well about them. Elizabeth Warren is talking the talk so far. I'm listening.