Idle Ranting, Revisited

To be honest, I am not much of a gangster. I never tried to be in High School, and something tells me I never will try. Not only do I not act like a gangster, but I do not look like one either. In fact, most of my kids think I am the exact opposite: a dirty hippie.

"Mister, are you a hippie?"
"Mister, do you surf?"
"Mister, do you ride a skateboard?"

So when I was called a gangster I was a bit taken. It was the class directly after lunch, and with mice falling through the ceiling, and the general school rule of no food in the classroom, I was really on my students not to be eating this period. Of course, some fat-ass mommy’s-princess bitch think she’s special. She is exempt from my rules, the schools rules, and probably anyone’s rules. As I said, she is special.

On her desk she had a bag of cookies. I told her to put them away. She said no. I took them. She looked at me in disbelief. Suddenly she was awed that some one enforced a rule and took her cookies. She was left struggling for words momentarily, and then she comes out with this wonderful bit:

Fat-Ass: "Mistah, you think you a gee or sometin’?  Cause I know you didn’t just steal my cookies."
Me: "No, I didn’t steal your cookies. I asked you to put them away, you couldn’t do that, and so now I’m taking them."
Fat-Ass: "Can I get ‘em back at the end?"
Me: "No. You should have eaten them in the cafeteria. You can’t eat them anywhere else. That’s why we have mice and rats."
Fat-Ass Friend 1: "Oh mistah, you a fuckin’ Starvin Marvin. Stealin’ students food."

At this point I’d had enough and so, walked away. Cookies in hand and I have to admit, they were pretty tasty.

I grew up in rural Upstate New York. Rodents were a common occurrence, be they in the house somewhere, running through the leaves or pushing up mounds of dirt in the middle of your lawn. They were never much of a nuisance, and I got used to them so when I came down to this cluster-fuck of people, concrete and pollution, the rats did not surprise me. The fact that people gathered on train platforms and watched and giggled at the rats playing on the tracks did surprise me.

So when my students were in an uproar about a mouse today, I could not seem to grasp their anxiety. All their lives they’ve seen big nasty rats playing on train tracks and rummaging through their garbage. Why then was a small mouse in the classroom something that put them all in an uproar. I understand that a mouse falling from a crack in the ceiling and landing on your assignment would be a bit frightening - it’d scare the shit out of me real quick for sure - but the students just could not seem to get over it. The best part about it is that the mouse was probably poisoned and tracked poison and nastiness all over my students papers that are now sitting on my table. Fucking awesome little mice.

I know that you are concerned about your son/daughters well being in the public classroom - more so than about their actual education - but relax and know that the police officers and metal detectors at the door are making sure your children are learning how to live in a police state as well as eliminating metal guns from school. The paper-clip-rubber-band-shooter is, unfortunately, typically made once students have passed these metal detectors rendering the police officers who seldom move from their alcove useless. But this is just a tangent.

The real reason I am writing this letter to you - parents, grandparents, pimps, legal guardians, whomever you may be - is to remind you of the schools no tolerance policy toward cellular telephones and other electronic devices (this includes any type of mp3 player, iPod, discman, walkman, radio, any electronic device. If you are unsure, look and see if it uses a battery of some sort, if it does, it is almost certainly an electronic device.) 

No, I do not have a personal vendetta against VeriZon or  Apple or Sony. The problem is that these devices cause children to lose focus in school. To be honest, there is little need for your twelve year old to have a cellular telephone in the school, let alone the classroom. Now I know that you may have an emergency from time to time - the police arrested Baby’s Daddy, or Grandpa cracked his head on the way to the bodega - but I assure you, if you call the main office, you will speak to your child sooner than if you call your child while they are in class.

And this, is my main point. Please, parents, I am asking you to refrain from calling/texting your child during school hours. It is rude, inappropriate, and immature. At the beginning of the year, every year, your child is sent home with a list of phone numbers. The phone numbers for the main office, as well as mine, are listed on this sheet of paper. Use these numbers.

If your child is caught with a phone, it will be confiscated. Detentions will be served and the phone will eventually be given back to students. I know that taking a phone from a student can cause separation anxiety and cause students to break into tears and fits of uncontrollable convulsions. I do not want this to happen, but if your child breaks the rules, there are consequences.

Lastly, please do not come into the school to retrieve your child’s phone. You are undermining everyone when you do this. You are not your child’s friend, you are their parent. If you want them to succeed they need some education, as well as the knowledge that when rules are broken, punishments are served and sometimes, believe it or not, no one’s going to save your ass. So if you really want to help your child survive in the world, support the schools decision. Do not come in and retrieve the phone like a trained puppy. Do not worry, teachers may not be paid well at all, but they will not steal your child’s phone. It will be returned to them.

Remember, this behavior can be stopped with a few simple rules to both parents and students:

1.) Do not allow students to bring their phone to school.
2.) Do not call your child’s cell phone while they are in school.
3.) When a phone is confiscated, allow the school to handle it. The phone will be returned.

I thank you in advance for your co-operation.

 

Sincerely,

 

 

Principal C.Bob