Today's episode of Atticus Goes Postal Over Something School-Related brought to you by:
New Jersey. {News article re: parents outraged that six teachers chaperoning an overnight trip to D.C. and Gettysburg had one drink each after dinner.}
- "I have the utmost respect for some of those teachers that {sic} went on the trip because I've known them for years. But it's a no-no," Quick said. "I'm sorry, these teachers are wrong. I hope every one of them gets fired. I am going to push until something is done and not just a slap on the wrist."
This is my advice: Tell all the doe-eyed younger siblings of your friends not even to
think about teaching as a career. Tell them to go to law school or investment banking; tell them to work at a drive-thru; tell them to whore themselves on the streets. Don't bother trying to teach. It's not fucking worth it. The parents don't deserve you. The kids will just try to stab you in the neck during the day; the parents will try to stab you in the back at night. You will be poor at 22; you will be poor at 65. Whatever you make, some people will say it is "too much" because you sit back and eat fucking bon-bons all summer, whether or not you have to get a second fucking job to make ends meet.
You will spend your day with children, and people will assume you are incapable of being more than a child yourself. They will assume you are only two pages ahead of your students in the textbook. If you work in a poor school, you will spend your year looking forward to the one student who didn't try to fuck you up actually saying "thanks, I graduated." Cherish it. You'll have to live on that satisfaction for another year. If you work in a rich school, you will spend your year parking next to asshole students driving nicer cars than you will
ever afford and going to colleges your parents wouldn't even let you apply to, all the while knowing that if you
ever tried to stand up for yourself against one of these golden children, the parents would take you down in a heartbeat, because the school board doesn't give a shit about you; you're expendable.
And the capper is, anonymous punk-ass sluts for cash will trash you on Internet message boards with impeccable prose they must have learned from God himself because they're
still pissed about two or three bad teachers at a high school they were too good for, even though they used those magical 99th percentile aptitude scores to get into a good college and a better law school. Now they're making $180K a year --- no thanks to you --- and make
no sacrifice for any kid other than their own. They snicker that you have the temerity to call yourself a "professional" even though, like them, what you do, you are, and what you are, you are 24/7.
Don't do it. Run away. Marry well, and hope you can move to Europe or Japan or some place where there is no threat that educational decisions will get made by the DUMBEST FUCKING DENOMINATOR like Ms. Quick. Some place where your name won't get dragged through the mud in the papers because you acted like a fucking adult at dinner, and set a fucking example that people can drink alcohol responsibly, in moderation. Jesusmotherfuckingchrist. What a world we live in.
