Last week a city high school teacher got busted for blogging about the bleakness of his place of employment. I found the Trib story fascinating because of its portrayal of a totally FUBAR school. Sez the Trib:

He labeled his students "criminals," saying they stole from teachers, dealt drugs in the hallways, had sex in the stairwells, flaunted their pregnant bellies and tossed books out windows. He dismissed their parents as unemployed "project" dwellers who subsist on food stamps, refuse to support their "baby mommas" and bad-mouth teachers because their no-show teens are flunking.He took swipes at his colleagues, too--"union-minimum" teachers, literacy specialists who "decorate their office door with pro-black propaganda," and security officers whose "loyalty is to the hood, not the school."

Needless to say this pissed off a whole lot of people. The writer stopped going back to work because he said he feared for his safety.

I spent some time in the K-5 version of this, back in (you guessed it) B-more. The part about the security guards really hit home. One of the sadder experiences I remember was when we had to cancel a Halloween party because one of the parent aides (they handled security, maintenance and all sorts of odd jobs) stole all of the refreshments. His soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend later saw him hawking 2-liter Pepsi bottles out on the corner.

So while his description is mean-spirited and unfair, I wouldn't call it made-up. Also familiar were the students' and teachers' objections:

"Although many of our students adopt tough facades and insist they are grown, they are still children: sensitive children who still crave guidance, encouraging words and positive reinforcement," wrote teacher Gina Miski.

They used to say this about the second-graders I worked with. That's pretty bad, when you have to sell people on this idea and you're talking about 7-year-olds. 

¶ 8:59 PM