Letting the Mud Drain Out

Who on earth would want to try my job? Let me describe it to you. I have 30 minutes twice a week to instill music fundamentals into 440 elementary students. I get the feeling that the moment I have the students’ attention and we are actually learning something is the moment they have to leave. It is the moment the next class comes in.
I feel like I am being asked to do the impossible. I am being asked to keep track of where each of my 18 classes are according to my curriculum. I am being asked to assess and give grade to each student in an equitable fashion. I am being asked to be quite engaging. I am being asked to be a facilitator for “student discovery” (could I get 30 more minutes?). I also have to plan my curriculum based on a creative process method. I love the concept of this, but it is so hard to implement it with my constraints. At any moment I can forget to write down some information causing confusion in future classes. I mean, I have 18 classes to care for! I am asked also to be nice to the students. That I can do, but then making up BS for parents just makes me puke.
There are a lot of great parents at my school, but I do not think they understand the constraints and stresses that I have. Also, they have been freed by the psychologist and sociologists to be an “expert on child behavior and education”. Well, if the child is being a ‘pain in the butt’ it is because the teacher has not engaged the child. It is because the teacher has not understood the depths of their wonderful babys’ personality and led him/her down the road of self-actualization. I always wonder if these parents would really persist on this road for very long if they had to be with their child all day.
Nonetheless, I have to say that, coming from a very strict private school environment, I have learned many things about managing and interacting with children that do not include a spanking or a karate chop. I remember that in my first year I really wanted to hit my classes into shape. Now this was not foreign to me because I went to elementary school in Swaziland where teachers were allowed to hit their students. I have no negative feelings about that because I was only hit once or twice and it did teach me a lesson.
Maybe this is the point of it all. What has happened in the US is something like this. Public Schools: “hitting teaches violence”= “authority should never hit”= “parents should never hit”= “educators should never hit”= “educators have to find other ways to manage class”= “writing up and expulsion should be last resort”= “come up with behavior plans (which means asking the parents to give consequences if Mr. Kuhn sends a message home, but with more flowery language and a lot more time spent.)”
Private/Christians school: “spare the rod, spoil the child”= “authority should hit to send a message”= “parents don’t need any tools besides spanking to parent a child”= “educators go immediately to referrals and expulsions”= “school culture is very strict on everything”= “children are told that if we disobey the rule of the school we are disobeying God becuase God has placed those in authority over us”= “I wore non uniform pants therefore I sinned against God and my teachers”= “pharisees vs. hellians students body”= “no growth especially not spiritually”.
You might be thinking that one of this scenarios is better or worse than the other one. It is up to you on that. For me I think they are both like try to try to climb up a tree that is planted up side down. There are other ways of explaining what I’m saying with explitives, but I won’t use those here (for the children lol). I wonder if we could start again. Maybe we could actually read two scriptures.
Proverbs 13:18–25 says, “Whoever rejects discipline wins poverty and scorn; for anyone who accepts correction: honor. Desire fulfulled is sweet to the soul; fools are loth to turn — from evil. Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, whoever mixes with fools will be ruined. Evil will pursue the sinner, but good will reward the upright. The good bequeaths a heritage to children’s children, the wealth of the sinner is stored away for the upright. Though the farms of the poor yield much food, some perish of lack of justice. Whoever fails to use the stick hates his child; whoever is free with correction loves him. The upright eats to the full, the belly of the wicked goes empty.”
Proverbs 22:12–18 says, “Yahweh’s eyes protect knowledge, but he confounds deceitful speeches. ‘There is a lion outside’, says the idler, ‘I shall be killed in the street!’ The mouth of an adulterous woman is a deep pit, into it falls the man whom Yahweh rebukes. Folly is anchored in the heart of a youth, the whip of instruction will rid it from him. Harsh treatment enriches the poor, but a gift impoverishes the rich. Give ear, listen to the sayings of the sages, and apply your heart to what I know, for it will be a delight to keep them deep within you to have them ready on your lips.”
Ok, so some of you might expect me to go into some great expostition now, but I won’t. This is just where my thoughts lead me as I was trying to confront my work being a teacher this week. Thanks for reading my wanderings and the word of God!