Running for Home - 9. August 27, 2021

August 27, 2021

Well, I’m now officially St. John Allerdyce: teacher of English. Today wasn’t so bad. I can already tell there are a few fucktards in my class who are going to annoy the shit out of me. I’m not just talking about the trouble makers; there are also a couple goody-two-shoes who were already trying to suck up to me. God, it’s only the first fucking day. Whatever. They’ll learn fast that it’s not going to get them anywhere. If anything, I’ll mark them harder for it.

I’m not really liking this whole ‘lesson plan’ thing. Emma insists that I have plans for the day, the week, the month, the term, end-of-year goals for each student and all this other bullshit. Hell, we’re even supposed to have a meeting at the end of every semester talking about each student and their keeping a tighter watch on progress in all their subjects. It’s supposed to combine team-building amongst the staff with the academic analysis. All of this stuff is a crapload of work that I really don’t want to do, especially for the Lit course. I mean, most of those kids don’t give a fuck and they’re only taking it because they have to in order to graduate. At least the kids in Writer’s Craft want to be there. Well, most of them, anyway. There’s still a few that are going to be a pain in the ass, I’m sure. I’ll know more when I go through the assignments I had them do today.

I’m not a teacher, but I thought a good first thing would be to have them write something for the first half of the class, and then do a self-critique for the second half. Besides taking up a whole period, I figured it would give me an idea of who among them can actually put a half-decent sentence together, who among them actually can think about how they are writing and talk about it, and who among them thinks they’re the next Shakespeare. At least this way I’ll hopefully have something concrete to write for Emma’s student goals bullshit.

God, it’s going to take me forever to go through all of these. Ugh. I gotta figure out how I can get them to do a lot of writing, but not have too much marking to do. Maybe I can pawn it off on the students with a lot of peer-reviews and shit like that, and I’ll only mark final drafts. Maybe that will work. Besides, if I’m forcing them to show off their writing to their friends, maybe they’ll actually put some effort into making it good so they don’t embarrass themselves. I’ll have to foster an atmosphere of mockery whenever it’s clear that a student puts in no effort.

I’m starting my Lit kids off with Gatsby. Emma thinks I should do Wuthering Heights, but fuck that shit. We can read something by one of the other Bronte sisters. Jane Eyre, probably. At least that’s not complete, constant melodrama. I gotta figure out what other books we’re going to do, though. A bunch of the ones I was thinking about doing over the weekend don’t really qualify because they weren’t written in English, originally. It pisses me off, too, because it’s not like every great book out there is in English. Hell, most of the great books out there aren’t in English.

I wanted to do one of Italo Calvino’s books, maybe something by Haruki Murakami too. I think I will end up subbing in something by John Updike or Isabel Allende, maybe some Margaret Atwood for the feminism or Zadie Smith for hysterical realism. Wait, and Toni Morrison, too. The students need to read that. Probably some Hemingway too, or ‘Blood and Guts in High School’ by Acker if I can get away with it. God, too many books. Oh yeah, and ‘Ulysses’ by Joyce. We’re doing that whether they can handle it or not. I don’t care if Emma thinks it’s too fucking hard for high school seniors. I’m stoked for that. I fucking love that book.