Fort Knox Pants

I guess I've been a bit busy as my last post was on April 1. We've made it though April and the last of the PSSA tests (today and yesterday were for Science). Now we've got the final push through May and the crazy last week. Lately, I've been noticing that the natives are getting restless, more restless than usual. That's actually putting it mildly. Let me try that again. Lately, I've been noticing some open hostility from my students. Various students are upset with me because I insist on not letting them chew gum, make them keep doing work even though there is only a month left and we finished our state testing over a month ago, or expect them to stay in their seats for more than two minutes at a time. The list goes on. What really surprises me is the level of apathy present in so many students. In one class, I have about 7 of 17 passing, with a majority of those being D's and C's. The F's aren't even close to passing. 60 is passing and I have students in the teens, because they refuse to do a single thing and never complete assignments. I really don't understand the mindset that would allow someone to be that apathetic. Some basic need is not being met.

I have one student who, despite everything he's done this year, I still like. He, in turn, continually lets me know how he feels about me. Whenever I see him, whether it's in the halls, in the classroom, anywhere else in school, he doesn't let more than ten minutes go by at a time without letting me know that he hates me. The other day, as I walked into school, he was in the stairwell window and pounded on the glass a la The Graduate and yelled that he hated me. The rewards from teaching never end. You have to think that if someone goes through that much trouble to let you know that he hates you, he must not actually hate you.

One mini-rant to close out this post: I am tired of wearing Fort Knox Pants. Why do dress pants have so many security devices built into the fly? If I ever had a bathroom emergency, I would be in big trouble because it takes a team of nimble-fingered gnomes to get me out of some of my pants. I have one pair of pants that has a zipper, two buttons, and a slidey-clasp thing. Whoever has been designing these pants must have had a traumatic experience with a fly technology malfunction.