Where I come from/am

I will be taking the bus this morning. It’s snowing heavily for the second day – –(good against our drought)— but no snow day off from school… Grumble grumble. 

It’s OK—I’m liking my work, but it would be sweet to have a day off. I will get one soon enough: starting Friday we are on spring break!

I was happy to find (on FB) a map of the clans and families of Scotland, from Amazing Maps. Some of my mother’s ancestors were Sutherlands – –circled in red, below. The earliest one to emigrate was Uriah Sutherland, in the mid-1700s. 

below: Classroom 

I took these photos ^ for my fantasy Pinterest page on what classrooms really look like. 

This idea came to me after looking at millions of reels and Pinterest boards of cute ’n’ clever ideas to make your classroom look like – – – oh, like no classroom I’ve ever seen. 

 I certainly don’t expect teachers to put in time as interior decorators, Though if it were my classroom, I probably would take down the faded-marker, two-year-old Valentines cards…

Teachers or staff are supposed to care for the classrooms (including cleaning them) on their own time, and pay for it themselves too. I have now seen a couple pretty cool classrooms – – set up by young energetics teachers. But the ones I work in look like the above.

Duct tape notwithstanding, I like the building a lot – – it’s 100 years old, with tall ceilings, wood floors, big windows – – I’d rather work there  than a pristine modern building. Or,  worse, the schools built in the 1970s that look like prisons, with window slits that don’t open. 

Our windows open (a few inches), but our doors don’t. A teacher looked shocked when I commented that our school is like a prison because the doors are locked. 

I think everyone’s gotten used to that, like industrial livestock, but it continues to bother me a lot. Especially because it’s matched in many ways with an attitude towards the students that they are not full human beings who have their own voices. Certainly not equal in power or dignity to the adults anyway. Often – – usually – – the teachers are benevolent in intent, but the students are more like inmates then full participants. Same as it ever was.

I just keep thinking of my rule to be like the teachers I see who do create a little bubble of dignity and personal space for the students. 

Yesterday morning I found one of the special ed kids lingering in the hall – – they did not want to go to their class, taught by the one teacher I have a serious problem with. So I asked the student if they wanted to come to the art class I was supposed to be in – – even though my student hadn’t turned up. This other student said yes happily. 

 Afterword I told the teacher that that was a testimony to what a good place they have made their classroom – – that a student voluntarily wanted to go there.

The student drew my portrait in class:t