9th Grade Writing Pet Peeves

[composed while grading end-of-semester research papers]

• “Without ___(main character, major plot event, major plot device)___, the story wouldn’t happen.”
• “This use of imagery is important because it really puts a picture in your mind of what’s happening.”

• No capitalization, no commas, no proofreading whatsoever
• Rhetorical questions… lots of them
• “__(main character, major plot event, major plot device)___ is really interesting.”

• 2nd person
• “I am going to talk about…”
• All that stuff I went over about what to do for your assignment? You ignore everything. 

• All that time you had to write and ask questions? All those times I opened up small-group writing conferences? You work on math or read manga instead. And it’s not because you already knew how to do everything, but because you don’t care.
• Not being able to write passive-aggressive comments on your essay to express my frustration because I’m supposed to be the adult here.

[150]

A therapeutic, venting post

The writing juices haven’t been flowing for me lately. Aside from my Learning Logs, I haven’t posted anything for weeks… I blame all the stupidity around me for stifling my creativity. Allow me to do a therapeutic, yogic breath on this Wednesday of Spring Break as I attempt to vent this all out: My bosses are idiots. My students are driving me insane with how mean they can be to each other. The STAAR test is around the corner and I have to teach my students to write like robots so they can pass. My Facebook friends have stupid opinions, but Facebook is one of the rare places where I can interact with adults outside of school, so I keep scrolling and getting pissed. And the special kind of stupid that is the 2016 Elections has made me lose all faith in humanity.

Breathe in, breathe out.

There are a few things that still make me happy and hopeful, though. Maybe if I focus on those things, I won’t hate the world so much:

• When I look at my students and try to talk to them about racism, sexism, and other prejudices and injustices that exist in our world today, I see that despite their naïveté, they have far fewer biases than I was raised with. No matter how annoying or sociopolitical climate gets–on both the liberal and conservative sides, because both sides are irritating with the way they push their agendas–I have faith that we are slowly getting to a better, more accepting place.
• My dogs are fucking cute.
• Pottermore is more navigable now and I can finally read all these stories that Rowling’s been publishing. And I’ll be able to read the script for her play and experience Harry’s new adventure even though I can’t fly out to London to watch it. I’m no longer mad at her. We are friends again.
• I have good friends and family. Even if we disagree on politics and that difference of opinion has become more apparent because of these elections, we’re still able to talk about something else and not hate each other.
• The only thing I hate about my job are the adults above me. If I still love my students, my teaching team, and my content area, then I’m still at a good place. Even if I fantasize about other careers, it’s pretty nice to know that the one I’ve got has badass vacation time.
• Even though the election looks like it’ll be a vote between a turd sandwich and a giant douche, I have faith that the rest of our government will make presidency a living hell for whichever turd/douche gets elected so that it doesn’t get too crazy here in the US. I’m just hoping this isn’t like that time I was watching the end of Season 1 of Game of Thrones, when Ned Stark had his neck on the chopping block, and I confidently turned over to my husband and said, “You know, I’m not even worried. I know the hero always wins. He won’t die.”

Breathe in, breathe out.

In with the positive, out with the negative.

I’m going to have to do a lot of breathing this year.

[532]

This week's writing inspiration, or the lack of it.

I’ve been trying to commit myself to a post every weekend, because that’s what good bloggers do: stay as regular as Jamie Lee Curtis. But the search for this week’s inspiration resulted in quite a few unsatisfactory turds.

I started with an epic tale from my childhood…

…but I got tired of typing so much and lost momentum.

Then I made some observations that I thought were both hilarious and thought-provoking, and I was writing for hours…

…but they ended up being pretty lame.

So I went back to the basics…

…and just ended up annoying myself.

Frustrated, I took a deep breath and a step back from writing…

…tried to tap into my inner genius…

…and said, “Fuck it.”

I’ll just find some GIFs that get me.

(128)

Why Walter White is the perfect example of today's frustrated teachers.

We have a trail of regrets that led us to this career.

 

 

We yearn to inspire…

…and pass on our passion…

 

 

…to kids who couldn’t care less.

We’re just a little bit odd…

 

…and half the time, we’re just acting tough.

We work for parents and students who demean us, not just as professionals, but as humans.

Our bosses used to be one of us, but forgot what that was like.

 

We are micromanaged to no end.

 

And then, we snap.

Because all we wanted was some control…

…and to tell people to back the fuck off so we can do our fucking job…

…because we really do did want to help…

…until you fucked us over.

Thank you, public education, for turning us into grizzled beasts unworthy of the dreams we had when we entered this profession.

(138)

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PS – In case some fool misreads this as the manifesto of an up-and-coming murderous drug lord: it’s not. I have neither the chemistry skills nor the 1970’s RV to make anything illegal, and it makes me sick to even think of people hurting other people. I just need to vent so I can make it through this school year.