Wednesday, November 26, 2008

WTF?!

A few days ago, one of my supervisors noticed how annoying the pencil thing is--a handful of kids ask for pencils every single period of the day. (At this school, students expect to get pencils and paper and teachers are expected to give them out as needed. This irritates the hell out of me every single time. No wonder charter school kids have a hard time in high school--they haven't even been 'trained' to come prepared to school every day. Anyway, end rant.)

She suggested I sharpen a bunch and keep them with me. So I did; I wrapped a dozen or so freshly pointy pencils in a rubber band and put them in the bin I use for papers.

The next morning, they had magically transformed into a rubber-banded dozen of *unsharpened* pencils.

What the freaking f*ck?!?!

7 comments:

17 (really 15) more years said...

What a fabulous concept- enable kids to come unprepared for school.

Does the school give you these materials to hand out whenever need be? If that's the case, I wouldn't even bother stressing about it- think to yourself, "life will deal with this kid".

I'm always shocked at the lack of discipline in your school (and yes, this IS a discipline issue)- so much for my ideas about charters.

Schoolgal said...

Are the teachers in that school truly happy??? Something is just so wrong.

Did someone deliberately do that to your pencils???

Jackie Secor said...

Baltimore city public high school teacher here. I am REQUIRED to have pencils for my kids. After a year of finding this incredibly annoying, I bought a bunch of golf pencils (you know, the little pencils sans erasers). This way, if they don't like to use the golf pencils (and they don't), they have some incentive to bring in their own pencils. Is this crazy? Yes.

NYC Educator said...

Maybe your supervisor has found an innovative way to make those lowly teachers sharpen her pencils.

I also used to carry around really unappealing pencils, but now I don't even bother. Really kids ought to be required to bring something with which to write or they're learning the wrong lesson.

Anonymous said...

I feel your pain...all too well! Very few things set me off like "Miss. Can I have a pencil?" I'm always amazed that they can get there with their mp3 player, their cell phone, with their clothes perfectly matched & accessorized, but they couldn't manage to grab a pen. Ach!!

Fred said...

How come I don't have you linked? I'll have to fix that.

Welcome back to school. It's almost over.

jeanne said...

what happens if you just DON'T supply pencils??
sheesh! that's just nutz.