Chris Herrington decided years ago that his reality was much more fun…
and he’s ready to tell you why.
Sit back and relax.
It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
A Typical Day for a Typical Student
I don’t know if anyone else is having this experience, but, as a school teacher, I am watching students sit by almost helplessly, not able to get much done. They seem, as a group, to be missing some key ingredient that would help them to get going, make a difference, and get on with their lives.
To explain this observation, maybe it would be better if I simply gave a typical day for many of these students. We could start at any time of day, because the days seem to run into each other. To start then, anywhere, let’s look at the point of contact I have with them at school, breakfast. Many of them will be tardy. They don’t seem to have that need to get to school on time. There has to be some responsibility for getting here on time, but many times the parents have either dropped them off or the students have left the house late, and so the parents are not unaware that students are getting to school late. It seems like the whole family is late. They get going; it’s complicated to get up a family, and maybe they really didn’t sleep all that well, but we’ll get to that later. But, in any case, we are getting a late start to the day, but it is no big thing because it happens like this every day. That’s the first bit of anxiety that has to be blown off and disregarded. Maybe it was finding the keys, maybe it was dragging the feet, I’m sure we’ll get to it, later.
While the students pile into the cafeteria for breakfast, they bump, nod, swagger, and lean like so many different versions of felines. A few dogs, the occasional possum, and a few parakeets come through, but, mainly, it’s cats. The “I could be bothered” mindset is pretty prevalent everywhere we look. I could care how I look, I could care how I sit, I could care why I’m here; that sort of institutionalized glaze is on their faces, and everyone is pretending to case less than his neighbor. The “This is going to be another boring day in the nuthouse” look is a classic tether to yoke them into a bonded glob of moppy-headed hipsters. The thugs, the droopy drawers, the elite…. the gangs are all here, including the swivel heads, the neon pencil players, and the neo-beat gothomatics.
“Is everybody in, the story is about to begin….” And the camera pans back as the teachers assemble the students for a morning lesson and the pledge. The rote mechanics of the exercise, hand to the heart, saying the words like cereal spilling over the side of a bowl that is held at a distance, all of it is merely a series of things that they do as a matter of course, in the house of the boring day, in Stalag 17.
The troops are dismissed to go to class, and way beyond the 5 minutes given, students drift in for an additional 10. It is easier for them to be questioned and released for being tardy than to actually get to class on time. What’s the rush anyways? The work just keeps piling on, and it’s just another day like every other day, stamp and stoop, the grist for the mill, all that sort of thing, blah, blah, blah.
Once in class, the work begins, and at first there is the thought that today is the day. If we can get organized enough, and get everything located just right, and get the desk tops arranged just so, and make sure that we have checked with everyone, and taken note of the papers….oh, the notebook is in the car, again. No thumb drive. Well, can’t work today, time to check with my friends. Maybe play a few video games, or search the Internet, only 1.5 billion websites to go…OH, this class went by so fassst. Did the teacher say something? I’ll work on this later. And the whole class whizzes by like a commercial that got skipped. Mute the incoming and wait for the bell. Use the time to glance at the e-mail while the stupid teacher is not looking, and put my earrings in again, just got new ink done, and it’s time for lunch. The amount of time it takes to avoid and evade the consciousness raising the teachers are trying to do is so overwhelming that to actually consider the information that is coming at them is so hardcore that getting to lunch is a break that is well-deserved and cannot be missed. It may be that only a few minutes of actual work was done all morning, but doing all of that evasive maneuvering is taxing, and it makes your “thinker hurt.”
Finally, the last class, shutting down about 35 minutes early is necessary because of all of the hard leaning that has happened all day. There is still the 70 minute bus ride or the inevitable car ride with the peeps unless you can shag a ride with your homies and take a detour on the way to getting there late too, wherever there is.
Many students have kids, and jobs, and things they have to deal with that are way adult, but in between, the time just drags on like a one-eyed teddy bear, held by one foot, speed bumping its head on the debris of existence. Video games and cell phone calls, and the ubiquitous text message are ways of checking to see if others are checking to see if anyone has checked to see if being in contact with anything in the least evasive and discouraging in range is the biggest past time. “Did you hear” is on the lips of everyone. What they are hearing will make no real difference most of the time, other than to make sure that it takes up otherwise valuable time that could be spent in the present making a pathway through the future. God forbid that anyone should sit down for 5 minutes and actually contemplate the future in a way that creates a list that will be done in the present to make sure that plans are being carried out. It is way easier to simply sit down and angst over the immense amount of stuff that needs to be done, get overwhelmed, and then seek diversion. Mood stimulation is the national past time for students. They want to feel something, only not this. Whatever it is, it would be better to do it some other way. While the teacher is creating a brand new way to reach them, then the students have no responsibility at all since the entire process is going to be changed and the 2.0 version may having nothing to do with anything they are presently dong, so the trick is to keep the adults moving and the students get to sit still while everything around them becomes obsolete and gets studied in a committee that will never come to ultimate findings anyway because those people will retire and the next crew that comes in will start from scratch. It’s just the flavor of the week; wait, it will change.
Once home, the routine is the same: evade, silence, avoid, excuse, phone, computer, shovel food, avoid, have a contemptuous look on your face, and call your friends and tell them what idiots your parents are. Never mind that if you mom died it would be totally heart breaking; while she’s here, she is a major pain in the backside, and since it is all about you, you can play the victim when she’s dead, crying about how much she was always there for you, and you miss her so much. Will this get me on Oprah? Will she give me a car? I’m not cynical, just observant.
I don’t hear them talk about chores much. They have jobs, but they don’t pay rent or take care of bills. They buy more stuff. They may have a $300 phone bill and need the new X-Box. They have 99 cent songs out the whazoo on their iPods. And their parents are working plenty of overtime, so they can afford it. “My grandfather has 100 acres, and I’m going to live on the land”, they tell me. They have also told me they hate this one horse town, and they would not stay here if you paid them. They say they want a good job, but when you question them, they want big money. They have no plans on working at anything that will pay that well. Everyone wants to be a superstar, but no one wants to practice. And everyone wants to continue on just as they are, living at home with their parents paying the bills, but they hate being told what to do, since they are 18 and only have 10 and ½ credits to go, so their parents need to get off of their backs. When you say it like that, maybe the parents really are to blame.
“No one is going to yell at me,” one student snarled at me about his dad, “I’m going to go join the Marines.” Okay.
“I’ve tried reading books, but they’re full of words!” another commented about my class.
Inevitably they need to go to sleep, and it’s just like the Waltons. They have 1000 people they need to tell good night. The cell phones light up like a nuclear power plant in a meltdown. The TV is going, the video games are blazing. He’s got no college fund but he does have the latest version of 204 games and software packs. He’s amazing on RockStar, but he does not know his times tables. She can hit every note on the update, and never misses a word, but she has no idea what a sonnet is, and would not know a split infinitive if it hit her in the head. Time to sleep; it’s 3:48.
At 7:13, the family has now raised him from the dead of sleep 6 times, and they are all late. It’s going to be a total rush, and he has not even begun to find his books, and his phone was right here somewhere. Thumb drive? I don’t need that today. An hour to school and it’s time for breakfast. Good morning my homies!
runningturtle87
Having completed 32 years of public school service, Chris Herrington lives, with his wife, in Appleby, Texas, and his writing consists of blogging and essay writing concerning an array of topics including education, mediation, self-development, and human interests. He teaches at the Martin School of Choice, plays racquetball, and enjoys his job.
Chris Herrington can be reached at herrington@everythingnac.com
