Teachers at Lawrencedale Public Schools were welcomed back to school with a celebration of all things legal, political, marsupial, and maniacal. Superintendent John Underwood began by explaining the school’s lack of money, facilitating no funds for retirement, extra-duty pay, and dry erase markers.

After these awesomely cordial opening points, Underwear went on to texplain that the school had reduced so many employees that there weren’t enough left to man an accreditation committee, so Lawrencedale would no longer have national accredidation.

Instead of pausing to acknowledge teachers who won awards, attended and presented workshops and conferences over the summer, finished their master’s degrees or became nationally-board certified or master teachers or in any way celebrating education and the daily work of teaching and learning, the welcoming comments continued with the introduction of Richard Coppley of Coppley, Coppley, and Hicks, who took off his seersucker Gregory Peck/Atticus Finch-wanna be blazer and updated teachers on new legal issues concerning education.

As the morning drug on with no bathroom or stretch or water breaks, Coppley delivered an 82-minute speech on the process of hypothetical court cases involving cocaine-sniffing teachers, drunk-driving teachers, and teachers committing other “acts of moral turpitude” and or just “being a crummy teacher.”

“One joint of marijuana, one doobie, is moral turpitude,” said Coppley to the teachers, who had not heard the word “doobie” used since a Foghat concert in 1982.

The teachers sat enthralled by the lawyer’s expertise, enabling them to create meaningful lesson plans, collaborate with one another on the curriculum, write welcome letters to parents, devise first-week activities, and enjoy the academic process of returning to a structured life of the mind with 100 or so students storming the doors.

More encouraging verbage included how the voucher program was killing public schools, how the separation of church and state was being bulldozed, and how FERPAs, 504s, IEPs, 911, C-Paps, photosynthesis, and 411 work. Then after a brief word from Superintendent Underling that included a rambling story about a dog in the outfield at a little league game, test scores, and the price of tuna, teachers were allowed to stand.

By noon, the teachers were so full of rules, laws, pessimism, putrefaction, and puke that they were, indeed, happy to be educators at Lawrencedale Public Schools, and pleased to be treated as un-thinking professionals who had not been cognizant of national education news and trends until Mr. Coppley opened his mouth before them only a few short hours prior in the never-to-be-retrieved past.

Waitress Tawny Cummings at the Train Wreck Bar and Grill in downtown Lawrencedale told TWP that the sale of Margaritas, Bloody Marys, and Jagermeister shots spiked at lunch that day.

In the afternoon, teachers were entertained by guest workshop presenter Betsy Pretzel, who taught  almost 2 years before beginning her career as a dynamic, experienced teacher and professional development speaker. Pretzel’s topic was on something whose title had a double negative in it. Toothpicks, color-coded 4 x 6 index cards, and jokes about the teachers sitting on the back row were all introduced.

The bartender at Train Wreck, Matt (refused to give last name), told TWP that he was out of all his cheap gin and tequila before the dinner shift even began.

Welcome back, teachers!

Omaha NE (TWP) 

With his latest book, best-selling writer James Pitterdaughter is achieving unheard of success, even for this author who has conquered the bland fiction charts, branched into children’s books and young adult flying fantasy and even uses a ghost writer when he needs to take a break between books for lunch.

Pitterdaughter’s Along Came a Teacher . . . Who Kills People has shot up to number 3 on the bestseller charts in only four weeks of its release. The book, which Pitterdaughter said would be the first in a series, follows high school English teacher turned serial killer Amillia Floss on her journey to rid the world of evil, while expounding on the meter in Thomas Hardy’s poetry to her senior students who refuse to read George Eliot because she was ugly.

Floss, a career teacher at fictitious Jonesborough High, in the fictitious town of Borough,Nebraska, is already being compared to Dexter, the infamous serial killer in the popular HBO series who only kills other serial killers or evil people. Floss, however, kills those opposed to logic and reason. Not surprisingly, the majority of victims in this novel hail from the world of institutional and bureaucratic education-land.

“I’m not sure why this book has taken off like it has,” Pitterdaughter said in a recent interview, using a speakerphone so he could type his next book at the same time. “I suppose the recent backlash against teachers might be behind it.”

Though not a “Pitterdaughter fan,” 4^th grade Omaha Washington Elementary teacher Jane Stein said, “I enjoyed the book. It’s like watching Gunsmoke or Judge Judy. You know the bastards will get what’s coming to them. In real life, teachers never get justice for the crimes of the higher-ups.”

The main plot of Along Came a Teacher centers on a pyramid scheme to raise test scores that pits superintendents against one another and teachers against superintendents and pitbulls against calico cats and kids on 504s against kids riding the #3 bus route. The branching subplots must all be explored and connected by Floss, a no-nonsense teacher known for throwing chalk when in dire straits and teleporting as a plot device when creativity fails. The superintendents’ ponzi scheme must be ferreted out and the guilty parties punished . . . and boy, does Ms Floss know how to punish!

“It’s only natural for Mr. Pitterdaughter to capitalize on the current educational climate, and maybe the book can produce some positive changes,” said actual Nebraska high school English teacher Teresa Burchett, “If it were well-written, no one would read it.”

The sequel to the book, Pop Goes the Teacher . . . Who Kills People, will be out early next year. TWP was unable to get any Nebraska administrators or education department officials to comment on Pitterdaughter’s book, though several remarked on the “paradigm shift” the book appeared to be making.

DETAILS as of 7/15/11:

Things were not getting better at the school I had been teaching at for 6 years. Principal and superintendent were not listeners. Both mouthed platitudes that were never concretely backed-up. Principal only called 1 faculty meeting for the entire year–and used it to abuse teachers for unspecified actions. The schedule was ridiculous, and the super refused to listen to teacher input about it.

I had been looking around at the want-ads and found one at another school nearby. I was immediately impressed with the superintendent and principal, who were both up-front about what they wanted . . . and . . . here’s the kicker–were very appreciative of my many years of experience and success as a teacher. They were already asking me for my input about classes and how to teach them. We teachers know how important appropriate praise, recognition, and attention are for our students. All good bosses know this. Why do so few admin know it?

We keep teaching because we love our subject and we love working with kids. Sometimes those two things simply aren’t enough. Sometimes you want to have input in the decisions that affect the students, which is the main reason you chose teaching–to have a positive effect on students. Sometimes, when you’re making a difference (which I was at this school), you also want it to be noticed . . . not with an award or even money (though, those are fine if you want to fork them over) but with a word, an email, a PERSONAL fucking acknowledgement of one’s efforts.

I’m hoping to have a good experience at this new school. It is quite a bit different. I hope it will not give the Teaching Whore fodder. I repeat: I hope it will not give the Teaching Whore fodder.

Now . . . on the state and national level, I’m sure the fodder will always be there. And so in that sense,  I hope to keep writing! Thanks to everyone who reads and comments and lurks and . . . exists metaphorically beside me.

In the glorious days of summer, when teachers frolic and gambol through the wildflower fields, all is right with the world. The teachers rise each day somewhere between ten and noon and then eat blueberry pancakes with specially ground French roast bean coffee and nap and watch a Lifetime movie in the afternoon.

After watching the movie and perhaps playing with a very furry calico kitten, the teachers take another nap and then rise at dinnertime to have fettuccine Bolognese or roasted chicken with garlic or grilled salmon, because they have time to learn to be top chefs in the summer when they are OFF.

In the evening, the teachers might gather together with friends and family for board games or dominoes or cards, which they will win at . . . because they are teachers. Or they might have a martini on the lawn at the city museum where an outdoor art exhibit is being presented. Afterwards, they will go to the horse races and bet on number 8 in the fifth race to place because its name is Schoolhouse, and they will win.

They will go to bed around midnight after having an aperitif and half a Cuban cigar on the veranda of their home with a special friend, lover, or partner. They will be wearing white linen or lace or both and the hummingbirds will swoon in their presence, and the moon will shine only for them through the wisteria branches cascading across the trellised porch railing.

Throughout the night, they will have the flying dream and sail above the bright blue ocean and the mint-green grasses of some beautiful and foreign locale and then alight upon an island to share champagne with George Clooney (or Penelope Cruz) (or Anderson Cooper or Jodie Foster) and become enveloped in the music of the night’s sea breezes and swaying palm trees.

This summer day will be repeated over and over for eight weeks or six or three . . . whatever constitutes summer in the district the teacher resides. During these sensual, lazy days, the teachers will read no books or texts related to their teaching field, attend no conferences or workshops, grade no AP exams, compile no PowerPoints or lesson plans, attend no staff development or college classes for continuing credit, do no training in the latest educational fad, perform no part-time work like cutting lawns or painting or teaching summer school or tutoring in order to make enough money to continue in the work that is one’s calling for the other 10 months of the year, write no letters of recommendation for current or former students,  enroll in no classes for continuing toward a master’s degree, design no new curriculum even though they are being asked to teach a new class in the fall with no text or resources or funds, learn no new skills, teach no driver’s ed classes, administer or monitor no ACT or SAT exams, conduct no teacher workshops, plan for no student council, cheerleading, journalism, choir, drama, speech, or academic team competitions or workshops to be held at their school in the fall, and they definitely will not write to senators and departments of education and speak with other teachers or write pointless blogs on wordpress sites about issues of concern to schools across the nation.

In short, in their summers OFF, teachers will live as so many believe they really do.

In response to widespread teacher protests and rallies in support of teachers who have recently been scapegoated, semi-lynched, raked over the black souls of the education department’s policy wankers, and, in general, blamed for bad kids, stupid kids, the economic downfall, the Olson twins, potted meat, and alopecia, teachers have finally gotten school administrators and test-addicted bureaucrats to see the light.

Instead of the annual three to four week onslaught of end-of-instruction tests, schools are now going to get the opportunity to test their students year-round! In an identical statement issued from the education departments of several states at once, the superintendents declared the following:

“Our goal is for smaller, less-intrusive tests throughout the year that measure cognitive skills and provide meaningful information for classroom strategies. Paired with that is a goal for a robust and accessible longitudinal student data system, something that many states have heretofore not had. The overarching goal is to provide teachers with meaningful data throughout the year that you can actually use. Thanks again for this information.”

Notified of this policy, Jackson High School math teacher Robert Anderson said, “Well, I guess the tests heretofore I have been giving are heretofore not good enough to give me the meaningful data I need to do what I’ve been doing for 18 years. I wish I had heretofore known. I have wasted so much time using my own tests to teach students who now make eight times what I do and have second homes on theRiviera!”

A recent education symposium brought a variety of education superintendents and school administrators together, and the all-year-testing plan was the solution they came up with to the unrest broiling across the nation. An administrator from a rural Midwestern school who declined to give his name to TWP, said of the resolution, “The meaningful data that has become necessary for teachers to do their job is the answer to a robust strategy for pairing information and skill in a less-intrusive cognitive system of data heretofore not provided for actual use.”

In response to TWP’s “Huh?” the administrator had to go pee-pee.

The regional education administrator for the southwest Arnold Ickiickishebang said at the symposium, “It is time to admit that the amount of time and energy we spend on end-of-the-year tests that do not accurately measure a student’s abilities and skills come to an end. It is time to initiate and thus utilize a heretofore not accessible longitudinal data system through the school year with tests implemented on a regular basis and designed for their meaningful data output by my ridiculous colleagues at the state capital who have never been inside a public school classroom.”

Aware that truth was randomly inserting itself into his sentences, Ickiickishebang began to cough and quickly exited the stage in a fit of spontaneous integrity that he could not sustain.

Toward the end of the symposium, a handful of tattered teachers who had ridden the city bus across town to the event, burst into the room. Their leader, a career second grade teacher fromWyoming, Jane Hall, grabbed the microphone and announced, “Your reforms are oh-so-wise and expedient and good. So let us not speak of such things as developing schools that meet the needs of all students, improving health, medical, and social care for all America’s children from the time of birth, and sustaining mentorships and partnerships with the community that give people an investment in the education of the future citizenry!

“Oh no, your all-year testing ideas are so wonderful that we should not even speak of team-teaching, sharing teachers across districts, developing innovative programs and schedules, and apprenticeships and opportunities for students not going to college and partnerships with colleges for college-bound students! No, no, no. We should not speak of giving schools the best technology and facilities, operable thermostats in their classrooms even! Because you have figured out all of the problems and will solve them with your continual tests!

“Indeed! The apocalypse has been averted by your careful, researched, proven methods, and lo, we heretofore ignorant teachers wandering in the dataless mire of our own making bow to you. We bow to you, oh mighty administrators who have not been inside a classroom in five, ten, fifteen, or never years! We bow to your robust knowledge, yea, that it shall lead us out of the valley of the shadow of a dearth of testing so we might dwell in the longitudinal system of meaningful data forever and ever, admin!”

At the Educational Magicurriculum Concepts Factory, account manager Bo North announced that sales of their new line of magical end-of-the-year teacher products have skyrocketed. “We haven’t seen this kind of increase in sales in such a short amount of time since the 80s when Ronald Reagan slashed the education budget, and we sold out of recycled staples in 24 hours,” North said. “Recycling was the best magic we could do at the time.”

The Passing Period Phantom-Producer, even at a pricey $149, has been the company’s best seller in the last week. The Phantom-Producer is a palm device, upon which the teacher places her hand as soon as the bell rings, and she becomes a phantom, invisible to the naked student eye until the bell rings for the next class.

“The Passing Period Phantom-Producer saved my life,” said middle school art teacher Raul Rodriguez. “For some reason, during the last few weeks of school, students suddenly want to talk with me, not personal issues, just random talking between classes. I have nothing to say to them. Repeat. NOTHING. Instead of fleeing from them or nodding vacantly as I try to record the attendance from the hour before or get a PowerPoint up on the stupid Smart Board for the incoming class, I can now just open my desk drawer, set my hand on the Producer, and I am invisible.”

Another big-seller this season is the handy Pocket Idiot-Alarm. This alarm is a small device the size of a key chain; in fact, many teachers use it as a key chain in the last few weeks of school.

Of this device, which sells for a low $19.99, an unnamed teacher from an urban high school noted, “When a student takes up for another one by asking an idiotic question, such as, ‘Why are you getting on to her for having earphones in her ears while you are talking?’ you can press the device and set off the school’s fire alarm system, thus saving you from homicidal acts and giving all of the teachers in the building a much needed, though ear-splitting break from the classroom.”

Other magicurriculum items that North reported are doing brisk sales include the Disappearing Principal Wand, the Gin-and-Tonic Dictionary Device, a talking calendar that counts down the days and uses your actual name, spoken in soothing tones by your choice of Liam Neeson or Marilyn Monroe, and name-brand packaged gum that when chewed by students causes them to slip into a catatonic state for exactly fifty minutes, at which time, they rise and leave the room en masse.

Fifth grade teacher Felicia Prentiss, Grand Rapids Elementary, said the gum appeared to have no side effects, though parents had been reporting that their children were unable to sleep at night. Apparently, the gum packages were given to all Grand Rapids Elementary teachers at a workshop put on by the Educational Magicurriculum Concepts Factory. “I guess I wasn’t the only one using them,” Prentiss said. “I ordered a gross of the stuff and the supply is getting low, let me tell you.”

During Teacher Appreciation Week, teachers across the country were honored with numerous gift packages, ranging from the small but special to the large and luxurious. TWP surveyed teachers and found some interesting results of the weeklong marathon of love and mutual respect.

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, 3rd grade teacher at Ross Elementary, Karen Morrison reported that she received a special email from the superintendent of schools which read, “As we close Teacher Appreciation Week, I want to say THANK YOU for all you do for our students! The single most important factor in our success as a school district is the quality teachers and staff we employ! We will continue to move forward and provide opportunities for our students because of you and your efforts! You are making a difference!”

Morrison noted that the proportion of exclamation points to white space in the email was surely evidence of great good will and sincerity, and she was pleased with this lone gift of her week, which came on Friday afternoon at 3:23. When asked if the email was sent to her personally or to every teacher in the district, Morrison declined comment.

Another special reward was reported by Evan Paterson, a middle school German teacher from Park City Schools, Utah. Paterson said that at a specially-called faculty meeting on Monday morning, the principal awarded each teacher a new bloodborne pathogens cleanup kit with their name on it.

Included in the baggie were a new pair of rubber gloves, 2 Band-Aids, a peppermint, and a ¼ of a roll of sterile bandage. Paterson said he used up all items that afternoon, so he was “especially grateful” for the thoughtful gift coming at such an opportune time.

Clarksville High School English teacher Brenda Turner reported on the Teacher Appreciation gift she received from her principal who was helping the counselor arrange end-of-instruction tests. Instead of teaching her normal afternoon classes, Turner would be monitoring the EOI test from 12:30-3:30. “It’s our gift to you,” her principal said.

“I figured it would be all right. I left some lesson plans and took a mystery book and some paper so I could read or write a little,” Turner said. However, Turner was scolded by the counselor administering the test, who was playing Minesweeper on the “monitoring screen,” when Turner pulled out the book. Told not to read or write, Turner sat numbly in a plastic chair for almost three hours, summoning up every poem she had ever memorized and crossing and recrossing her legs, since neither the principal nor the counselor had arranged for her to have a bathroom break.

“Yes, it was such a magnificent experience of appreciation,” Turner said. “I had to go to the doctor for a bladder infection the next day.”

Other reported teacher appreciation gifts included a teacher evaluation given to a sub because the actual teacher was proctoring a test, 25 cents for a free pencil from the school pencil machine, cake left over from the principal’s wife’s mother’s birthday celebration, 3 extra minutes for lunch, air conditioning (in a south Texas classroom), half a canister of puke sawdust, and a plastic keychain from the superintendent’s brother’s car dealership.

Alight with the glow of all the warm, thoughtful appreciation of the week, teachers continued on their educational journeys much refreshed and eager to earn more blanket exclamatory emails with the occasional glimpse of capital letters in THANK YOU.

Teachers, staff, and students at GarnerMiddle School have created a new language of sorts, one worthy of research and further study. Noted etymologist Dr. Rand Lichtenstein of Harvard has recently published his research on the language in the April issue of the Modern Language Review.

Lichtenstein studied the school over an eight-week period, after it had come to light that outside members of the public and parents were unable to communicate effectively with those associated with the school. “What I found was an ingenuous code these people had developed in order to survive in the educational environment that has arisen around them,” Lichtenstein said.

Lichtenstein said he noticed the strange language as soon as he entered the building and said “Hello” to the student aide on duty at the front desk.

The student responded by asking,

“Do you wish to

• A.  speak to a counselor
• B.  check out a child
• C.  request a transcript
• D.  scorn a teacher?”

Lichtenstein laughed and asked, “What have you done with the None of the Above option?” While waiting for the student to laugh in return and then begin a normal conversation, Lichtenstein grew wary. He told TWP, “It was as if she did not understand what I was saying at all.”

Lichtenstein said he immediately tried an experiment. He asked another open-ended question: “What kind of school do you have here?” Again, no response. He asked, “What educational activities are emphasized here? Again, no response. The girl chewed a piece of gum and looked blankly at a point above Lichtenstein’s head.

Then the doctor said, “This school looks like an exceptional place.” The girl tilted her head and replied, “A = True. B = False. Circle the correct option. I circle B.”

Aided in his research by retired English teacher Nanette Eagleton, Lichtenstein searched for the language’s cognates in other languages and an origin or transmission of the language. Eagleton, told TWP that she made the decision to retire during 3^rd hour freshman English one day, when she was reviewing questions in a state test prep booklet and found this one about William Carlos Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow”:

So much depends upon the red wheelbarrow in Williams’ poem because it is

• A. important
• B. metal
• C. dependable
• D. necessary

“I read that question aloud to the class and just couldn’t take it anymore. I had begun finding myself ending everything I said with ABCD answers and True-Falseing any statement made to me. When I asked my husband one night if he wanted A. a shower, B. oral sex, C. a back rub or D. to be left alone, I heard what I was saying and knew I had to quit. I immediately ran to my files to find my retirement papers, with B-B-B ringing in my ears.”

Lichtenstein said that more studies would need to be done on the language to fully understand its intent and repercussions in modern life. He did note that while he was studying Garner Middle Schools, he received calls about at least twenty-eight other schools in the country experiencing the same acquisition of a specialized language of educational survival.

“The language itself,” Lichtenstein noted, “does not have much linguistic value. It is the effect of its usage over time that remains to be seen—and of which, we should all be very, very concerned. Do you not agree? A = True. B = False.”

Education enforcement officers recently cracked down at Springfield High School in Kentucky. Two separate math teachers were ticketed for completing end-of-instruction practice booklets at excessive speeds. Tipped off by a crying girl, officers lurked near the open doorway of Ester Reed’s room until their radar clocked her going 2 mph (mundane problems honed) over the State Education Department limit.

The crying girl was later found to be suffering from eternal drama fatigue, unrelated to any math infractions (or fractions) pending in the room.

English teacher Donette McKinney, cited for negligence of her recently-installed Smart Board, posted bail with the spare change she had accumulated in years of selling pencils to students (another violation of Education Code BE-19999982—profiting from the poverty, ignorance, and laziness of a captive source).

A forensic measurement of the dust (1.3889 millimeters) on the Smart Board surface, plus a report of its malnutritioned wires worked againstMcKinney. When questioned, the Smart Board also testified that it felt unloved and of no value to its “mother.”

“If I need a talking head or talking numbers or letters or bright colors or flashy words and music, I’ll turn the fucking thing on. Otherwise, I don’t need it. If you haven’t learned to be creative and think with what is inside you, ten-thousand images and talking heads and whistles and bells aren’t going to solve the problem,”McKinneytold TWP.

Biology teacher Mark Underwood was ticketed for going 250 mph (material per handout) over the limit, resulting in systematic copier abuse and excessive pencil-to-paper contact from students. Underwood was told to “utilize computer software programs to reduce the amount of paper utilized in the classroom.”

After Underwood noted that he had only one computer in his classroom, he was told to use the computer lab. After he noted that there was no computer lab, he was told to use the laptop computers stored in the library. When he noted that the laptops did not have the biology software on them and the technology guy had failed to add it even though it had been requested at the beginning of the year, he was told to . . . “utilize handouts.”

His fine was, however, not revoked.

Elsewhere in the building, the head of the science department was cited for keeping cats in the freezer, the family and consumer science teacher for keeping condoms in a locked cabinet, the agriculture teacher for wearing boots, and the attendance secretary for making too many phone calls.

As she was being led away in handcuffs, Spanish teacher Rebecca Weaver, arrested for translating 50 mph (muchacho por hombre) over the speed set by Eddie Philpott’s mother who had been to Mexico once and knew that her boy could learn that language if there weren’t so many Mexicans already in the class who were making it hard for all the “real students” to learn, yelled, “Viva la revolucion!”

And to the officer tugging on her arm, she smiled and whispered, “Chingada.”