when teaching school is like divine

When teaching school is like... a divine comedy

For me, the school year is back in full swing-- inasmuch as one can be

when Labor Day still hasn't rolled around yet. For those of you who

have forgotten, or who now look back upon your high school years

through the rosy mists of fondness for that halcyon era when your

head, not your back, was covered with hair and your tricep didn't flop

around like a Tibetan prayer flag in a good stiff breeze, high school

is organized into concentric circles of despair and Sisyphean drudgery

which align quite nicely with the Nine Circles of Hell our friend and

eternal optimist Dante Alighieri described so fully.

Circle 1- Limbo, the Home of the Innocent: The freshmen have already

had most of the pranks pulled on them-- like looking for a swimming

pool on the roof, or looking for the smoking area, or being told that

we have open campus for lunch, and so on. They've lost a bit of that

dazed look-- unless it's a permanent condition.

Circle 2-The Lustful: The "veteran" freshmen on the two- or

three-year-plans are already falling back into their habits of trying

to evade class as much as possible and still somehow be able to

finagle enough credits to achieve sophomorehood. They lust for a way

to get over. Those who lust for each other have tried to discover just

where the security cameras don't work.

Circle 3- The Gluttonous: Last year's freshmen who made the cut to

sophomores are hoping to have grown some-- the girls hoping to be able

to fill out those teeny tanks they wear and the boys hoping to get

closer to making that dunk on the basketball court. The boys can eat

the weight of a newborn elephant in one sitting. Sophomores bear the

grim visage of those who realize that they still must slog through an

eternity of high school, and that as long ago as they were seventh

graders? That's how long it will be before they graduate. The

mathematically inclined have computed this sentence in Hell as the

equivalent of 19.7% of their lives thus far.

Circle 4- The Hoarders and the Improvident: Most of the juniors are

engulfed in a tsunami in post-high school planning, as the first

deadline to register for the ACT was on the Friday after we started

school, and they are frantically collecting honors to list on their

aplications and recommendations from harried staff. Those who swear

that they'll NEVER want to go to college or trade school or sit in a

classroom again are sneering at their classmates who are wigging out.

They can't wait to get out of school so they'll never have to do what

anyone tells them, EVER AGAIN.

Circle 5- The River Styx; the Wrathful and the Sullen: The seniors

have slogged their way through all these levels only to discover that

they are merely on the verge of true Hell. They've figured out to take

AP and honors classes their first semester, and as soon as the

transcripts are mailed off to their fifteen dream colleges to "drop

them like it's hot" and coast through the rest of the year. The ones

who SWORE that they would never want to go to college or trade school

have lost a bit of that sneer as they are slowly coming to the

realization that after antagonizing Mom and Dad for the last six

years, what with the brushes with the law and the suspensions and the

phone calls from school and the poor grades, their parents are

COUNTING the days until they can tell their offspring that their

bedroom has become an exercise room, and seven bucks an hour at TWO

part time jobs at fast food joints minus something called FICA and

social security will get them a run-down one bedroom apartment with

three roommates, rides to work on a bus, peanut butter sandwiches, no

vacations EVER-- much less three months in a row off, no health care,

and tennis shoes from K-Mart, not Foot Locker. No bling, no phat

threads, and no pimpin' any rides. Suddenly four years of sitting in a

classroom listening to someone drone on and on about 18th century

British literature or the principles of accounting doesn't sound

nearly as stupefying as fifty years of soul-destroying repetitive

labor where you come home at the end of the day with the smell of

fried food permeating even your HAIR, which you now have to get cut at

Great Clips four times a year. They've asked their uncle about that

job at the Ford plant, but it's shutting its doors in 2007 and

outsourcing to Mexico under NAFTA, and soon their uncle may be

delivering pizzas and competing with them for jobs-- and he, at least,

has a history of showing up to work on time and following directions,

which gives him a big leg up on them.

Gosh, is it too late to take the ACT?

Circle 6- The City of Dis; the Heretics: The teachers have once again

realized that no matter how thick the student behavior guide is, that

the assistant principals have pretty much no interest in enforcing the

policies on tardiness, dress code, attendance, cell phones, smoking in

the john, or insubordination unless it's directed at them. These

teachers will "dis" these administrators with considerable bitterness.

They are already huddling in circles in the hallway, disputing the

diagnoses buried in IEPs and 504s, and mocking memos from

administration. They have their own vision of what the school should

look like, but theirs is not a theology bearing the imprimatur of the

powers that be, so they just appear out of touch with reality. Those

who work hard and strive to inculcate their students with a love of

learning are nonetheless vilified by the public and even some of their

peers. Those who think that students should be accountable for their

shortcomings are considered to be child-hating misanthropes.

Circle 7- The Violent: Many of the parents have already had all the

phone calls from school they are going to tolerate. They have blocked

calls from any building in the district. Others have been lurking

malevolently in the counseling office since the end of July demanding

that their kids' schedules be changed about five times, or that an

entire class be created to fully meet the needs of their son or

daughter. Already two hundred of them have tried to enroll their

children in our district by claiming the address of the UPS store down

the street, and if they don't get what they want, they will try to

intimidate anyone within hearing, including our sweet little

white-haired registrar.

Circle 8- Malebolge, The Fraudulent: The counsellors and principals

fall into various categories listed by Dante. They either spent two

years in a classroom and are 24 years old, or they spent two years in

the classroom twenty years ago. But no matter what, they are experts

in good teaching methods and writing curriculum, or so they assure the

staff. Among them are:

Panderers, who just want to be the students' "friend;"

Flatterers, who will tell you that they think you're a great teacher

only to dump more work on you;

Simoniacs, who shower dispensations for referrals upon kids, in a bid

to supposedly "save" them from the "Heretics;"

Hypocrites, who will merely counsel a kid who calls a teacher that

word for "a person who would engage in carnal activity with his

maternal relative" but who suspends a kid for six days for calling the

AP a sexual deviate;

Sowers of Discord, Scandal, and Schism, who hang out all day with

their favorite staff members in their office, trading gossip and

innuendo regarding the rest of the staff-- they think that teachers

are all incompetent, hyperbolic, child-hating misanthropes.

Circle 9- The Traitors: The central office administrators and school

board. They will bizarrely give permission for five hundred kids who

supposedly live at the UPS store down the street to attend schools in

our district, and they will refuse to investigate reports that

students are being dropped off at bus stops in cars with license

plates from a neighboring state. They will overturn suspensions upon a

whim. They will go to the National School Board Association meeting in

Miami with their entire families while they tell teachers there is no

money for raises and their deductible for health insurance will need

to triple. They think that teachers are all incompetent, hyperbolic,

child-hating misanthropes who are overpaid.

And how would our friend Dante describe this abode?

"And when, with gladness in his face, he placed his hand upon my own,

to comfort me, he drew me in among the hidden things. Here sighs and

lamentations and loud cries were echoing across the starless air, so

that, as soon as I set out, I wept. Strange utterances, horrible

pronouncements, accents of anger, words of suffering, and voices

shrill and faint, and beating hands--all went to make tumult that will

whirl forever through that turbid, timeless air, like sand that eddies

when a whirlwind swirls." [Dante, as he enters the Gates of Hell.