So you're married to a Teacher... A Drinking Game

***This post brought to you by: Being stuck inside with nothing to do but distance teach and drink. Also the letters W, N, E and the number 1.***

I'm sure all professions have their personality quirks or behaviors that make being married to someone in that job difficult. Lawyer spouses must say, "I object!" or "I'm not out of order, you're out of order" sometimes. I'm sure firefighters are not much fun at bonfires or fireworks. It is time we teachers celebrate our general teacheryness (and let our spouses drink while we do it).

At my wife's suggestion (and because we've been quarantined together for two months now) I have created a drinking game - not for Teachers (unless you are a teacher, married to another teacher - in which case may God have mercy on your household and liver) - but for their significant others.

So let's get to it.

Take a Drink every time your Teacher Spouse:

1. Uses their Teacher Voice in regular conversation
2. Uses the words, "Well" or "Actually" when correcting you. Take three drinks if they use them together.
3. Is super particular about the day's schedule or lack thereof.
4. Assigns grades/levels to random stuff like chores, bird feeders or foot rubs.
5. Criticizes teacher movies for their various inaccuracies. 
6. Asks anyone to 'wait their turn' or 'put their hand up' in normal, human conversation.
7. Talks about 'this student in their class' or 'what happened in the staff meeting' like it is interesting or anyone actually gives a f*ck about that nonsense.
8. Still has a dedicated snack time, nap time or recess. Everyone else is doing those things constantly now.
9. They show you a 'funny' teacher meme on Facebook/Pinterest.
10. Drink twice if the proceed to explain the meme when you don't laugh at it.

I'm sure there are more - please share your suggestions.

10 Tips for Working From Home

10 Tips for Working at Home

Note: These tips are binding contractually and represent fireable offenses if violated

During this time of unprecedented unprecendentedness, we want to make sure all staff understand the unprecedented nature of their roles. To assist you in this, the Board has produced this unprecedentedly helpful guide to working from home.

1. Set office hours. Sure, you will be likely up till midnight answering a student who just got home from stocking shelves. And your weekend is effectively dead as you knew it, because we want you to be flexible and (digitally) meet kids where/when they need support. Nonetheless, it also helps to set an arbitrary time where you will be in your office. For Professionalism.

2. Speaking of your office; Set up a Home Office space. Try to find a non-ergonomic chair and a table height that is either too low or too high. This will best mimic the work environment that you have grown accustomed to. Avoid setting your office at a comfortable room temperature as this will only make it less like an actual classroom.

3. Dress to Impress: Sure, we want you to socially distance yourself from parents and kids - but what about that nosy neighbour who peeks in your window during your office hours? What are they to think if you are answering student emails in your pyjamas like a pervert?! Remember, even though we don’t want any live video conferencing or actual human contact, you need to pretend like that could happen. Stay sharp!

4. Don’t go outside during work time. We know - it might actually help to reduce peak times to have people shop or do weekly errands when stores aren’t busy. But that is for other people. You are a teacher, working from home. Do not be seen to be human or taking the unprecedented step of shopping during school hours!

5. Don’t go on social media during school hours or probably at all. In addition to possibly being seen as lazy and not at work in your cold, uncomfortable home office, you will likely read concerns from parents about how much/how little work their kids are doing. You will want to address these questions and help remove concerns from parents/students, but that isn’t your job. It’s someone else’s. We just haven’t decided who yet.

6. Do share Good News stories on Public Forums (not social media. Whatever. Probably a physical bulletin board? Wash your hands). People love good news stories about teachers helping students. Be sure to only use the Board approved/defunct Google+ and blur out all student images like they are on COPS. Let the good vibes flow!!!

7. Create projects, timelines and due dates for your students. Check in with them regularly and do LOTS of communication. Use email, phone calls, Google classroom and physical mail.

8. Projects, timelines and due dates are all flexible and entirely unenforceable especially if the student has, literally, any excuse. Excuses could range from ‘working to support family’ to ‘overwhelmed by all the emails and communication that teachers have been sending’.

9. Respond promptly to all parent, student or admin questions. Preferably ASAP, but sooner, if possible. There are about 5 different memos/day/level of government. Each may contradict the other in some way. You will need to read them all and understand them. Also, create all your courses from scratch in a new medium. Unprecedented!

10. And above all, take care of yourself. Relax. Take breaks. Pee. But not too much. You’ll have to work in a regular school again sometime.

Top 5 Alternative Careers for Teachers

Our province released some education funding announcements today. Class sizes took a shit stomping. It's buried in perfectly modesty sounding class average size increases, but the net effect will likely mean class max sizes pushing 36+ students. Fuck that.

Guess How Many Ways my School Board wants to Contact Me? Nope - more.

I don’t know if our Board is weird/unique or what have you, but there are a disproportionate number of ways they can contact us, as staff. 

To call it redundant would be an insulting, libelous, slander to redundancy. Let me walk you through the 9 (NINE! Are you kidding me!) ways that we can be communicated at:

• Mail: For real. Regular, postal service mail and our in-school mailbox system of paper slips from guidance, the library, the main office, special education and what-have-you. It’s almost quaint in its old-tymey-ness, so I barely even resent it. Don’t get me wrong -I do resent it, but not on the scale of some of these other intrusions.

• Home (landline) Phone Number: Okay, admittedly, this was given when I was first hired. It is still valid, and (I’m guessing here) will only be used in the event of a global communications meltdown to let me know whether or not school was cancelled. It might be used to contact my spouse to let her know I’ve been hurt in a chalky-hands related disaster, but they actually already have…

• My Spouse’s Cell Number: Just in case I cut my thumbs off using a paper chopper and need to be medi-evac’ed by an actual chopper to the hospital.

• My Cell: I’ve gotten voicemail here from work, but I also get texts from other teachers, VPs and the Principal. None of the messages are ever good news. Why in the hell did I give them my real number?

• My Work number: It doesn’t actually ring - it just goes through to a voicemail box with the...slowest… robot… voice… menu… devised. I hate it. On principle (the principle of forgetfulness) I only check my voicemail once a month. Why not more often? Because...

• Our Department/School Phone/Paging me in my class: If there is an honest to goodness emergency (or even some shit that doesn’t live in the same time zone as an emergency) the main office/our department each have their own respective number that can be used to talk to a human who will page my class and interrupt a lesson.

• ‘Work only’ Email. Hosted on Board servers and using the worst donkey-balls-of-a-software web interface to connect. It has extremely limited storage space and the SPAM filter is fooled more often than a senior citizen talking to Nigerian royalty. And, AND! inside this email account there are at least three separate folders/message boards I’m expected to read. I’m going to be a sport and not count those as distinct channels to contact me.

• Student email: Hosted with Google and the only email with any reasonable amount of storage space so I obviously have to have all student work sent to this account for marking purposes. Probably the only one I don’t actively hate AND IT IS FULL OF GRADING TO DO! What does that say about all the other crap communication I receive? Nothing good. 

• REMIND/CREW/Other contact App: I could be using all of them, but again, to be fair, I will lump them together. It was awesome when 100+ staff members all joined CREW this week and my phone twitched like a fentanyl junkie every few minutes with the canned “Mr. TECHMORON has joined CREW and wants to say HI” default test messages. Now I doubly hate my phone and triple-ly hate my coworkers. Great team building!

How many ways can your school contact you? 

Can anyone beat my number?

6 Things that Movies and T.V. get wrong about Teaching

Teaching is one of those professions that ends up in movies and television shows a lot. Sometimes the whole show is about Teachers (Boston Public anyone? I don’t want to hear your fond recollections - that show was nonsense). Sometimes Teachers just figure into the background (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off).

The one thing they ALL have in common is that they get many fundamental things about teaching horribly wrong.

Let’s run down a list of the worst lies told on film about teaching as a career.

• Class size: Are you kidding me? No wonder Robin Williams was able to change so many damn lives in Dead Poets Society - his class had, like, 18 students. I mean, Private School, I get it, but still - LIES. My smallest class might have that many kids on a Friday, but all that means is a bunch of follow-up note-chasing and calls home because 8-10 kids were skipping. Next time you see a teacher on film - count the students: if there are over 20 in a room, I’ll buy you a beer.

• That A-hole punk Kid is a Secret Genius/Artist/Musician/Tap Dancer/All of the above: Yeah, actually no. Usually if it walks, swims and quacks, it is a duck, not a mathematician. 

• Lesson Content: Most writers seem to realize that every trial isn’t the dramatic Law-&-Order-Jack-McCoy closing argument grandstand and that every hospital patient doesn’t have a rare disease that gets diagnosed at the last minute to save them. Police procedurals and Hospital dramas at least make some attempt to strike a balance. But for whatever reason there is an idea in Hollywood that every lesson taught in every classroom is a life-changing, hands-on, immersive, multimedia experience. Some of my lessons flat out suck. Where is the movie where seatwork is assigned so the teacher can finish overdue marking while eating the lunch they skipped for coaching? I want to see that one!

• Field Trips: If I ran Field Trips with the reckless abandon of Ms. Frizzle in Magic School Bus, I would be fired soooo fast. No permission forms from parents, no permission from the principal, no clear educational objectives in her proposal. And did she even call ahead to verify 2 million dollars in liability insurance at the locations she visits? I’m betting that no, she did not. And students having ‘exciting misadventures’ on a field trip makes for a good movie, but it gets real teachers written up, suspended without pay and/or shitcanned.

• School Facilities: For the love of everything, why does every TV or movie high school have natural lighting, tall ceilings, arched doorways and lovely wooden panels? If you ever see graffiti, broken infrastructure or a hint garbage, it means that the school is a ‘slum’ or ‘it’s the last day of class and everybody DGAF’. In my school, if you see graffiti, exposed wiring or trash, that means it’s Tuesday.

• The “Emotional Student-Teacher Bond”: Looks great on screen. Generally creeps out parents and other teachers in real life. See Trips, Field above for details about getting written up, suspended and shitcanned. Also: Jail.

What makes you cringe when watching a movie about Teaching and Schools?

BINGO Game for Staff Meetings and Professional Development Days

I won't claim ownership over this idea. 

I saw a 25 year veteran make a D.I.Y. version during an especially terrible full-morning session of forced professional development. She scribbled one on a sheet of paper, wrote in her own words, and began checking them off as the experts droned on. 

It was the greatest thing I'd ever seen. 

Or it seemed that way at least. I mean, the oxygen was getting pretty recycled and the presenter as boring AF. I was also likely a little hungover from playing cards the night before with some other staff. But in any event, this seemed amazing. 

So, I've pulled together some bingo cards for you to print, copy and distribute among like-minded educators at your next PD day or Staff talking-at. If you play it, please comment and let me know how you yelled BINGO! Did you work out a complicated system of hand gestures or coughing? Or did someone just get all excited and actually yell 'BINGO' out? 

And for the love of everything, make the prize booze-based.

A Eulogy for SCANTRON

Our SCANTRON test marking machine broke recently. This was devastating news for many (read-almost ALL) of us who rely on it to mark the closed-answer questions on tests. We have to mark multiple choice by hand? That's bullshit!

But, it also felt like I lost a friend and colleague. I chose to honor this passing with a eulogy that I delivered in my head, while students were working on seat-work. Sure, it wasn't as touching as an actual memorial, but SCANTRON was such a tireless, hardworking S.O.B., that I feel it was an appropriate tribute.

Without further preamble, I present, 

"A Eulogy for SCANTRON"

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines SCANTRON as “The word you've entered isn't in the dictionary. Click on a spelling suggestion below or try again using the search bar above”, but it felt like so much more than that. 

How well did we really know our SCANTRON? I come not to bury our machine, but to praise him/her/it.

When I first met SCANTRON, I was a young teacher, still wet behind the ears. But SCANTRON had already seen it all. It had marked typing tests, East vs West Germany quizzes and ‘There are Nine Planets in the Solar System” still scored a ‘True’ (Or [A], in SCANTRON language) on the answer card. My new approaches to teaching were fine, but SCANTRON always told me to just wait - things are cyclical in education and they always come back around again. I thought this was very wise for a machine that only read the world from right to left (or left to right if a technician switched the settings around). Sure enough, here we are.

It was well worth spending time with SCANNY, as it preferred to be called (only nerds called it TRON) and learn how it saw the world. Race, gender, age, grade - even names - were irrelevant. If you wrote in a number 2 Pencil, that was all that mattered to SCANNY. Objectivity ruled and was an understated beauty in that. I hope I can mark student work with a similar neutrality.

SCANNY saw a lot of technology over the years. Photocopiers changed from boxy, metal behemoths to sleek, molded plastic, well, behemoths. The phones we staff used migrated from the walls to our pockets. Staplers got waaaay crappier. But SCANTRON was constant. SCANTRON was the same. The simple work ethic of getting the job done and not caring that you look like a 1960’s Bond villain computer/nuclear detonator is a lesson we could all learn from. 

I can count on one hand the number of times I remember SCANTRON breaking. A tireless, consistent workhorse that took in unmarked student work and spit out time on a summer deck is all I ever saw when I looked at it. If I have a career half as long and diligent, I will count myself lucky. You will be missed by all of us, old friend - peace be with you

Reading this still chokes me up a bit. If you have any happy memories of SCANTRON or other similar marking machines in your school, please share below.