Another Successful Day

I couldn't find a way to justify my teacher since I could never read her thoughts, so I just made her sound terrible. Oops.

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The first bell rang, and my early birds entered the room, struggling to carry their heavy binders and textbooks. I smiled to myself, and made a mental note to commission yet another unnecessary textbook to their load. They needed the exercise, the skinny little string beans.

Students continued to trickle in throughout the next few minutes. The second bell rang. I didn't bother starting the lesson yet, but instead, I prepared my detention slips. John rushed in 27 seconds later. 27 seconds. A new record for him. I walked over to him as he sat down, and slid a signed detention pass to him. He shrunk into his seat with a sigh. Mrs. Lilith, the current detention room overseer, was always accompanied at lunch by at least one of my students. She was a lonely and sullen woman, so I told myself that I was doing her a favor.

A few students had noticed the black piece of construction paper taped over the clock. Being able to tell the time was the basic human right of the privileged. So I took it away from them. That way, they wouldn't be able to pack their things five minutes before the bell. I introduced this method to my class formally, and they stared at me as if I were insane. Many of them groaned, four of them panicked, and one of them looked ready to kiss his watch. It was amusing.

I instructed my students to place their homework in the basket at the front of the room. Most of them did so. A few of them quickly checked it over, and I noticed the look of horror on three of the student's faces when they realized that they forgot to fill out the bonus question at the very bottom of the page. In my class, the word "bonus" was synonymous with the word "mandatory". I smiled thinly, "Speak to me after class if your homework is incomplete. And yes, if you didn't fill the bonus out, it's incomplete."

I headed to the front of the class and turned the Smartboard on, a PowerPoint already set up. I could hear the faint mumble of two of my students talking. "I could turn this off and hand you a worksheet, you know," I said after a brief pause of silence. That shut them up. I'd give the class the worksheets for homework anyway.

I went through the PowerPoint, clicking away with my remote control and pointing to important details with my laser pointer. My commentary was monotone, and was practiced in a way that would convince my students that every word I spoke was fact and not opinion.

The bell rang, and I handed out the homework for the day and detention slips to students who neglected to finish their homework. Another successful day. I was sick of this job. Over twenty years of it, and never any appreciation or respect. I even had to open a "complaint department" in the summer just so my students would stop complaining until then. Not to mention I didn't get paid nearly enough.