On the Plus…
Posted in Work
One benefit of working here…
I just had a conversation with a student entirely in Spanish. So, there is that.
Category: Work
I Don’t HAVE to Bang My Head Against the Wall….
Posted in Old Man Yelling at the Sky, Work
There’s a special kind of luxury in taking a day off when you actually need it instead of waiting until your body files a formal complaint.
Yesterday was a mental health date, and honestly, I highly recommend dating yourself. I slept like an angel the night before – one of those rare sleeps where you don’t wake up at 3:17 a.m. wondering if you remembered to reply to an email from three weeks ago. I still got up early, because apparently my body now believes 5:30 a.m. is a personality trait, but there was no rush.
Coffee. Quiet. No work bag. No bell schedule.
I did the full Ross Retirement Simulation.
Went for a run. Went for a swim. Read for a while. Watched a genuinely good movie without scrolling my phone every eight minutes. Read some more. Played drums. Made dinner. Watched hockey. It was 100% enjoyment with no productivity guilt attached. Frankly, I was thriving. If I had put on linen pants and started talking about olive oil, I could’ve become one of those people who moves to Italy.
Meanwhile, in my actual life, I had left what I thought was a pretty fun assignment for my law class.
Find two songs that sound alike – sampling, parody, copyright disputes, whatever. We’re doing copyright law, so I figured this was a layup. Listen to music. Your music. Pick songs. We’ll talk about ownership and infringement.
There are 21 kids in the class.
Two did it.
Two.
I literally assigned teenagers to listen to music and somehow that was too much. Not a ten-page paper. Not Bluebook citations. Not “brief Marbury v. Madison.” I asked them to Google songs that sound alike.
They didn’t even care enough to fake it.
That’s the part that gets me. It’s not just that they didn’t do it – it’s the complete indifference. No panic. No excuse. No “I forgot.” Just vibes. It could have been five minutes of work while sitting in the parking lot before school.
Nothing.
And this is where people love to gaslight teachers.
“Well, if they were more engaged…”
“If the lesson was more relevant…”
“If you built stronger relationships…”
Nope.
Respectfully, nope.
I am the same teacher I’ve been my entire career. Same sarcasm. Same energy. Same stupid jokes. Same projects that used to work. Same assignments kids used to actually enjoy. I’ve done mock trials, debates, music law, crime scenes, contract negotiations – real things, fun things, things designed specifically so they don’t feel like school.
This group of seniors just does not care.
Not all of them, obviously. Two of them did the assignment. God bless those two. I may frame their work like it’s the Constitution.
But when the baseline becomes “I don’t care if I fail,” there is no educational strategy powerful enough to compete with that. You can’t out-teach apathy. You can differentiate, scaffold, build relationships, call home, create incentives, stand on your head juggling flaming copies of the Constitution – but if they fundamentally do not care whether they pass or fail, eventually you’re just performing CPR on a mannequin.
So today, after sleeping terribly because apparently peace has an expiration date, I’m back at work. Making playlists for copyright law. Prepping study guides for other classes. Doing the job because that’s what you do.
But if I’m honest, the tank is running low.
People say focus on the ones who care.
I do.
I absolutely do.
But when it’s 2 out of 21, sometimes that math gets a little depressing.
Testing…
Posted in Work
I spent the morning proctoring the ACT at work.
I’d love it if school districts made the ACT/SAT optional. Maybe some do, not mine. Every kid has to take it, no matter what path they are on. For 50% of our students, it is a waste of time. They aren’t going to college. We don’t force kids to take the ASVAB. Only kids who want to go to the military take that. We don’t force them to take the Welders’ Union exam.
I get that college is important, and many people are better off for going, but it isn’t the answer for everybody, and making people take 3.5-hour standardized tests is a waste of time and resources.
Naming Rights…
Posted in Work
In the wake of the news, a CPS school is exploring changing its name from Cesar Chavez Elementary. I’m once again suggesting we do away with school names, ala NYC.
Just give them numbers.
P.S. for elementary schools and H.S. for high schools.
Start with P.S. 1 and keep going until you run out of elementary schools. Same with high schools.
I doubt the number 3 or 76 will ever be cancelled due to uncovered misdeeds (but I wouldn’t put it past Twitter or BlueSky these days).
Professional Development BINGO…
Posted in Work
There are few things worse in education than sitting through a useless, all-day professional development session.
Yesterday’s installment? Multilingual education.
Now, to be clear, that’s not a bad topic. It’s an important one. The problem is, we already had four separate PDs on it last year. At this point, it’s not professional development, it’s professional déjà vu. I didn’t learn a single new thing. The only thing that happened was that some outside agency cashed a nice district check.
And that’s kind of the game, isn’t it?
Almost every PD I’ve attended follows the same script: bring in consultants to teach teachers how to talk to kids…as if we don’t do that all day. As if many of us don’t also have kids of our own. As if the building isn’t already full of experienced teachers, deans, and counselors who actually know our students.
But no—let’s keep feeding the consultant industry at CPS’s trough.
The real highlight, though, is always the lingo.
So for the next PD, I’m making BINGO cards for my friends. First one to BINGO wins a beer.
Squares will include:
- “Equity”
- “Seen and heard.”
- Free space “Bio break” (just say break…we can all decide if we need to use the bathroom or not)
- “Collaboration”
- “Oppression”
- “Community”
- “Thank you for sharing.”
- “Let’s unpack that.”
- “Difficult conversations”
It’s mind-numbing.
And don’t get me started on “studies show…”
Which studies? Where? Conducted by whom? Can I read them? Or are we just supposed to nod along because someone said “research-based” in a confident tone?
At some point, “studies show” just becomes an appeal to authority with a PowerPoint slide.
This mindset is how we ended up teaching reading the wrong way for years. A study showed that certain strategies helped some students with reading disabilities, and instead of using that as a targeted intervention, the system said, “Great—let’s do that for everyone.”
And now we’ve got generations of kids who struggle to decode words, don’t recognize prefixes and suffixes, and are left guessing based on context clues, like it’s a game of educational charades.
But hey, studies showed. (fantastic podcast on that issue)
The bigger issue, though, is this: I’m not sure I’m a good fit for education anymore.
I’d put it at about 70% that this is my last year.
It feels like CPS cares more about social-emotional checkboxes and graduation rates than about actually producing educated people. There’s little accountability for students to do the work—just a growing list of reasons why they can’t. Standards get lowered, expectations get softened, discipline becomes optional, and the solution is always…more spending.
More programs. More consultants. More initiatives.
Worse results.
At some point, you have to ask whether this is about education, or if it’s just a very expensive jobs program wrapped in good intentions.
Enrollment keeps dropping. Families are voting with their feet.
And the system’s response?
Demand May 1st off so students can join the union in protesting for more funding. Really.
They Don’t Make it Easy…
Posted in Work
I should learn my lesson. This is the second professional development day at my school that I can’t “sign in” to because I don’t bring my phone. I want to be a better “student,” so I don’t bring electronics to the meeting. That way, I won’t be the person scrolling online like 95% of my colleagues and ignoring the teacher. I know I hate that when I’m teaching so I’m trying to be mindful and respectful.
BUT then, sign-ins are always QR codes to scan.
Sigh
The “No Good Deed” Boomerang: A Masterclass in Being Lujacked…
Posted in Work
Everybody knows that no good deed goes unpunished. In fact, if you do a good deed long enough, it eventually becomes a permanent line item on your soul that you can never truly delete.
For the past few years, I’ve organized a field trip for our female students to visit the courtrooms, observe the legal process, and see what a career in law actually looks like. It’s a great trip. But this year, I decided to test my theory. I didn’t seek out the invitation. I didn’t go looking for the work. I figured it was time for someone else to step up—specifically a female lead, considering I’ve been saying for years that a female-empowerment trip should probably be led by a woman.
The organization sent the invitation to someone else. She accepted. Great. I thought I was free. I thought I could just exist in my classroom and let someone else handle the logistics for once.
The Request
Then came the request: “Can you help chaperone?”
Sigh. Fine. I said okay. I can sit on a bus. I can stand in a courtroom. I can do the “support” role. That was my first mistake.
The Hijack
A day later, the other shoe didn’t just drop; it kicked me in the teeth. I got a request for a list of the girls who want to go on the trip.
Me: “Weren’t you coming to my classes to talk to the girls today?” (You know, to actually inform them about the trip she is supposedly organizing?)
Co-worker: “I have a meeting now, so can you do it?”
And just like that, I’m the organizer again.
The Lujack
Here’s what burns: If you prioritize a meeting over the actual legwork of the event you accepted, that should be on you. Don’t lujack your choice of one meeting (with who knows who) over the meeting you had planned to come talk to the students on to me!
By “helping” her because she’s too busy with a meeting to talk to my students, I am now the one doing the recruitment, the list-making, and the logistical heavy lifting. The “Meeting” trump card shouldn’t mean I suddenly inherit your responsibilities.
I knew I should have said no. I saw the trap, I walked into it anyway, and now I’m back to square one,
Will I ever learn? Probably not. But for today, I’m just annoyed.
I will learn, though. I will learn to NEVER do anything outside my own classroom again. Every time I do it ends badly for me.
Grumpy Old Man Is Grumpy
Posted in Old Man Yelling at the Sky, Work
I wasn’t a great high school student. I get it.
But it was different.
We’d come into a classroom loud, talking, laughing, finishing a story from the hallway. But when the teacher said, “Okay, let’s begin,” or even just cleared their throat, we quieted down. We faced forward. That was the signal. Class had started.
I don’t remember students deciding to rearrange furniture. You didn’t drag your desk over to face your buddy. You didn’t turn your chair away from the board to socialize. You sat where you were told to sit, facing the front, and you either paid attention—or pretended to.
And we did the work.
Maybe not well. Maybe not enthusiastically. Maybe an essay was half-assed or a worksheet was rushed. But we did it. We listened to lectures. We read along in textbooks. We read silently. We filled out worksheets. We dissected fetal pigs. Whatever the task was, we did something.
Today, many students treat work as optional.
They’ll spend an entire class period on their phone—watching a movie, playing a game, scrolling endlessly—while groups of friends just hang out and talk. I walk around nonstop policing it, redirecting, asking for phones to be put away. Five minutes later, the phone is back out. Again. And again. And again.
We aren’t allowed to take phones. I can ask a student to hand it over—one did today—but if they say no, there’s nothing I can do except call home. And about 90% of the time, the parent either doesn’t care or tells me the kid needs the phone.
This semester I rearranged the desks to all face forward. Two students per desk. Every class but one has been great.
Face forward. Work in chunks. Worksheets and projects completed in front of me and turned in the same class period. No computers. No phones. No cheating. Structure. Accountability.
And honestly? It’s been great—in most classes.
But every year, there’s that one class.
This year, it’s my 8th period. Last period of the day. Ten students. Two who care. Three who are mildly interested. And five who want to sit in a group and do absolutely nothing.
This is a financial literacy class. “Adulting” stuff. Budgeting. Rent. Cars. Insurance. Saving. Investing. Things they will actually need when they leave high school.
Today’s task was straightforward: research average rents across different Chicago neighborhoods. Consider how safety, commute, entertainment, and location shape rent. Pair that with a starting salary for their chosen career. Calculate net pay (simplified). Apply the 30% rule for housing.
Every other class did it.
They all reached the same conclusion: The rent is too damn high. Maybe roommates are necessary. Maybe living at home for a bit isn’t failure—it’s survival.
This group? Learned nothing.
And here’s the part I don’t like admitting: it frustrates me because I know I’m going to pay for it.
Teachers and administrators are trying to prepare these kids for college, the military, the trades, or the workforce. In my class, I’m trying to teach them how to function as adults—how to budget, save, invest, rent an apartment, buy a car, pay utilities, and understand insurance.
They won’t learn it.
They won’t develop executive functioning skills. They won’t build basic competencies. They won’t leave with the reading, writing, or math skills needed for an apprenticeship, let alone anything beyond menial labor.
And then—my tax dollars will support them. I’ll pay the housing, food assistance, medical care, and all the welfare-type benefits.
That’s the part that burns.
They have the opportunity to improve their situation. They have access to education. They have a chance to rise above poverty. Whether the reasons are systemic, cultural, personal, or motivational—I’m not here to assign blame.
I’m just saying this situation exists.
Now that it’s off my chest, I’ll add this: the other four classes are good. My AP kids are fantastic. I stay in touch with former students who’ve gone on to do meaningful things and improve their circumstances.
Focusing on them keeps me motivated.
But banging my head against the wall every day with the others?
That part is soul-sucking. I’m ready to retire.
How Hard Is It? (A Teacher’s Rant Driving Him to Retirement)
Posted in Work
Every once in a while I look around my workplace — a public school in Chicago — and ask myself a question that has become almost a mantra:
How hard is it?
Not in the philosophical sense.
Not in the “teens are complicated” sense.
I mean… literally… how hard is it to do the absolute simplest things?
Because lately, the gap between “this should be easy” and “apparently this is impossible” feels wider than the Grand Canyon.
1. The Master Calendar That Does Not Exist
Let’s start with the calendar — or rather, the lack of one.
My school does not have a shared, school-wide master calendar. That means I often have no idea when field trips are happening, when testing is scheduled, or when some random event is going to hijack half my class.
Imagine trying to run a class with structure and planning while operating in an administrative environment that seems allergic to… well… structure and planning.
And here’s the part that drives me nuts:
A shared calendar takes ten minutes to set up.
Google Calendar → Create → Share with staff → Done.
How hard is it?
Apparently very.
2. “What Can I Do to Raise My Grade?” (Asked With One Week Left)
Another classic:
Students approaching me a week before the end of the semester, asking what they can do to raise their grade.
Not in week two.
Not in week five.
Not even in week ten.
Week seventeen.
And the answer — the simple, painfully obvious answer — is always the same:
Do the work during the semester.
It’s astonishing how foreign that concept feels to many of them. We’ve created a school culture where deadlines are flexible, missing work can be made up months later, and every consequence can be negotiated.
So kids have learned that nothing actually counts until it’s too late.
But still… how hard is it to keep up with assignments as they come?
Harder than I thought, apparently.
3. Being Where You’re Supposed to Be
You’d think this one would be simple:
Be in your class, not your girlfriend’s class.
Be in Civics during Civics, not wandering into the gym.
Go where you’re scheduled to go.
And yet, every day I have students drifting in from hallways, from other rooms, from places they absolutely shouldn’t be — usually with an expression that says, What? Why is this a problem?
It’s not that the rule is complicated.
It’s that enforcement is inconsistent, consequences are rare, and many kids have learned that rules are more like suggestions.
So again:
How hard is it?
Too hard, it seems.
4. Why This Feels Like a One-Way Ticket to Retirement
The truth is, none of this would bother me if it were the result of complicated, unsolvable problems.
But these aren’t complicated.
These are the easy problems.
The low-hanging fruit.
The quick fixes.
The “we could have solved this in 2009” issues.
What wears me down — and what makes retirement look more attractive every day — is living in a system where:
- the simple things don’t get done
- the obvious things aren’t enforced
- the preventable problems repeat endlessly
- and the people who notice sound like the unreasonable ones
I’m not asking for perfection.
I’m not asking for reinventing the wheel.
I just want a calendar.
Students who do their work.
Kids who go to the class they’re assigned to.
How hard is it?
Hard enough, apparently, that I’m starting to think the answer might be:
Too hard for me to keep doing this forever.
They look different on TV….
Maybe I won’t use AI to help update my presentations 
for class.