Why My Job is Difficult

The supermarket can be a pretty strange place if you go when it's busy. You're basically in a confined area for up to an hour, running into the same people aisle after aisle. And not only are you running into the same people, you sometimes get uncomfortably close to them, squeezing between a pair of wide-load buttocks and the ethnic canned goods shelf. It's a good place to check out the demographic of the area in which you live (for Merion, that would be Jews and upper-middle class white families).

It's also a good place to see how kids are raised to behave, especially in an environment that is not specifically designated as kid-friendly. This has become particularly interesting to me as a kindergarten teacher. I kind of like to scope out what parents have to offer me. Today, the results were not particularly encouraging.

One of the Acme customers that I kept running into was a woman and her son, who was probably around 6 years old (prime kindergarten age). For a while, they did not particularly catch my eye, but when I did happen to glance in their direction a few times, the little boy seemed pretty annoying, grabbing at his mother's hair when she was stooping to get some bread and bouncing it up and down. But that I was able to chalk up to antsy little kid stuff. (Yeah, when I was a kid, bread was boring too; I liked Trix.)

But then, a bit later, I was walking up the snack aisle when that same little kid came running towards me and carelessly knocked over a few boxes of Ritz crackers. He glanced up at me for a moment, before darting past me toward his mom who was further down the aisle. This pissed me off immediately. One of my classroom rules is about cleaning up after oneself, especially in a communal space, and this kid had obviously never been spoken to about personal responsibility. (Trust me - kids are never too young to learn about it.) So I said to him firmly, "You should put those boxes back, especially since you knocked them over."

Well, the little #!%&er completely ignored me, which wasn't completely unexpected. Upon hearing what I said to him, his mother kind of half-assedly asked him to put the boxes back (because I was still within earshot), but when I started walking away she just dropped the issue and started walking away with him! There was no reprimanding her son, no asking him to clean up the mess he made. And I'm sure there will be no whupping when they get home. That's right, young people of America - somebody else will always cover your ass; Mommy and Daddy will always be there to make sure everything is okay. That was basically the lesson the woman just taught her son in a simple minute.

And what that kid learned in a quick moment of lazy, irresponsible parenting is what will take a teacher months, or even years to undo. And if that doesn't do the job, think about what kind of person that kid will be when he enters society as an adult, or as the parent of another child. Am I being overly dramatic? Well, that is for you to judge. But I know that every person who reads this knows at least one inconsiderate jerk who is a drain on the people around him...and his mom probably never made him pick up after himself at the supermarket.

Even More Baseball...

You're cringing now as you find yourself reading yet another baseball post. Don't worry, the season will soon be over...

But in the meantime, I have to brag about the Phillies’ amazing sweep of those kings of the NL, the filthy New York Mets. Each successive game in this series just got more and more intense, and I swear I almost peed myself tonight (I taped the 1:05 day game) when Chase Utley hit that walk-off RBI that sent Iguchi home for the win. Game 1 on Monday was a blowout, Game 2 was tight but low-scoring. Game 3...well, don't think we didn't catch you trying to cheat, New York (*cough* Reyes and Wright *cough*), but you lost anyway. As for tonight, all I have to say, giddily, is: Billy Wagner, you sucked, and bad. You forget that when you are an ex-player, we know all your secrets, and that really came back to bite you in the butt tonight. Enjoy the ride back up I-95, suckers (as well your cross-town rivals’ sweep of the Red Sox)!

Aug. 28: Wright, Heilman, and Lo Duca stare in disbelief at a swinging bunt that's rolled fair.*

Aug. 28: Ryan Howard after his winning homerun.*


Aug. 29: Marlon Anderson freaks after interference is called on him and the Mets lose.*


Aug. 30: Shane Victorino jumps on Tadahito Iguchi after Iguchi comes home for the win.*

In other baseball news: Yes, I am still madly in love with Carlos Ruiz. In the exciting aftermath of today’s game, I imagined Carlos rushing into the dugout and, in the heat of the moment, kissing me passionately. I sent the rookie catcher a fan letter a few weeks ago (no comments please), in which I suggested that sending back an autographed picture would be good karma for the playoffs. Now that the Phillies are behind the Wild Card and division leaders by only two games, I think Carlos has no choice but to show me some love. (Picture at right: "Bay and Carlos")

Last but not least, I have decided to….quit my job and aspirations and become a professional baseballer. After going to the batting cages for the first time in my life this past weekend, I now see the light. And it has nothing to do with educating little black kids or winning a Pulitzer. It’s all about bending your knees and wiggling your butt in the summer sun, and swinging a bat to the euphonious crack of a well-hit liner. No matter that I was just facing the slow-pitch softballs – that feeling is pretty damn good all the same.

*Photos courtesy of Yahoo! Sports.

...Most Verdant?

While watching the Phillies take out the Dodgers tonight (let's go Wild Card!), I started pondering: Who would win if MVP stood for...

Most Voluptuous Player:
Rod Barajas. By far the fattest player on the team. Guy, you lost out starting catcher position to a rookie, and during your single at bat in the last several weeks you strained a groin muscle. Weak.


Most Vivacious Player:
Shane Victorino. Be it his shaving-cream-pie-in-the-face antics or goofy but lively run-garnering trips and falls, Shane is not only fun to watch but just plain fun.



Most Vociferous Player:
Jimmy Rollins. "The Phillies are the team to beat this season." Comments such as this have earned JRoll the honor of being the team's most outspoken player. Sure, it pisses off our rivals, but he just tells it like it is.


Most Versatile Player:
Carlos Ruiz. This is the rookie player who replaced Barajas. He's got a 100% fielding percentage, 40+ RBIs, 5 homers, and is an overall dependable player. Ruiz is also my personal favorite (hubba hubba), which counts for more than all his stats combined. I love you.

Most Visible Player:
Ryan Howard. This one's a no-brainer. Being last season's actual National League MVP and winner of the Homerun Derby, Howard is the household name of the Philadelphia Phillies.


Most Victimized Player:
Chase Utley. I wish I could give the closest thing to a Philly hero a more honorable title, but the man is the most hit-by-pitch player in the National League! As is, he's on the DL for having a hand broken by a bad pitch.


Most Vigorous Player:
Aaron Rowand. I'll lay it out for you: May 11, 2006. Rowand voluntarily smashes into the center field wall at high speed and comes away with a broken nose, lacerations to his face, and Xavier Nady's deep fly ball. That's one more home run robbed by AaRow. He embraces the hustle.

Most Villified Player:
Pat Burrell. Once nicknamed Pat the Bat, Burrell is on-and-off the most hated Phillie for his shameless womanizing and inconsistent at-bats. On this team of beloved players and all-around nice guys, that's all it takes to get a homecrowd to boo.


Most Veteran Player:
Jamie Moyer. At 44 years of age, Moyer has been with 7 different major league teams and is the Phils veteran pitcher.



Most Virginal Player:
Kyle Kendrick. On the opposite end of Moyer, this is pitcher Kendrick's rookie season with a 6-3 win-loss record. Not too shabby. Add to that the fact that he's the Phillies youngest player (22 years of age as of today). I'm glad to say that his MLB cherry was popped by Philadelphia. I'm sorry, that wasn't necessary.

Most Vindicated Player:
Brett Myers. Myers started out as, well, a starter for the Phightin' Phils in 2002. And the last few seasons, he has...sucked pretty bad. You'd think it was the end for this distinctive Bert look-alike, but after being placed in the bullpen this season, we made the amazing discovery that Myers is a hell of a closer. That's 11 saves out of 12 opportunities. That's routinely striking out the side. Watch out, Rivera and Papelbon.

Most Virulent Player:
Tom Gordon. I have little to say about this, except that he was placed on the DL for half the season for an unexplained illness. That is all.



Most Vermillion Player:
Kyle Lohse. Stop reading now if you are easily offended. Not the most PC thing to say, but as a person who recognizes minorities who step up, I have to call out Lohse for being one of only four Native American players in the MLB. Plus, he's hot.


Most Victorious Player:
Cole Hamels. Of course I had to save the best for last! This kid is a phucking phenom, no questions asked. The ace of the team, Hamels is giving the best NL pitchers a run for their money. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I love the Cole Hamels strikeout montages on CSN.

Honorable Mention:
Tadahito Iguchi. Okay, so I couldn't find a V-word for the clutch player, but I just want to say that when we lost Utley to the dreaded DL, Iguchi filled in like no one could. Excellent fielder, just excellent.


Did I leave anyone out? Leave a comment if you can think of anything other players, Phillies or otherwise, that would satisfy the MVP with a V-adjective I haven't yet used.

Back to School

Work started yesterday. I have been avoiding August 20th all summer, and was successful for a couple of weeks. (I know that wasn't really funny, but it's what work does to me.)

So it's one more year at West Oak Lane Charter School. I've yet to mention my teaching experience on my blog. It's difficult to know where to start talking about it, since it is a very broad and farreaching experience with a plethora of accompanying attitudes, but I will say now (for those who don't know) that at the end of last year I did join the union at WOLCS. While I enjoy teaching and love my students, dealing with the school's administration and jumping their hoops is one perk I - along with the rest of the WOLCs faculty - do not enjoy. Take the current school year, for example. The first two weeks are a slow and painful trek through hours after hours of "Professional Development", sessions which are meant to improve us as teachers but really just waste time and demean our intelligence. Today we spent upwards of 4 hours practicing analyzing student data to inform our teaching. Have we not all been to college? Do we not know how to interpret a graph? My group accomplished our data analysis in 30 minutes, and the rest of the time was just wasted as we sat around "learning" things we already knew.

The plus side to all this is that being really bored allows me to create some fun doodles. These are Alien Astronaut Kitty and Hipster Snake-Man.



But back to the union.

We have 7 or 8 members of the administration (yes, that many, and no, they are not running a small country, just a school) who enjoy pretty loaded paychecks while the teaching staff is left to subsist on a below $40K salary with a measly 2% yearly raise regardless of teaching experience or education level. The excuse we are given for not getting better pay is that the money goes into maintaining our facility as it is newly painted and does not smell like urine. (Quite a bar, huh?) While our Chief of Staff rountinely gives us lectures about how lucky we are to be at WOLCS and how teacher retention is a big part of maintaining stability in a school, in the same breath she will turn around and remind us that she sees a teacher's time at WOLCS to be a stepping stone to bigger opportunities. (Let me remind you that it is cheaper to constantly hire new teachers than to keep an experienced teacher happy with pay raises.)

This list of offenses continues, but suffice it to say that the teachers last year were unhappy enough that the union membership went from 5 to the 30s, a solid majority of the teaching staff. While the school day tomorrow will only bring more mindnumbing hours of "Professional Development", I will be looking forward to the results of the afternoon contract negotiations, in which our union rep will be bargaining for a step-scaled salary and paid maternity leave. Wish us luck - we friggin' deserve it!