Miserable Piece of Doo Doo Teacher

I do my job as an adjunct teaching English at, as Amanda and Angie say, "THE premiere Technical School of the South!" because I love the students. It's not love for the administration, the school itself, the lousy pay, the lack of health benefits, or the stress. Nor, for the record, is it the joy of grading papers. It's the students. Nothing pleases me more to show a student what they CAN do rather than what they can't, and then to watch him or her blossom as the year unfolds. I feel useful that way. It makes me want to get up and go to work.

I don't understand why anybody would teach if the person didn't want to be there for the students. There's nothing else good about this job. I get very protective of my students, and I can't stand it when I hear tales of other teachers being dipshits.

Lo, we had our very own dipshit at the Premiere School, and he just left last week. Why do I call him such a foul name? Let's review!

1) Disorganized classes
2) Teacher had little knowledge of the veracity of anything he taught. To quote what a student told me, "He said, it's not quite MLA, it's MY MLA!" Read: useless to know
3) Doesn't cover most of the materials one should cover
4) Doesn't give a rip about the students despite professing that he does
5) Leaves in the middle of a term (which we all might have to do however....) in such a way that he LIES to the people in charge about what his last hours are with his classes and the Writing Center so as to most severely inconvenience the entirety of campus
6) Does his own thing in the WC and doesn't read stuff Pat gives us/care to follow her leadership

Ok, so his last day was to be last Friday. He told Pat and Robin: they wanted me to start on Thursday, but I said no and that I'd start on Monday. Fine, then don't lie. What actually happened? Writing Center was to be opened by HIM at 9a on Thursday. I arrived at 915 a for my 935a class, only to find students milling about panicked in front of the locked door. Robin wasn't there; Pat was at the high school. I ran down to Bren and she called Robin, finding out from her that we could get Julia when she came out of class to cover the room until Pat could get there. I opened up the center in preparation for Julia coming in. By 925a I had all the computers on and looked at the appointment list. Who was this inconsiderate fool inconveniencing by his irresponsibility???? HIS STUDENTS! I realized that the 9a was a paragraph, so I went ahead and checked it before I went off to my class and before Julia got there. I didn't do a folder, but of course Pat understood. He had told his students they could get 5 pts in his Eng 100 class if they came in to have their paragraph looked at, and they all signed up. He wasn't willing to help his own students and couldn't EVEN BE ASSED to call up Pat so she could have called me to come in to cover until Julia got out of class or something. I could have been there for 9a as I didn't have kids that day. Hell, I was in the parking lot at 9a but I just puttered around because class wasn't until 935.

So, today the saga continued. I have a former student, Kristi, who is in an Eng 102 class That Man abandoned. "IT" covered five short stories and was done. Five? I thought I covered just a few because I cover NINE. Five??? She was frustrated by the incompetency of this teacher, and then in comes Chuck. Poor Chuck--he did nothing other than be himself and stride in, and Chuck is the antigabe (IE, Chuck = competent; former male teacher = incompetent). Kristi complained that he came in and SAID he was an asshole. I was trying to figure out how this was different from me coming in the first day and SAYING, I curse, I make innuendo, and I'm a bitch. Then her friend (also a former student of mine) Greg came up and said, yeah but Chuck couldn't possibly be a perv like you are!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Chuck the pure? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! (sorry, Chuck dear, I love you but...you KNOW that's just a hilarious thought hehe)

I talked to her for a while and I think anybody short of me (whom she already knew and liked as an instructor) would have received a poor welcoming from Kristi. She's a girl who likes her security and stability in her life, and her world was turned upside down when she realized That Man was leaving. She told me, we all knew the teacher wasn't that great and was too disorganized, but we also knew we'd all pass. So there it is: Chuck makes it clear that folks might not pass by his brash, blunt manner, and she panicks because sure, she wasn't learning much with That Man, but at least she knew she could pass with him.

So I told her that Chuck was, perhaps, a bit more intense than I was about some things, but on the whole he had my exact temperment: anal retentive about some things, never a surprise as he will tell you....and laid back about the rest. She kept repeating that she thought they might have a personality conflict, even though she realized suddenly and completely that she had erred by how she treated Chuck in class today. She even apologized repeatedly to him for her attitude, and that pleased me.

See, I'm mad at That Man for upsetting Kristi too. You have no idea about Kristi, folks...ultra conservative girl. I actually had to explain to her in excrutiating detail why she COULD argue Pro Prostitution in the arguments/debates without compromising her morality. I had to also argue with her about the concept of homosexuals not having a choice. If homosexuals have a choice, that meant they choose to be gay...so when did YOU choose to be heterosexual? Oh, and you think that people wake up and decide, my god, today I'd love to be persecuted for loving somebody and tortured and not able to even show expression to the one I love in public, and maybe be thrown out of my house or disowned for it? Really, the bible says it's wrong? Leviticus? The same book that tells us how to sacrifice our animals? But she really, really listened to me. I made it clear to her that I didn't disrespect her views but merely held different ones, and that made her listen. And....I swear, she's really a nice girl. She loves geek games and has a good sense of humor. How DARE That Man ruffle a wonderful work in progress like Kristi? I get especially fond of most of my students. Not all, folks--you know, some of them are jackasses, just like in any other realm of Planet Earth. But most of them I just adore. So, I suppose I am protective of them.

Fuck you, That Man. You told your students that you loved them, but you screwed them over by not teaching them what they needed to know (did I mention that he never told them they needed to do the literacy workshop?), and then when you could have helped them you chickened out and just didn't show. You even cancelled class an hour before it started via email. Do you really think the kids saw that? Do you know HOW MANY of your students just drove there for that class only to find it cancelled because you just decided you had no idea what to do that day, the last day of class? Do you care? DO YOU???? *I CARE* and I'm mad as hell.

We won't even get into the Let's-Ask-Kira-Five-Times-In-One-Hour if she's sure she wouldn't cheat on Alex that THAT MAN did to me.

Bah, I'm going back to drinking my merlot. When I have enough wine in me, I won't care any longer that incompetents get hired for good jobs and screw over good people.

*swigs*