I have a part time job at a private tutoring establishment. My workplace is located in a suburban town that might be best described as "New Orleans's Benton" (i.e. created by white flight).
I moved to New Orleans with the express intent of teaching math to middle school children in one of the most ravaged public school systems in the country. I was planning on working in underserved (i.e., poor, black, and fucked up) schools, and after a year of effort and planning towards this goal I did become a classroom teacher last fall in a NOLA school. Then, three and a half months later, I was fired. And now here I am teaching fractions to very polite children named Hayden and Peyton and Brooke.
This is sort of the equivalent of setting out to backpack the Appalachian Trail and instead somehow finding yourself in a gym in Silver Springs, walking at a medium pace on a treadmill and idly flipping through an Esquire from 2004.
Am I allowed to ask if there is a good story behind the firing? You can make up something awesome if not.
ReplyDeleteIt's a midgrade story at best. Thank you for asking, though! I have been sort of shooting for this thing where I tell the story of being a teacher and then being fired in small bits over the course of these various blog posts while in the process describing my life post-teaching so that the whole blog doubles as a kind of nonlinear descriptive narrative but I doubt I'm gonna have the discipline to do that with any coherence and also it's definitely going to be a tedious exercise in narcissism so STAY TUNED!
ReplyDeleteare you suggesting middle class white kids are more likely to have androgynous names?
ReplyDeleteI'll wait for the exciting conclusion (beginning?).
ReplyDeleteI hate any name that rhymes with Aiden. Reminds me too much of Britney Spears's kids.
If you are implying that I am suggesting middle class white parents are secretly using biotechnology to engineer their own offspring into a terrifying new race of unholy ubermench eunuchs, then yes, that is exactly what I am suggesting.
ReplyDeleteFacebook tiptoed my way here, and now am being impressed by you and rooting for you (in a more concrete way than the way in which I've generally been doing so for the past 10 years). Also, I have a friend researching down in New Orleans/Baton Rouge in a couple of weeks, looking for some couches to sleep on...
ReplyDeleteReally? Have him/her give me a call. Do you still have my number?
ReplyDeleteAlso, good to hear from you and I hope your canned goods are going well. I bought three of them today. Guess their contents and win a new boat!