Please pay our teachers more

So yesterday was a very long, irritating day...

I started off my day by getting up (yes, getting up) at 3:45 AM to get to Washington early. As it was the State of the Union the night before, we were anticipating a lot of stories. Of course, the 4:40 AM train was an hour late! I only got to work about 45 minutes early than usual. I figure if I'm going to get up that early, I better be able to get in early.

After work, on my way back to the train station, I was heckled for money by the same four people who usually harass me, but had the added joy of a new homeless man approaching me while I was positioned at the urinal. Now, I sort of have a problem with "stage fright" to begin with, but it doesn't help when there is a guy standing two feet behind you over your right shoulder telling you he needs money to get to New York. Awkward...

Recently on Wednesdays, Kristin and I have been tutoring some "disadvantaged" students from East Baltimore. Two weeks ago was our first session. We were told that there would probably be 0ne kid and 15 tutors; there were 15 kids and 7 tutors. This week, there were 17 kids and 5 tutors. Great.

As seems to be typical with young kids, the girls try and the boys just screw around. Last week, I had this 11 year old boy who seemed cooperative, bored, but cooperative. This week, he wasn't there so I asked another boy if he wanted to work with me-he shook his head no. After some time, because we were short staffed, I noticed he wasn't working with anyone so I asked if he had something to work on in the computer lab (the girl I was with was being studious and preparing for a debate tournament for this Saturday).

The kid was an absolute puke. He had nothing to work on. I tried to talk with him, asking simple questions like: "What grade are you in?" "What are you studying in school?" "What subjects do you like?" "Okay, why don't you like them?" Most of his answers were: "Nothin'."

I tried to get him to do some basic research on a historical figure, ANYONE. Everything would gravitate back to his stupid Myspace page. I thought, "next month is Black History Month, maybe I can get him to look into a historical African-American figure." I said to him (by the way, I don't know his name because I could not understand him when he mumbled it to me), "next month is Black History Month, can you do...." He interrupted: "Don't call it that!" The girl I was also working with turned to us and said: "That's what it is!" He said "But he don't need to say that; call it something else!" So basically, I'm not to talk about Black History Month because I'm white. Now that really pissed me off. It was bad enough that the kid had nothing to work on, nor did he want to be there, but I was acting as a TEACHER, not a tutor, trying to develop a freakin' lesson plan for this kid. His insubordination was due to my white skin. To top it off, he said that I was the reason that the other kid didn't come back. Boy was I glad when I got to go home. Long day+pukey kid=crabby Nick.

All of you teachers/future teachers out there: thank you. You guys need to be the ones making millions of dollars!

-N

My Golden Ticket

This isn't very exciting, but I can't really remember what I was going to write about.

So, as some of you know, I commute into work. It usually take make a total of 1.5 hours to get into work, and the same to get home. Yeah, I know it seems like a lot, but 2 of those hours are usually spent sleeping on the MARC train. After getting to Union Station in DC, I walk to work (about 1 mile).

When one buys a month-long MARC pass one is able to use it on the MARC train (M-F) and just about all public transportation in Baltimore (24/7). The trick has been finding out what trains, if any, I could use it on during the weekends. It seems like the good people at the Amtrak ticketing station don't want you to know that you can use the passes on their weekend trains. I finally got it all figured out, but now I think I understand what the process of buying a kilo of heroin must be like...
As it turns out, my pass is also good on the Washington circulator buses (I found that out completely by accident yesterday)...sweet!

I'm sorry for this worthless post....

Any of you public radio listeners out their should listen to this