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