“Okay, let me have a look.” I said, leaning over his table.

“Ah,” I straightened and strode to the whiteboard, pulling a marker from my back pocket. “I recommend plugging each point into the function and seeing if they work. Three of them won’t work. The one left over is the correct answer.”

Nathan scrunched his nose and furrowed his brow. “That seems like going around the … the idea. Isn’t there, like, a formula or something?”

“Well, in this case, the line is the solution to that function, so you’re seeing which of these points fit inside the solution.”

Nathan leaned back. “Yeah, I get it. It just doesn’t feel like good math.”

I laughed, “Yeah, well sometimes in real life, you gotta try stuff until something works.”

۞

 “Mister Vaudreeeeee!” Natalie screeched, sprinting across the classroom with Jenny in tow. “Somebody took my pink pen.”

It’s January of 2008, my first year teaching. I am drowning in the flow of my responsibilities without the skills to paddle my way out. We just got back into class from a fire drill and Natalie is distraught.

“It was her Christmas present, Mr. Vaudrey.” Jenny states with a somber face. “It was a Gel Sparkle.”

“Okay.” I rub my eyes, deciding if this is worth my trouble. Deep in my psyche is a youth pastor, feeling the need to be liked by my students and wanting to play a little joke on the other students. I lean in close and say, “Watch this.”

“Alright, listen up!” I stride purposefully from my desk to the front of the class. “Whoever took Natalie’s gel pen, give it back or the whole class gets detention. I am not kidding!”

The irony being that I totally was kidding. I had no intention of giving anybody detention, especially if Natalie got her pen back.

This was an interesting time in my teaching career. I recognized the importance of honesty and the reward that had to be inherent.

•  If Chris stole Natalie’s pen and gave it back, he took a risk and was honest. If I give him detention, he learns that it’s better to be sneaky and avoid consequence.
• If I give Chris thanks for stepping up and congratulate his boldness to take responsibility, I show him that redemption is more gratifying than sneakiness

Yet in this situation, I’m prepared to make an idle threat to the whole class in hopes that Natalie could possibly have her stupid pen returned.

Nobody produced the pen, and nobody got detention.

The students left knowing that I sometimes make threats where I don’t follow through. If I were a student, I would store that information for later. Perhaps when I get in trouble, I can point out Mr. Vaudrey’s inconsistency with “But you didn’t take away Adrian’s phone when he was texting!”

Later that year, two students had their pencils stolen during fire drills. I ignored it.

۞

Ehhn! Ehhn! Ehhn!

The students looked up from their books as the fire alarm grabbed their attention.

“Alright, folks. Grab your pencils and head outside!” I shout over the siren and point towards the door.

“Pencils? Why are we—“

“No time to ask questions! It’s a fire drill! Get outside if you don’t wanna burn, child!”

The students smile, pocket their pencils and head out the door in a bunch. Once in the evacuation zone, I line them up and take attendance.

Back in the classroom 20 minutes later, a student asks, “Mr. Vaudrey, why did we take our pencils?”

I think back to Natalie and her stolen Sparkle pen and say. “Firewood. We don’t want to give the fire anything more to burn. Now, back to Vectors.”

Don’t get me wrong, some blue-collar jobs are great. I was a janitor for 4 and a half years and I loved probably 4 of them. It’s incredibly gratifying to work with your hands and immediately see results.  I left that job due to a sense of typical entitlement: I’m about to get a college degree, I can do better than this.

I am currently a Geometry teacher at an arts school and I have found a medium where I’m able to interact with students, enlighten supple minds, and quip fun facts about Latin words and Religion. No job is perfect, but while I may voice my concerns to my wife and close friends, I am still bursting with gratitude that I have a job that doesn’t suck. It’s also in a field that I actually like. I’ve seen dozens of aging Baby Boomers working the returns counter at Wal-Mart and none of them are too happy to be doing it.

To back up my claim that the recession is good for our kids: here are a few direct quotes from the internet:

Play unnoticeably on your browser at work!

Today, my co-workers decided to play a round of “Who can piss off the boss the most?”. I didn’t play, but I still won. FML

Check out this video! NSFW!

There are 37 million Google results for “kill time at work”, including this article on ehow.com, which gives “productive” ways to piddle away the weekday. I had to look up NSFW a few weeks ago, while I was reading an article online (It was during my break period; don’t judge me).

In the movie Office Space, Jennifer Aniston laments “Everybody hates their job”. Unfortunately, this sentiment is a poor sampling of Humanity and an even poorer sampling of the United States. An individual can make $9 an hour testing video games; our country is awesome.

Enter the recession.

Suddenly, those who hated their jobs are wishing they had it back. Suddenly, $40,000 a year isn’t a right, it’s a privilege, and you may have to actually… *sigh*… apply yourself and earn the paycheck.  Suddenly, if you hate your job, you aren’t “everybody”, you’re an ungrateful douche, and probably a little arrogant also.

Hence, the growing “Get a College Degree or Live with your Parents Forever” movement gains more steam as even Wal-Mart employees have 12 years experience in retail and a law degree.

Now, the entitled American teenager who plans to work as a receptionist with his/her high school degree must get some experience, get a degree in Administration, and most likely have skills other than texting and hiding gin in an Arrowhead bottle.

Double-you tee eff?

Further, college students who have accepted allowances from their parents during college in the past must now compete for Starbucks and Albertson’s jobs and… go to work often. I recall sleeping through at least two shifts at Subway when I was in college, in addition to arriving late and leaving early. If I were to do that now, there would be a dozen other collegiates looking to earn $7.50 an hour to sling salami. How else will we afford EasyMac and Plan B pills?

By the way, that’s not a euphemism; please note that I actually mean slinging salami. Subway employees aren’t required to prostitute themselves, at least not during a shift.

Gives a whole new meaning to $5 footlong.

Yup. It appears that the United States will be joining the rest of the world in budgeting, saving money, reducing debt, raising productivity, and planning ahead.

Except that 67% of us are obese while we do it. Happy Hanukkah.

I gave you my vote in 2008 and I am still 100% glad that I did. I’ve never doubted you in your 14 months so far and I think you’re fabulous. This is a letter commending your triumphs because you are an easy man to criticize; people love to throw stones at the TV screen knowing the President won’t yell back.

As an American, I’m fan of Healthcare reform. So committed, in fact, that I find myself in the minority for the first time in my life. I’m a White, Protestant, Middle-class male with a Master’s degree. I’m from an upper-middle class family and so is my wife.

I’m in the minority for this reason: I’m prepared to pay more taxes for the same health coverage so that medical coverage could be provided to those less fortunate than I am. I’m sure if everybody thought this way, we’d have a bill already, but I’m prepared to wait until we find a bill that people quit complaining about.

(And I’ll tell any Republicans I know to put some of their energy into building bills instead of tearing them down.)

Unrelated to health care, I support several unpopular ideas and I figured that you’d like a voice in the trenches. So here it is from an educator:

Merit Pay is a great idea if properly and concretely implemented. I won’t suggest what that system will be, but I can say from my own experience that teachers who stink are kept in the payroll way too long. Exciting and motivated teachers have little incentive to do a good job when tenured teachers get paid more to sit behind their desk and hand out worksheets. It’s depressing.

NCLB is hated universally among teachers that I know. We all agree that the students in our classes need better skills and that a great way to measure that is test scores, but to claim that all schools reach an API score of 800 by the year 2014 is ridiculous. If you don’t know much about API, then you can trust me on this; it’s ridiculous.

We understand that the White House has bigger fish to fry than No Child Left Behind reform. For now, we teachers are fine to just … not talk about it.

It’s also pretty apparent that you’re not a big fan of people applauding you; I respect that and empathize. I giggled when Michelle motioned for the house to “sit down” during the standing ovation for her obesity plan.

All that to say that I think you’re great and I will support you until you do something crazy, like invade Canada

… and probably even after that. They’ve been asking for it, eh.

~V

At first, Jane was just another “problem student” who had trouble focusing. She claimed that she was just hyper, or just had a bunch of candy; the usual excuses. I thought that I had made a breakthrough when she told me she was dyslexic. My eyes lit up as I moved her to the front of the class and provided the notes in advance with blanks for her to fill in. I was excited to be able to meet her needs as a teacher.

Then she started missing school. She’d come in late with a limp and ask to be left alone for the day. “What’s the matter? Hungover again?” I’d smirk.

“Something like that,” she said with a weak smile. Later that day, she’d murmur something about a spinal tap.

“Oh, man!” I said, “my sister had one of those and she got awful headaches.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I have headaches; I couldn’t do the homework last night.” A pretty weak excuse as excuses go. I’ve heard a lot of them. I’ve heard a lot of excuses.

Then she’d miss a whole day. She came back to class with no energy and didn’t have the pluck to talk to her classmates during the lesson or distract her neighbor. “I was with family. There’s drama at my house. I couldn’t finish the project.” I’ve heard that one a lot, but I give grace for unstable home lives. I thought I’d heard it all.

Soon she was out a whole week at a time. The office would call and say that Jane was in the hospital and her mom was coming to pick up her assignments. Hospital is a good excuse. One of the best I’ve heard. I thought I’d heard it all.

When she got back, I’d be patient and show her what she missed. Jane was pretty bright and could have gotten an A if she were in class more often. I would tell her that when filling her in on the Perimeter and Area of Trapezoids.

Eventually, she leveled with me.

“Mr. V, I have cancer.”

I thought I’d heard it all.

“Like bad cancer?” I asked.

“Well, it’s a … osteoblastoma… I think.”

I know enough to know that having “blast” in the name isn’t a good sign, but I keep a straight face. So what’s the plan?

“Nothing,” she shrugged.

“What do you mean, nothing? I mean what’s the plan for treatment? Chemo? Radiation?”

“Nope. I don’t want none of that. My auntie had cancer in her face, and even after they took it out, she still has it, like under her eye. The radiation just made her hair fall out. I’m already losing my hair and I ain’t gonna be one of them bald girls.”

I tilted my head sideways. “So… that’s it? Just giving up? How long do you have?”

“Well, the doctor says if I eat right and take the pills then I could have years left, but I don’t even eat at all now and those pills make me tired. So maybe…six months?”

I thought I’d heard it all.

“Why not fight it?”

“Oh, uh-uh. I saw what it did to my auntie. Three weeks in a hospital and it didn’t even cure nothing. I hate hospitals to begin with. I ain’t doin that. My momma wants me to do the treatment, but she knows it’s my life. It’s my decision.”

“Hmm…I’m curious why not; it seems like you have years to gain by risking weeks.”

“Mr. V, it sounds like you trying to convince me.” She grins a winning smile, white teeth against her dark skin.

“No; you’re going to do what you want to do. I just want to understand you and make sure you know what you’re doing. Do you journal?”

“No.”

“You should start.”

“Why?”

“Because,” I say, touching my head. “The right side of your brain is where emotions lie and the left side is where speech, writing, and logic lie. By writing or talking about your feelings, you move the ideas to the logic side and can see things more clearly. Think about it.”

“Okay, Mr. V.” She grins and goes to lunch.

I thought I’d heard it all.

Turns out, she was full of shit. She knew all along it was a cyst.

~V