Fear and Loathing in the Afternoon

I have an unrelenting fear of retirement, and yet conditions at school are forcing me closer and closer--We have a new regime that believes our students are too poor to be accountable for their behavior and that this is the new way--no accountability, it has unleashed chaos in the classroom. I knew it was important to have support at the top, but I had no idea what it would mean to have none. I am two different people. A great teacher with good classroom management who barely needed the front office, to a failure who must send kids every day out of one class to be able to teach the rest of the class.  This is supposed to be state mandated, but I think it is misconstrued, and I think it is starting to reek of a nasty form of racism. We are actively teaching children who will some day enter a work force that they have no rules, that they are incapable of learning self-control because they are so poor.  How will this translate?  In my building the children who are thought to be incapable of controlling their behavior are brown. I think this is an insult to those students. For over 20 years I have seen children of poverty and of color succeed and achieve in high school and post high school. It is true, our poverty rate is much much higher with the loss of important employers, but I do not like the underestimation of the abilities and the drive of my students.

If I have a reader left of my pokey little blog, please do not re-post this.