Endangered Species

I love being a teacher, and, I'm not going to lie, I particularly love it during the summer time. Since I tend to see the humor in everything (even when others don't), I think I'm very well suited to working with teenagers.

I'm certainly not one of those "miracle" teachers who have Lifetime movies made about them. One of my former colleagues thought herself the miracle type. In fact, she once taught a sophomore in San Antonio who had severe attendance problems and she took it upon herself to visit him at home to try to get him to attend school (you'd have to know this woman, and some of you do key words: San Antonio, to realize that this story is total BS). Anyway, the kid was in a really bad motorcycle wreck and was in a coma for three or four years. When he got out, he had total amnesia, but when he ran into her at the mall one day, he walked up to her and said, "I have total amnesia, but I remember that you were my history teacher and you changed my life." This same colleague was once very concerned that the children were outside sitting on a big green plastic thing that had "high voltage" written all over it. My response to her was, "Look on the bright side, maybe the electricity will render their dumb asses sterile before that DNA gets in the gene pool." I, apparently, am insensitive.

Ok, I don't have a coma story (and I also don't just make shit up to try to impress people with how much my students love me). Some kids think I'm great, and others don't. I'm ok with that. I'm also ok with the fact that the kids who like me are a little on the thuggy side, although I've had to talk them out of "taking care" of someone on more than one occasion.

Here is an example of how my kids try to help me out. One day right before lunch, I got my purse out of the cabinet for my lunch money. The bag was a fabulous pink croco number, and one of the girls said she really liked it. My response was, "Thank you; they killed the last pink alligator in captivity to make it for me." Everyone chuckles, except one kid. He stays back behind the others to tell me, "Miss, I don't think you should tell anyone else about your bag. It could get you in trouble, being from an endangered species and all." I'd trade that kind of concern for fake coma boy any day!