Can we call this the home stretch?

Not saying I am looking forward to summer or anything, but my summer reading books are sitting on my nightstand cheering me on. I am supposed to be downsizing in the book department, but we can't all be successes at everything. These last two weeks have certainly been trying. My anxiety level has been turned up to 11. Between the standardized testing and the re-accreditation process at the high school, and the reality of how much work there is left to do at Sac State, I cannot remember the last home cooked meal I had. Cooking is typically such a stress relief for me, but it is time consuming, and right now there is too much Henry James and Anthony Trollope to read for me to cook my usual health conscious meals. My wife's sudden illness has not been helping in that department either.

While I have had my juniors over the last few weeks, we have been doing rhetorical analysis, a unit I slapped together when I realized April was kind of a shitty month for us at school. I had this whole project idea where students would pick a problem they would like to raise awareness of, pick three different audiences that problem affects, and then create three different texts, one for each audience. In theory it sounded fantastic. The problem was, it never got off the ground. This week our FHA students were at a conference, our marching band, choir, and color guard were in Disneyland, two of our sports teams had tournaments, we had Farm Day recently. My classroom was too empty to get anything meaningful done, so instead, we took our problems and turned them into rants. For an entire day, I gave my remaining students a platform to vent frustrations, to complain about whatever was on their minds. It turns out that people do not ask teenagers what is bothering them all that often, and it led to some pretty emotional outbursts. These complaints ranged from the disgusting nature of school lunches (a student actually started a petition after venting), frustrations at another teacher's texts not being on the stuff they actually cover in class, pressures of college, to global issues of homophobia, transphobia, racism, and most commonly, sexism. Multiple young ladies told stories of older men following them, grabbing at them, or stories of school teachers and administrators excusing some pretty awful boy behavior towards girls by saying "Boys will be boys" and telling the girl she probably should not wear whatever she was wearing to attract these disgusting things.

It was all very healing for the students, but enraging for me. To know that I work alongside so many people who are perpetuating these ideas I rail against so frequently was a bitter pill to swallow. I was left emotionally drained, angry, and like nothing I can say or do can change the culture of this backwards thinking community. On the plus side, the students were made more aware of the issues that face young women, and they all felt safe and comfortable in my class to speak up. If I can continue to provide that, I think I am doing my job.

The next challenge is going to be my African American Experience unit with Raisin in the Sun as my primary text. The racism in this community is thick. I have to be ready for some backlash.