Percentage wise, we may lose more teachers than students at the end of this school year. I know a whole lotta teachers will be looking for employment elsewhere next summer for various reasons, most of which come right back to the administration building.

I was called on the carpet twice a couple of days ago. The first time because of a bellwork assignment. I’d left the chalkboard where I write the bellwork blank to do my hall monitor duty. When I came back in, a student had written, "If you have sex with a prostitute against her will, is it rape or shoplifting?" I started to erase it, kids protested they were already writing about that, so I left it and said anyone who was offended or didn’t like it could do a free write about anything they wanted. Later in the day, apparently, a couple of students were talking about what they wrote and a female teacher got offended. Instead of having the guts to come talk to me about it, she went to the district superintendent, who went to the principal, who pulled me into his office.

Later the same day the principal called me about a girl who was allegedly sexually harassed by a male student in my room. I heard the beginning of that conversation, where he told her she looked nice, then I was helping other students until another male student told the first one that, "She’s saying you don’t have a chance to fuck her!" I told them to shut up or I’d write them all up for sexual harasment. Conversation ended. The girl mentioned it to her dad, who wrote a letter to the principal.

On Friday I caught a kid cheating on a vocabulary test and it looks like I broke up a regular ring of cheating by busting him, as several other guys who’d been doing surprisingly well suddenly went back to failing.

Today one of my students was hauled out of class, cuffed and arrested. The same period, after assigning an essay for their bad behavior yesterday, two football players went to sleep in my class, so I had them escorted to the office. Three people in my first period are in the in-school suspension room for the rest of the week, and one of my drug dealers in seventh hour was put in there or suspended today for running through the halls and slapping people on the neck or head.

We’ve had an increase in the number of fights this year. The freshmen are the most uppity, disrespectful bunch of brats to ever have a false sense of entitlement.

I found out yesterday that one of my students is getting checked out of seventh period almost every day to go pick up his little brother and sister at the elementary school, and his teacher isn’t counting him absent. One more example of the problems caused by our new schedule.

Another teacher was called to the principal’s office because in her junior AP class she said that saying "Because the Bible says so" is not a valid argument in rhetoric. A student went home and said the teacher said the Bible is invalid. Yeah, that’s exactly what the teacher said. Same thing, right?

Every day I kick myself for not taking the job I was offered in late July. It would have been more money, about five minutes from home, a better support system, and couldn’t possibly be the headache most days are in the ghetto this year. Don’t get me wrong, there are still some great kids at my current school, but there seems to be a lot more bad ones now, and that coupled with the problems caused by admin are making it a difficult experience.