Tales from the California Public School System

Tales from the California Public School System: Part 1
posted May 18, 2005 by

Tales from the California Public School System This series of articles will focus on the lunacy that is the California Public School System. I don't know how many of these articles there will be yet, but with the complete lack of common sense in California schools, I'm sure to have plenty of material.

For those of you unfamiliar with who I am, let me introduce myself. My name is Bob, I am 17, and I am a senior in a Southern California charter school known as "BCAL". BCAL has been around for 3 years, and I've had the misfortune of being there from the first day.

I won't get into all the gory details of why BCAL is such a mess, but I'll tell you that yesterday we were introduce to our twelfth History teacher of the year. Yes, we've had 12 different history teachers this year. Some of these were subs, but most were "permanent" teachers who got fired or quit for various reasons. Because BCAL is a charter school, teachers are not hired under contract, and therefore can be fired at any time during the year.

Before I talk more about our new teacher, let me give you a quick rundown of some of our previous instructors:

Name: Ms White
Nickname: WhiteWench
Political Leanings: Unknown
How she did: Extremely anal retentive (see my other article), also had the nickname "Nazi Lady", all work had to be in a notebook, notebooks had to be a certain size and could not be spiral bound, all work must be on specific pages in notebook, graded on artwork and ability to glue things into notebook. Believed ownership of a Sharpie was evidence of gang activity.
Why she's gone: Quit after less than a month following a dispute with the school board.
Name: Mr. Sweeney
Nickname: Sweendog
Political Leanings: Conservative
How he did: He was old and his hands never stopped shaking, tied everything into one of two anecdotes: The years he worked at Disneyland or why shipbuilders were hurt economically by Jimmy Carter's Presidency
Why he's gone: Was fired after a few weeks for being too boring
Name: Ms. Gordon
Nickname: Troll Lady
Political Leanings: Liberal
How she did: Made us watch Robert Redford movies and fill out crossword puzzles
Why she's gone: Told us that George Bush stole the first election through lawyers, and stole the 2004 election through fraud and intimidation.
Name: Mr. Szakall
Nickname: None
Political Leanings: Liberal
How he did: Seemed very laid-back and funny for the week that he was there
Why he's gone: Snapped at the end of the week and told the seniors they were "Too f*cking stupid to vote"
Name: Ms. Grant
Nickname: None
Political Leanings: Liberal
How she did: The seniors were basically allowed to slide and do nothing, but she actually did teach the younger grades.
Why she's gone: Quit, probably to avoid being fired.

So now that you have a little background on our previous teachers, let me tell you about number 12, also known as "Mr. Smith" (to the best of my knowledge that is his real name). Mr. Smith is a moderately tall African American male with dreadlocks down to his shoulders. He looks 19, but claims to be 40. Right off the bat Mr. Smith told us "There will be no lesson today. We can get to the academic bullshit later". He also told us that most successful people didn't go to college, and "If you don't wanna come to school, don't come to school." Mr. Smith understands how much fun high school is. He told us he had fun with things like "sex, drugs, uh.......sports". He will treat us like adults if we treat him like an adult. He will treat the school board as a bunch of assholes when they fire him sometime this week.

We spent the rest of the day playing guitars, talking about the next generation of gaming consoles, and attacking each other's sexual orientations through crudely drawn pictures on construction paper. I'm sure the taxpapers of California wouldn't object to spending $8000 per student per year if they heard these stories.

In the next edition of Tales from the California Public School System, we'll take a look at how many movies we've watched this year, how well fire alarms work while hanging off the wall by their wires, and take a look inside the men's restroom at a high school. Be afraid.