Ummmm.... yeah, let me just begin by saying my all time favorite movie (Besides Indiana Jones) is Office Space, a cult classic.

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Peter Gibbons: The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.
Bob Porter: Don't... don't care?
Peter Gibbons: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime, so where's the motivation? And here's something else, Bob: I have eight different bosses right now.
Bob Slydell: I beg your pardon?
Peter Gibbons: Eight bosses.
Bob Slydell: Eight?
Peter Gibbons: Eight, Bob. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.
I believe it is time for a career change, when I feel that this movie is the one that I equivocate with my job. I can’t call it a career anymore because, it feels like a “Job” I don’t feel like one of those teachers who go and buy T-Shirts stating what a wonderful teacher I am, I don’t have cutesy teacher type decorations decorating my home and desk. My personal space in my classroom is filled with postcards of far away places and my photography. I’m a burnt out, tired teacher who thinks the system has taken over and paperwork trumps curriculum individualism and true education.
I love some of the quotes in this movie, because I couldn’t describe my working situation better. Eight bosses, well that’s about the number I have, who come to tell me what I need to do on my paperwork. This is the year of scrutinizing High School Special Education teachers. My only real motivation is not to be hassled, when you work and work and you only hear about the bad things you do or your mistakes (which in the real world should be something inconsequential). Of course my bosses motivation is not to be hassled bye the State Department of Education that demands we do this paperwork and they in turn are bowing to the Federal Government and their massive amounts ofunfunded mandates. I’m just waiting on Obama to “fundamentally change education.” The thing is, I'm sure well, that my supervisors surely think that much of what they do is ridiculous too. So I really can't sit and blame them, as much as I like to sit and blame them.
You might think that special education students who have special needs and disabilities would be exempt from the No Child Left Behind requirements for passing standardized tests… they are not. This is a dirty little unspoken of secret, I think. Our Special Children are to be held 100% accountable for passing the tests and we are expected to get them ready for College just like everyone else. Yet, they aren’t always like everyone else that is why they are “labeled” with a disability which may delay development or hinder reading skills or cognitive ability. They are Intellectually Disabled and no longer the “R” word (which is all silly political correctness I suppose I’m not incredibly offended but I’m tired of explaining that Intellectual Disabilities is the new word for the “R” word). So in the land of opportunity and individuals, individualism is frowned on because everyone must pass standardized tests made by textbook companies located on the eastern seaboard, thus filled with bias and teacher created editing error. Individualism is dead in American Education.
Not to mention they must pass the test, but we all have case-loads or a locked filing cabinet filled with the information regarding our students disabilities and the plans called Individual Education Plans or (IEPs) that we must maintain on each student. We are over this student, we are their case-worker, which means if they are in our classes for one hour and a regular class for three we must maintain contact with all the teachers who are not special education teachers and make sure our kids receive classroom modifications and adaptations so they are successful (which means more paper documentation- pretty much a constant stream). We then teach four or five different sections of a course of our own in our small classrooms within a class period and are expected to plan adequately for that and produce quality instruction, while having no materials (I’ve yet to see materials come out of the empty promises). We then are held accountable for the 14 forms (or more) of paperwork required by the State and the Federal government on each student and to hold meetings. Now, we are told that we are going to have to maintain a portfolio of class work on all students.
Did I mention how hard it is to teach United States History, Government, World History and Oklahoma history at once (simultaneously) to kids who do not read well and having very little resources to do so? Oh, it’s nearly impossible. Of course by the time these kids are in High Schoolthe learned helplessness has kicked in. These students have disabilities like Autism, Intellectual Disabilities and learning disabilities all grouped together at once. Oh, yeah and then the grading which is due every Friday and 85 minute class periods because we are on block schedule.
My main goal is to figure out how to talk, discuss, lecture teach history to maintain their interest so I know they are learning. Paperwork is a nightmare for my students, who may have problems likedysgraphia (where writing is hell) or dyslexia (reading is hell) or memory loss (that means learning history is hell), or ADHD (like me), they may also have problems like Schizophrenia, Bi-Polar, Autism, which when students have emotional or behavioral problems the first need they must have taken care of is their emotional state, you have to be emotionally stable before you can truly begin learning so we have to create a warm, comfortable environment, you can’t learn if you fear.
So when the bosses come around to tell me that I forgot a page in a report and I need to fill out this form before I do anything these words ring in my mind:
Dom Portwood: Hi, Peter. What's happening? We need to talk about your TPS reports.
Peter Gibbons: Yeah. The coversheet. I know, I know. Uh, Bill talked to me about it.
Dom Portwood: Yeah. Did you get that memo?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah. I got the memo. And I understand the policy. And the problem is just that I forgot the one time. And I've already taken care of it so it's not even really a problem anymore.
Dom Portwood: Ah! Yeah. It's just we're putting new coversheets on all the TPS reports before they go out now. So if you could go ahead and try to remember to do that from now on, that'd be great. All right!
I try not to write a lot about my job and believe me I have loads of material about my job, that I wouldn’t write about, because, I’d get fired, and what is funny, I love to express myself through writing all the while knowing that as an Educator we are governed by Moral Turpitude laws in Oklahoma, so anything considered “immoral” like perhaps using “bad” language, is a risk. But I’m also a libertarian and have decided that speech is important and my freedom of expression is important. People fear people who speak out. People fear expressive people, artistic people, amazing people, because they have that spark within them but corporate America and our spark is dying.
And I will close with my favorite quote from Office Space:
The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care
All Movie Quotes borrowed from IMDB.com
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