Travis R. Martin, CPA » Rotten Apples

Vandalism Blues

travisrmartin — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 03:35:15 +0000

“While I was sitting down, I saw something that drove me crazy. Somebody’d written ‘F*** Y**’ on the wall. It drove me damn near crazy. I thought how Phoebe and all the other little kids would see it, and how they’d wonder what the hell it meant, and then finally some dirty kid would tell them…I tried to rub it off with my hand, but this one was scratched on, with a knife or something. It wouldn’t come off. It’s hopeless, anyway. If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn’t rub out even half the ‘F*** Y**’ signs in the world.” – The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger

Sitting in the school library during a faculty meeting today, I was reminded of the famous graffiti rant made by Holden Caufield in The Catcher in the Rye. Posted on the wall next to my table was a poster advertising a high school math and science tutoring program run by Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. The program provides high school students homework help from college students via a free 1-800 hotline. Based on the information in the poster “Ask Rose,” seemed like a great program. Nevertheless, someone still took it upon themself to scrawl the word “b***h” across the bottom of the document.

Vandalism of this nature is not completely unheard of at my school. I’ve seen “F*** School” carved into cafeteria tables. We have textbooks with “school sucks,” written across the pages in black sharpie. Students routinely use the bathroom walls as a forum to spread vulgar rumors and insults.

Smoke Weed? 420? Whatever happened to 867-5309?

Lately, the vandalism has taken on a marijuana theme (perhaps in celebration of the informal Weed Holiday, April 20th aka 420). For the last week, the men’s room has become a marijuana wailing wall of sorts with students paying tribute to the drug by scribling sentiments like “get high,” “smoke weed,” “420 forever,” and “i love weed” on the smooth portions connecting the concrete bricks in the wall. Each night the custodians wipe or paint the slate clean, only to have a new crop of messages appear the next day. It’s the janitorial equivalent of the Wack-a-Mole game.

I'm Sure We Can All Enjoy the End of School Without a Bong, Thank You.

Classrooms are not immune from the pro-weed vandals either. Last Monday a substitute was in my room while I attended a conference. I returned the next morning to find a drawing of a foot-high (no pun intended) bong burning furiously on the white board beneath my “End of the Year Coutdown.”

When I see this junk on the walls, tables, and books around the school, I always wonder what the students think about it.

Do they think it is funny? Does it bother them? Are they numb to it? Does it encourage them to misbehave? (Broken Windows theorists would say, yes)

I know how I feel. Like Holden Caufield.

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When Carpets Become Spittoons

travisrmartin — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 01:57:46 +0000

Here’s another entry from my personal journal of the 2008-2009 school year. Look for other tales from the classroom under the tag “Rotten Apples.” Please note that all student and school names have been changed in the interest of privacy.
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September 11, 2008

When Carpets Become Spittoons

It was a lovely end to the day today. About 15 minutes before the final bell, I happened to notice Michael Williams spitting something onto the floor. I walked over to his seat in the back row and observed a brown lake forming on the carpet between him and his neighbor.

“What’s all this,” I said, pointing at the carpet. “Are you dipping?”

“No, I didn’t do nothin,’” he mumbled as he looked away.

I grabbed a piece of paper out of the printer, put it over the wet spot on the floor and stepped on it. The fresh spit soaked into the paper, turning it brown.

“So, that’s not your puddle of spit on the floor?”

I have gotten used to seeing tobacco and trash on the bathroom floor. On my classroom floor? Not so much.

“No, I didn’t do nothin’.'” Michael said, this time looking me directly in the eye.

“Ok,” I gestured towards the student sitting next to Michael, “so that wad of dip sitting in the floor is Bobby’s?”

Bobby Chandler didn’t even look up. Earlier in the period he had discovered a video game site that our web blocking software had yet to find, so he was busy shooting cartoon cats out of a cannon.

“I don’t know.”

“Mike, I watched you spit it out.”

“I’m not dipping…wook,” Michael said as he pulled out his lower lip, causing him to slur his “l.”

“I know there’s nothing in there, bud…I watched you spit it out. It’s sitting right here on the floor.”

I directed his attention toward the damning evidence. I thought I made a pretty good case.

“Well. It ain’t mine.”

We were at a stalemate. I decided to pull out the heavy guns.

I pointed at the black plastic bubble protruding from the ceiling, “Mike, there’s the camera. It is aimed right at you. Do I really have to go to the tape and get the pictures of you spitting on the floor?”

He didn’t answer. I took that to be his admission of guilt. Having scored the touchdown, I went for the extra point.

“Why would you spit on the carpet….” I struggled for words. What I wanted to say was “what the *#@!* is wrong with you?” I settled for something that was less likely to get me fired. “That’s just gross. Do you spit on the floor when you’re at home?”

“Yeah.” He looked at me defiantly.

“You spit on the floor at home?” I asked again. Sometimes students say something so crazy, that you just have to ask for confirmation.

“YEAH!” He was starting to get worked up. I really think if I pressed the issue he may have tried to punch me. Which, given the circumstances, might not have been too bad. Getting slugged by a student at school would have to entitle me to at least one day off.

I weighed the options and relented. “Well, you’re going to clean this crap up.” I called the custodians and they brought a bucket of suds and some paper towels. Michael spent the last three minutes of class scrubbing the carpet.

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Thank You, Google

travisrmartin — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 02:46:11 +0000

Here’s another entry from my personal journal of the 2008-2009 school year. Look for other tales from the classroom under the tag “Rotten Apples.” Please note that all student and school names and have been changed in the interest of privacy. Enjoy!

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Tuesday, January 7th

Thank You, Google

I was hoping over Christmas Break that my room would be forgotten as the choice hangout spot of students who would rather browse the internet than go to lunch. My hopes were dashed as the 3^rd period lunch bell rang and the usual handful of kids trickled into the computer lab to get their daily fix of Facebook (MySpace is sooooo 2005) and YouTube.

The biggest problem with having kids around during lunch is that our lunch period falls during my planning period – and it’s very hard to get anything prepared when I have kids in my room.

Take today for instance. Cara Bentham spent her entire lunch period in my room looking up local sex offenders. Why? I have no idea. But, after each one she found, she provided me with a full breakdown of what the offender did and how close they lived to local points of interest. So, for half of my planning – a time where I should be busy making lessons or grading papers – I was having the following conversation over and over:

“Mr. Martin…hey, look at this guy!”

“He looks like a freak, what’d he do?”

“It says rape,’”

“Yikes, where does he live?”

“Oh God! It says he lives right next to the gas station! I’m not going there anymore!”

“Yeah, that might be a good idea.”

“Mr. Martin, Mr. Martin, check out this one!”

The only variation in this seemingly endless dialogue about local degenerates came at the very end, or somewhere around the 11^th sex offender.

“Mr. Martin, hey, here’s another one. This one lives out by the firehouse.”

“Oh, yeah?” At this point, I was not even looking up from what I was trying to work on.

“Yeah!”

Thirty, maybe forty seconds passed. I assumed the game of find the pervert was over. I looked out of the corner of my eye and noticed Cara squinting at the monitor.

“Mr. Martin, what’s sodomy?” Cara asked.

I responded with what I always do when a student asks me a question for which I do not have an immediate answer: “Huh?”

“What’s sodomy mean? It says he got in trouble for sodomy.”

I turned and faced Cara. Having just had a daughter, I really didn’t want the memory of my first “birds and bees” conversation to be a discussion of the particulars of butt-love with a 20 year old, second-time high school senior. So, instead of launching into the whole “when a man and woman, or two men, or two women and a plastic object, love each other very much” speech, I decided to go a different route.

“I’m not sure, Cara, why don’t you just Google it.”

She nodded and began pecking the letters out one at a time on the keyboard. She was on the second “o” in “sodomy” before I interrupted her.

“Oh, Cara.”

“Yeah,” she said, looking up from her keyboard.

“Make sure you do a web search instead of an image one, okay.”

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From the Cubicle to the Classroom

travisrmartin — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 00:57:58 +0000

My name is Travis Martin. I am 29 years old, and I am an idiot. I wasn’t always an idiot, though. In the old days when I went to work, people would listen to me. They respected me, my credentials, and my opinions. I was a CPA at a large public accounting firm. The initials at the end of my name were enough to garner a certain amount of respect from most anyone I crossed paths with.

Then something happened. After four years of juggling the endless minutia of tax forms, financial statements and audit reports, I started to wonder what in the hell I was doing with my life.

Clients were no longer people; they were random names affixed to manila folders and faceless voices on the other end of a phone line.

Seasons were no longer defined by the weather, but by the type of job I was working on. Spring was tax season. Fall and winter were audit season. Summer was a blur of loose ends and unfinished jobs.

Co-workers shuffled into and out of the firm, leaving little evidence that they were ever there in the first place. I felt like a cog in a machine, counting my life away in fifteen minute increments using the firms’ billing software.

It all seemed pointless.

I wanted more. I wanted creativity. I wanted spontaneity. I wanted to change the world. I decided I wanted to be a high school teacher. That was five years, thirty-six graduate credit hours in Education, and $12,000 in tuition ago.

Unfortunately, somewhere between the cubicle and the classroom I became an idiot.

The Idiot Chaperoning at the Senior Prom in 2006

Parents with no training in business or education questioned my teaching methods and qualifications. Principals tracked my every move from afar, demanding copies of my lessons, tests, gradebooks, and syllabi while seldom stepping foot into my room. Students accused me of a litany of offenses, including losing their homework, miscalculating their grades and generally ruining their lives. Co-workers held secret caucuses to discuss the environment inside my classroom.

This year I will be beginning my fourth year as an idiot. I am guessing some of your teachers, or your children’s teachers, are idiots too.

It’s not all our fault though.

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Prior to the beginning of this school year, I decided to keep a journal to document my day-to-day experiences as a high school teacher. The above post, along with the posts The Legend of Mr. Tooters and Weiner, AR – The Capital of Adolescent Humor, are excerpts from my journal. Future excerpts from the journal will be posted under the tag Rotten Apples. I hope to have the entire journal finished and ready to submit for publication by August 2009.

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Weiner, Arkansas – the Capital of Adolescent Humor

travisrmartin — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 02:46:04 +0000

Some of the greatest achievements in the history of mankind occurred by accident. Coke, for instance, was invented when Atlanta pharmacist John Pemberton mixed together a handful of random ingredients while trying to invent a cure for headaches. Penicillin was stumbled upon when an absent-minded scientist forgot to clean his laboratory prior to going on vacation.

On this day, April 7, 2009, another breakthrough was made – one that will be remembered for all eternity by sophomore boys who enjoy sophomoric humor. For it was today, at 1:03 pm, when two of my Computer Applications students discovered a town called Weiner.

Weiner, Arkansas...Home of the Fighting Cardinals

The discovery came while the students were researching weather conditions for a database project. Each two person team was assigned the task of gathering current weather conditions from 20 different cities, and compiling the information into a database, where it could then be organized and manipulated in a number of different ways.

For some of my students, the idea of creating a database is about as appealing as the idea of having an acne outbreak before a big date, so I tried to incorporate an element of fun into the assignment by encouraging the class to find cities with odd names. (Although the suggestion may not seem like much, I have found that small twists of this nature can make the difference between a student completing or not completing an assignment)

As I sauntered around the room, I noticed most of my students had taken the conventional route – selecting common cities such as Chicago, St. Louis, and Louisville. Then I came to “Brad” and “Steven,” my compadres in the back of the classroom. As I glanced at their computer screen, I noticed they had comprised a database solely of wacky towns. There was Tennessee, Illinois, Crapo, Maryland, Quitman, Georgia, Winner, South Dakota, Sheboygan, Wisconsin and Forks, Washington. Satisfied that my advice had taken hold with at least one group, I continued around the room. I returned to Brad and Steven moments later when I heard them laughing hysterically. When I asked them what they had found, all they could do was point at their screen, which was displaying up-to-the minute weather information for Weiner, Arkansas.

Part of me, the part that didn’t have to worry about maintaining order in a classroom with twenty-eight fifteen and sixteen year-olds, wanted to laugh. Hard. The “responsible teacher” part of me won out though, so I just grinned and told them that the preferred spelling of “weiner,” was in fact “w-i-e-n-e-r” (thank you, Principal Skinner). My spelling lesson did little to dampen their enthusiasm.

“What kind of stuff you think they have in Weiner?” Steven asked Brad excitedly, just before rephrasing the question and typing it into Google.

Normally Google processes queries in a snap, but Steven’s Weiner query seemed to take forever, which allowed plenty of time for a group of curious students to make their way back to see the results.

It turns out there’s not much in Weiner, AR. Just a school. The Weiner School District, to be exact. Of course, that link was where Steven’s mouse landed and within seconds, Brad and Steven were treating half of the class to an impromptu tour of the internet home of the Weiner High School Cardinals. The small group howled at the risqué irony when Steven clicked on February’s Teacher of the Month, Mr. Woody. Even the trivial statements made on the Principal’s page (“It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to Weiner High School”) drew a chorus of laughter.

After a few minutes, the laughter died down and the group of students returned to their seats to conduct their own Weiner research. One student, skilled in the art of browsing Wikipedia, noted that, with a total area of 1.4 square miles, Weiner just wasn’t that larg… “Brandon!” I cut the student off before he could finish.

As the bell rang and the students exited the room, I had the sinking feeling that I had inadvertently done more to improve the students’ comedic skills than their database building skills.

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The Legend of Mr. Tooters

travisrmartin — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 01:28:26 +0000

Superman wears a cape. Batman wears a utility belt. Mr. Tooters, a student in my Computer Applications class, wears a faded black t-shirt depicting a gaseous stick figure luridly advertising “free gas.”

Mr. Tooters takes a break from breaking wind to pause for a photo opp.

When Mr. Tooters began my class in early December, he had already achieved mythical status. My fellow teachers spoke cryptically about the seemingly mild-mannered boy, known by most as “Steven,” whose complete and utter lack of self-awareness allowed him to break wind in a classroom full of people without feeling embarrassed. Like all good legends, everyone had heard stories of Mr. Tooters’ exploits, but few could seem to recall having witnessed them firsthand. That notwithstanding, I still believed.

Nearly three months went by. I waited patiently for Steven to unveil his gassy alter-ego, but to no avail. I started to wonder if the Legend of Mr. Tooters would go the way of Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster.

Then, last week, it happened. I had just finished demonstrating for my class the art of creating a table in Microsoft Access when all of the sudden, Mr. Tooters, without warning, raised half of his backside up from his chair and produced one of the most absurd farts in the history of public education. The sound, a cartoonish “brrraaapppppppppp” that was not unlike the sound a push mower makes when first started, echoed off of the concrete block walls of my classroom.

I stared at Mr. Tooters in disbelief. I think I said “that did not just happen,” but in my shocked state, I may have just mouthed the words. The other students exchanged confused glances with one another in a futile attempt to make sense of what had transpired. Did he just? Was that a? No. He couldn’t have. Could he?

And then the smell set in. Confusion quickly turned to desperation as the back row vacated their seats in hopes of finding cleaner air near the windows. One student demanded that Mr. Tooters be dismissed to the bathroom to “go wipe himself.”

Mr. Tooters said nothing. His face was beet red – not from humiliation, but from choking back the laughter that resulted from seeing the momentary carnage his bodily function had wrought.

It was at that moment that I understood the beauty of Mr. Tooters. Some kids are good at sports. Some kids get good grades. Some kids bully other kids. Each of these things may give a student a sense of belonging, but none of them are necessarily unique. At some point, Mr. Tooters learned that it doesn’t take straight A’s, bulging muscles, or a lights-out fastball to earn respect in high school. Sometimes all it takes is a little gas.

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