Travis R. Martin, CPA, MBA » Teaching

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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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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