what retired teachers are like
Today was the last day of CBEST. Yay!!!!! I was being driven crazy by that place, the inescapableness of its rhythms. And the rigidity of its white senior citizen culture. Kinda want to scream something inappropriate.
Retired teachers are pretty good as far as people go, but you know how old people can be so mired in their own reality and unwilling to consider anything but their old tricks. Of course, young people can be this way too. But, for example, I'm thinking of rigid ideas about ethnicity and gender. Very rigid, and how something outside of their everyday experience seems ridiculous. And how anyone who isn't white is tolerated loudly rather than accepted as a given. There's such a confidence in their own superiority that comes through always and makes me sick.
This all corresponds with problems Erik sees with the CBEST itself seeming to just weed out the ESL people. It's more of a "where were you born test" than anything. And no one there seems to see any problem or even... potential problem.
All scoring brings up moral issues for us, but we keep going back for more, as it's the only thing we can do and get more than ten dollars an hour.
Anyway, the retired teachers, they're always talking about their wonderful vacations to other countries, and I'm just jealous they're all so comfortable while we're so uncomfortable. In their professional, easy, educated, senior whiteness.
Yet the grim reaper reaps. And almost every session, there's a sad announcement. This time, the person who died was someone I very much liked, though I hadn't spoken with him, the man of a married couple, and I liked the woman of the couple and spoke with her in the bathroom. When they announced he had died, and it hit me who it was, I said, "Oh my god." Because they were such a cute couple, seemed so right together, and happy. He was the last person you would want to die.
Kitty has been extremely cranky since we came home from our weekend trip. He wants constant attention yet isn't pleased when he gets it. He howls and meowls.
Retired teachers are pretty good as far as people go, but you know how old people can be so mired in their own reality and unwilling to consider anything but their old tricks. Of course, young people can be this way too. But, for example, I'm thinking of rigid ideas about ethnicity and gender. Very rigid, and how something outside of their everyday experience seems ridiculous. And how anyone who isn't white is tolerated loudly rather than accepted as a given. There's such a confidence in their own superiority that comes through always and makes me sick.
This all corresponds with problems Erik sees with the CBEST itself seeming to just weed out the ESL people. It's more of a "where were you born test" than anything. And no one there seems to see any problem or even... potential problem.
All scoring brings up moral issues for us, but we keep going back for more, as it's the only thing we can do and get more than ten dollars an hour.
Anyway, the retired teachers, they're always talking about their wonderful vacations to other countries, and I'm just jealous they're all so comfortable while we're so uncomfortable. In their professional, easy, educated, senior whiteness.
Yet the grim reaper reaps. And almost every session, there's a sad announcement. This time, the person who died was someone I very much liked, though I hadn't spoken with him, the man of a married couple, and I liked the woman of the couple and spoke with her in the bathroom. When they announced he had died, and it hit me who it was, I said, "Oh my god." Because they were such a cute couple, seemed so right together, and happy. He was the last person you would want to die.
Kitty has been extremely cranky since we came home from our weekend trip. He wants constant attention yet isn't pleased when he gets it. He howls and meowls.
posted by Laura-Marie @ 8:27 PM
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