When Mongrel Dogs Teach

What happens when a 45-year-old Baby Boomer goes back to teach high school and finds the students are more in touch with reality than his colleagues and supervisors?

"So don’t blow off these tests. Keep our school number high. These test scores are not about you, the students. They are about property value. Money. Status. Making the rich richer and the poor poorer. The American Dream is about moving from districts with shitty test scores to those with really good ones."

"Teaching isn’t easy—it’s grueling. You have to have the gift or you won’t make it.... teachers should be paid like doctors and lawyers; their contributions affect the lives of millions of young people .... what they give back to the human race is far, far greater."

"The evaluation of teachers is a very hot issue at this writing, and as Storm once told the entire faculty, the people doing the evaluating take these extra courses, but it doesn’t really qualify them to evaluate anybody."

-- William J Burghardt