A Reader's rant

I got an email regarding a post titled "What a dumpass".
I vaguely remember seeing the misspelling and meant to change it, but me being me and being a dumpass at times, it got spaced out.
Ms. X, being a teacher caught it and sent this via email.
I got a kick out of it and responded with a request to publish it and she graciously agreed.
I hope y'all enjoy it as much as I did, especially the second dumpass story.
Ms. X is the third person to contact me and in the course of conversation mention that they teach for a living. Mortal enemies when I was under their collective thumbs, now I have nothing but respect for them.


My rant has to do with the No Child Left Behind bull shit and the fact that my school did not make AYP - Annual Yearly Progress. Which is another rant all by itself. I'll clue you in in another email.

See, here's what happened. I was in a game room chat and putting my two cents in about education and how I am being held accountable while parents and students are not. I felt I had a right to chime in since I've been a teacher for 20 years and have too many years in to quit. A retired teacher blasted me and told me that I was hindrance to the process because I blame everyone else for my students not learning and it really pissed me off to the point that if he/she/it were standing in front of me we would have to go the hospital to get my fist out of his/her/its jaw and to get myself calmed down I was checking out your old postings. (How's that for a run on sentence?)

I stopped responding to him/her/it because he/she/it has no idea what I am talking about. My students not only learn, I tell them every day they are expected to learn. And I make sure that the least amount of improvement for the year is 6 months in reading & math. And just so you know I teach 4th grade and some of these kids can't read or perform math on a first grade level. Hindrance my ass.

The title of your older post was "What a dumpass".

Well.

A few years ago one of my 4th grade cherubs apparently didn't think much of me and changed a computer icon to read Ms. X is a dumpass.

The next time the darling was in my room, I wrote the change on the board and said:

One of you changed a computer icon to "Ms. X is a dumpass." You are entitled to your opinion and I respect that. However. Dumb is spelled d-u-m-b so I am NOT the dumb one. So if you are going to write something about me at least have the decency to spell it correctly especially since I am your spelling teacher.

The best part was the kid couldn't accuse me of calling him/her a dumbass because then that would admit guilt. And consequences.

I LOVE being a hindrance.

Here's a second dumpass story.

I told my aunt about it and, of course, we use it all the time...especially when we are serving beverages at our biannual fire & rescue auxiliary turkey & oyster dinner. Our beverages are sweet tea, unsweet tea, and water. We have a signs for the two types of tea, but people don't read them so we spend our time indicating which is which. But we love the people who point to the third beverage and ask, "Is this water?" What the hell do they think it is...water????

That, my dear friend, is a dumpass.