While many of my colleagues fled the state for more temperate climes this summer, I stuck around the Big D (and I do mean Dallas) and taught summer school. You see, I could have spent the entire summer outside, attempting to paint the house (or as I prefer to call it, "tilting at windmills"), or I could earn more than enough to pay a painter and have some left over. Naturally, I seized the opportunity to stay indoors and pay someone else to do it. Someone with painting skills and equipment and an assistant and a special truck with paint running out the tailgate.
I taught US History to English as a Second Language students. I tried telling the project coordinators that I was an American Lit teacher, not an American History teacher, but they insisted that it didn't matter, and that it was all Kosher, and that they would pay me $20/hour to babble at the kids. There was an ESL teacher in the room to remind me to slow down; he was actually the one that was the teacher of record for the class (meaning he had to grade the papers), so my responsibility was simply to show up and put on a 7 hour stand-up routine about history. No problem!
Well, okay, maybe a little problem. Problems. For starters, these ESL kids had been in the country for less than a school year. Most of them were low socio-economic background. Many of them couldn't read and write at grade level in their native tongue, much less English. They thought they were showing up for a conversation skills enrichment class, not a vocabulary-intensive social studies class. But hey, I like a challenge, and they were, by and large, good kids.
Dallas was one of 10 counties that received a grant to pay for this particular project. Part of their funding required participants like me to show up twice a week downtown at HQ to "debrief and reflect" with the other teachers. Silly me, I thought for $20 an hour, they deserved my honest opinion, and I gave it in spades. I think I was one of the more cynical critics at that. I was under the impression that by the end of the summer session, they were really happy to see me go.
And then yesterday I received a phone call from one of the coordinators: "Hello, Mr. Bosch. I bet you didn't think you'd hear from me again, did you?" No, no I didn't. This particular lady reminds me of Miss Eileen, my pre-school teacher, so I have to admit that I have a soft spot for her. Now that I think of it, I don't remember Miss Eileen sporting a rack like this lady's, so that may have contributed to said soft spot. Anyway, Miss Eileen II continued, "We were wondering if you'd like to be a presenter for the project's SIOP class. You wouldn't have to do every session, but we'll pay you $200 for co-presenting the material to other teachers." SIOP is alphabet soup for some inclusion training that everyone in the district has to go through. Me, one of the district's bigger AP elitists, presenting how to include limited English proficient students in your regular class. And the $200 is on top of my regular salary that I'd receive on staff development day anyway.
Man, I love suckling at the county teat; it's irony-flavored!
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