Who's the Loser?

  You might have read today about a teacher in North Carolina coming under fire for writing "loser" on a student's paper.  http://www.ksfy.com/news/national/87461092.html  My "day job" is teaching English as a Second Language to adults.  I enjoy it.  The students are almost always just, lovely, not losers.  The administration and faculty?  A real mixed bag with plenty of losers.  I had a principal at an LAUSD Adult School call me "that blonde woman" for over a year before she decided to learn my name.  Some of the teachers are really great.  Qualified to over-qualified in many cases, with a real knack for the stuff.  Oh, but there's plenty of nut jobs and just lazy teachers, too.   I was sitting in a break room one day when a teacher announced that she'd grown up most of her life in a coma, and yet somehow had also been a supermodel.  Another day a teacher confided in me that the district was spying on her.  Had even searched her house when she wasn't home.  And then there's the ones that read the newspaper during class, pay their bills and plan their weddings during distance learning office hours, or can't bring themselves to do anything other than play bingo with their students.  This just angers me as a taxpayer.  Why should I have to pay for you to do a fraction of the same job I do?  Teacher unions make it very difficult to fire teachers.  Often they're encouraged into administration where they fail again, but now with more power.  A tenured teacher in the Downey Unified School District couldn't stay awake during class, just kept falling asleep.  After many complaints, she was given a teacher's aide.  I've stepped away from that dog mess and now I work for a community college with an administrator who is actually intelligent, passionate about, and great at her job.  SO refreshing!  And since she does the hiring, the teachers are pretty great too.  I LOVE not hating my "day job!"