So here's the deal with today.

Today sucked ass. Big fat ass.

A bunch of my students totally bombed their Huck Finn final test (Shannon, I know you didn't read it either, but at least you were a good student who didn't pretend you did...or did you?) and the number of them that did so really pissed me off.

I mean, I knew some of them were just copying their homework from others, but I didn't realize it was that many. Then I felt like a shitty teacher, because I convinced myself that only shitty teacher's students cheat, because a good teacher's students would be so excited and motivated about school that they wouldn't even feel the need to cheat.

And I handed back the tests today, and I said: I am extremely disappointed in these tests. These tests are an indicator to me about those who actually did do the work and those of you who did not do the work, and I can't believe so many of you took the easy way out. I know that people in this class have been cheating on quizzes and copying homework--I know that's the choice some of you have made. And I'm sorry that some of you did that, I really am. I'm sorry that some of you are willing to live with your moral conscience of cheating for a measly 6 points per week, and I'm sorry that you didn't read the book, because it's actually a really good book. I'm sorry that you're the kind of people who are okay with someone else doing work for you, and I'm sorry that I was so, so, so naive that I trusted some of you, that I trusted that you would take credit for only work that you did. Because, really, the only thing that is going to happen to you cheaters is that you aren't going to be ready for 10th grade. And you've just proven to me that you do your own work, getting 50% on a really easy book test.

My teacher heart was broken today, it really was. I blamed myself for so many things. I learned so many "teacher lessons" today about "what to take away for my future classes" my head is throbbing. Too many lessons in one day. It hurts. I brainstormed and brainstormed ways to fix it for next time. I even asked my "stupid" class for ways to fix it for next year--and they actually told me how they'd cheated this time around and what I could fix for next year. Can you believe they just told me? I guess all you have to do is ask, and you shall learn. They told me some of their tricks that I'd never have even thought of. I shared them with other teachers who said, no shit! I wouldn't have even thought of that to cheat. No shit.

Anyway, I feel that all I did today was bitch and bitch and bitch and feel like a bitch and feel crabby as fuck and snap at kids that I love (did you know that at least 40 times a day I hear do we need our books today? do we need our books today? as they come into my classroom? Guess what: YOU NEED YOUR TEXTBOOKS EVERY FUCKING DAY STOP ASKING ME OR I WILL FUCKING PUNCH YOU IN THE THROAT; did you know that kids think it is okay to interrupt you in a conversation with another teacher that is obviously private and personal to ask you--to interrupt--Ms. Prokott, do we need our book today? Ms. Prokott can I go get a drink? Guess what: I AM AN ADULT IN THE MIDDLE OF AN ADULT CONVERSATION AND YOU JUST WALKED IN BETWEEN IT LIKE YOUR QUESTION ACTUALLY FUCKING MATTERS). Today was a big pile of shit. My 3rd hour (hate them) students were so bad, I made them walk from the library back to my classroom in alphabetical single file because they couldn't shut their fucking mouths in the hallway for the 2 minute walk. This is so dumb, they said.

This is where I'm going with this: today sucked, but I had a therapy appointment. At 2:00. So I left school during prep, heated and heated and fuming with anger, and I sat down in the chair, and my doctor said: I have something to tell you. And I scrunched my face and she said:

I see one of your students here--I obviously can't tell you who--but I was talking to her, and she was talking about school, homework. And I asked her if there was anything she liked about school, and she started talking about English class, and how much she loved it, and I asked her who her teacher was, and she said--Ms., Mrs.--she's really young, Ms. Prokott. And she said that English has just opened up so many doors for her, and she loves your class, and she is excited about it and she is inspired by the stories.

And I cried and cried and cried.

Horticulture & Mascara: The Ms. Christina Edition.

Dear Ms. Christina,

I have a couple of questions for you, and I hope you don't mind that I consolidate and put them into one query.

First of all, whenever I walk out into my front yard here in Huchinson, Minn., it smells like vag. At first, I thought it was just a vag in the wind, but then, I went running and I noticed that many of the trees here smell like fishy vaginas! And one of them happens to be in my front yard!

So, I guess my question is: is there such thing as a vagina tree? And if I spray that thing with some Summer's Eve, can I get rid of that vaggy stink?

Secondly, yesterday after drying and straightening my hair, I was putting on some mascara (Cover Girl Lash Blast!), and I lost hold of the mascara brush and dropped it into my hair! It left a ridiculous black streak, and I tried washing it out in the sink, but it just got stickier.

How do you get mascara out of blonde hair? Does peanut butter work? Or gum? Have you personally ever committed this folly?

I guess that's it! Thank you so much! And a happy May to you, Ms. Christina.

Sincerely,

Billy's Mom
Hutchinson, Minn.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: Children & Rape.

Because it is the job of teenagers to take language to a new level of "offensive" each passing year, the students have decided that the word "rape" is an appropriate replacement for the word "kill," which has adopted the meaning "dominated," which means "own," or "pwn." All which stands for "succeeded at."

For example, Tessa said she heard a student say, Yes! I totally raped this assignment! when he got back an A essay.

Excuse me? As a teacher, an adult, a woman, a human being, this is disgusting.

As myself, this is hilarious, and it deserves mocking. I am two people: I am a teacher, and I am Jeano.

And this broken barrier of language opens up so many doors! Look where we're going, America!:

• I raped that essay.
• I committed a statutory offense against that equation.
• I sexually assaulted that multiple choice test.
• I tore up that group project and left my sperm in it because I didn't use a condom.
• I bent that reading assignment right over while it screamed at me to stop.
• I hid in the parking garage and then forced myself on that assignment when it was alone after-hours.
• I molested that take home test until it went numb with pain.
• That pop quiz just got a restraining order against me.
• I finger-fucked that vocab test while holding a pillow over its face.
• I humiliated that math problem sexually and ruined it for all students who will encounter that math problem in the future.

I'd forgotten about this conversation until Tessa and I went for pizza today--and we ate like we were hungover. On the way home, after a bit of silence, I said, so, we really raped that pizza, huh? She snorted. I said, yeah, we tore that pizza up. It was a mess when we were done. There was sauce everywhere.

You have to admire the verbiage. It's like really twisted poets live inside students.

Quick-like.

I'm sorry I've been gone (Kristin)!

I have lots of things to say about students, and lots to write about this last month of school, but there is no time. I went to the doctor today and she said that the fact that my whole life seems foggy, that sometimes I don't remember what I did the day before, or the hour before--it's all side effects to way too much stress.

Have I mentioned that I ache, ache, ache for June?

*

I had dinner with my family--all of us--for mother's day. It was more a celebration that Craig had come with. He said fuck a lot, and loud enough to get looks from the families around us. He told a story about a tragic fight in St. Michael, and here's what I got from it:

yeah, they made that guy on the news look like he was a goddamned saint, saying he was going to graduate school, that he was gonna be a pilot and shit. ...No, he ain't dead, but he's a vegetable [breathy chuckle] yeah, they say if he wakes up he's not going to be all there, can't move his legs, never be as smart again, half of his brain workin'...

Two guys that Craig knows (friends of friends I guess) were in a fight with this vegetable guy. This guy started the fight, the fight was over a girl. I don't know whose girl. I know that the two guys walked into the bar where the man was, and the man started shit, and that shit got brought outside, and then one of the guys that Craig knows threw a punch at this guy--just one punch to his head but it was a big enough punch to almost kill him--he fell back, and he hit his head on the sidewalk. ... yeah people who were there said his skull hitting the pavement sounded like a fucking pumpkin getting smashed.

This made me physically sick. All of it. The pumpkin the vegetable the one punch to the face the fact that Craig could give someone one punch to the face if he was drunk enough or mad enough about it and then he would go to prison for 20 years just like that guy did for first-degree assault over a girl with a man who wanted to be a pilot at a bar and that bar's sidewalk.

Oh, yes. This makes me anxious and annoyed that mi familia just talks about it like they talk about it. Like when Gregor's family just acknowledges that he's a bug but nobody is like WHAT THE FUCK HE IS A BUG HOW DID THAT HAPPEN.

[crazy shift in tone here]

Funny comment of the day:

A student is on crutches, new injury this weekend. Another student asked: hey J, why are you on crutches?

And after he said my dad beat me up and I said, J, you shouldn't say that unless it's something you want to talk about with me privately because there really is a problem, he said, sorry, my dad didn't beat me.

It's just that Jesus took the power in my legs away.