Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," where surprises lurk like tripping hazards around every corner! I'm your befuddled host, Anne Johnson, proficient school teacher.
Once a year during the first week of October, public schools fling wide their doors for an evening event called -- variously -- Parent Night or Back-to-School Night. In the case of my school, this extravaganza also includes presentations and tours for potential students, since we are a magnet school.
This year, some person in the top ranks of our command squad decided that Covid risks are alarming enough to turn the bulk of Parent Night virtual. Interested 8th graders and their families would still be welcome in the building, but parents of existing students would have to come to Google Meets online.
So the command squad ordered each of us to create individual Meet links, and then the squad put all these links up on the school web site, with our names on them. The sun set over Camden, and we teachers reported to our classrooms and opened our Google Meets.
Parents started trickling in for me right away, considering that I now have 7 classes total.
About 30 minutes into the ordeal, it was time for the parents of my first class of freshmen to log in. So, the way Google Meet works is that someone asks to join and I (the teacher) have to admit them. Which of course I was admitting everyone, because email names and such are wacko to begin with.
Have you noticed that this younger generation is more technologically savvy than their elders?
My Meet attracted trolls with bad grammar and spelling and worse language. There I was, trying to tell parents about how I grade silent reading, while the "chat bar" was filling with the "n" word from some user who actually even blocked their ID in the chat. The ordeal culminated with a comment about Romeo and Juliet that suggested the play should be buggered by me, a white cracker (and some more insults) smoking that fine weed.
With the help of text messages from colleagues, I was able to purge the Meet of the monsters and resume affable chatting with parents. Certainly not my fault that the command put all those Google Meet links on a public platform.
If you are retired from the ed biz, like my friend Ol' Buzzard, you are very lucky indeed. Apparently this upstart social media platform named TikTok is giving youngsters the idea to film acts of vandalism and mayhem in the school setting. October, for instance, is "slap a teacher" month. I have no doubt that "disrupt online Parent Night" was a "challenge" as well.
Lord love a cross-eyed fruit fly! And to think I am staring down the barrel of seven more Parent Nights before I can hang up my chalk and retire! I think I may have to downsize the dreams of my golden years.
