Apathy = The Death of Our Nation

It's a good thing I didn't write last night because I was immensely *frustrated* and beyond sensible writing.  Basically the problem is that my students are shockingly apathetic.  Yesterday my seniors were supposed to turn in their mini research projects that we have been working on for 3 weeks.  The assignment was cake and out of 32 students in one class I had only 17 projects turned in, 5 of which I will be returning for the students to redo as they don't have half of the required material in them.  That leaves 12 projects, NONE of which were exemplary work.

  

I wanted to cry as I graded them wondering what I had done wrong as a teacher for these kind of results.  However, my mentor teacher and the English department chair came and talked to me and reassured me that this in no way reflected on my teaching.  They said that in the past 8 years they both began to notice a shift in their students, getting increasingly worse each year.  Mrs. Jacobsen (dept. chair and AP English teacher) said that it's not just the regular English classes, but Honors and AP too.  She shook her head as she talked about plummeting grades, graduation rates and especially respect.

As we talked, we came to the general consensus that this generation has no desire to learn, not because of all the cell phones, video games, smutty media influences (though all of those play a large role as well), but primarily because there is no support, encouragement or pressure to do well from parents.  It is scary how successful Satan has been in destroying the foundation of society: the home.  My first week student teaching I graded 120 essays from my juniors where they could write about anything that had been influential in their lives from kindergarten to 6th grade.  I was shocked when I counted 40 of those papers that talked about the traumas of divorce, 5 that talked about abuse, and even 2 girls who talked about being homeless for a time.  Keep in mind these are the students who chose to share those trials.  What about all the students who didn't write about the hard things in their lives?  If a documented third of my students come from broken homes, how many of them are in a stable environment where parents value education and will push their children to succeed?  If no one in their lives encourage them to do their best, why would they?  It is a slightly depressing thought that no matter how enthused I am about teaching or how clear my instructions are, if my students don't care, there is absolutely nothing I can do to change that.  Ugh.

To clear my mind of unmotivated students, when I got home I took a long hot shower to relax.  I just happened to forget that our smoke detector has been extremely touchy lately, going off probably 4 times in the last month from the steam from the shower.  Just as I turned the water off and sighed with relief, my ear drums exploded from the piercing shriek of the smoke detector.  You can imagine the scene that followed with me running around the house, frantically grabbing a chair (realizing I still couldn't reach the alarm), stacking pillows on top and pushing the button that said "off" over and over and over again.  I finally grew so upset when it continued the hellish noise that I yanked down and pulled the entire thing out of the ceiling!  Oops.  I also managed to strain a muscle in my stomach in the process, so I spent the next few hours until Burke got home worried that I had hurt our baby, grumpily grading crappy projects.  I didn't even have enough hot water to wash it all away again.  Hmph!  

HOWEVER, after a good nights sleep and long talk with my sweetheart I realized that all I can do is try and be the best teacher I possibly can be.  My students have their agency to choose if they learn from me or forget everything the second they walk out the door.  Not my problem.  I will just do my best to create such fantastic lessons, discussions and meaningful projects that they won't be able to help but think about it beyond the door frame!  Again, suggestions are more than welcome - that's what this student teaching experience is for!