Mr. Valentine
My school has a strange tradition for Valentine’s Day. Many of my kids celebrated by bringing commercial valentine card cut-outs to class and passing them around. So pointless. I received about 5 High School Musical valentines with just my name on them. My favorite one is below.
In an effort to show the young men at the school ‘chivalry,’ or something like that, the male staff dressed up in bow ties and suits and brought gifts to the female teachers throughout the day. I delivered 45 feather pens today, dressed in my bow tie and vest. It was pretty fun, but a strange (perhaps just unconventional) approach to teaching moral behavior and character development. The women didn’t do anything in return, which I found most troubling – but then again, I’m not sure what they have planned. This school is often a puzzle, literally coming together at the last minute or never at all. They plan things that are hazy at first and then they give a full itenerary on the day of whatever is planned. I just found out 30 minutes ago that the men are cooking lunch for the ladies tomorrow, too. I’m wearing a chef hat, they told me. Maybe I’ll have pictures of that, too.
For now, this is all I have to entertain you:
Happy Valentine’s Day
- Jeff
It’s all very heterosexual, too. Why couldn’t you give feather pens to the male teachers?
You are such a gentleman in that bow tie and suit. The ladies should definitely do something for the male teachers in return or what lessons are you teaching these kids about 21st century equality!? Tito recommends that the ladies get all of the men Eagles season tickets. Hm…
Yeah, even trying to bring that up is just still kind of hard. Harder than it would seem. I actually pretended to give it to a few guy teachers and they just laugh. Honestly, when I first heard we were doing it, I kind of wanted to opt out, but I just felt like I should participate in the tradition, and maybe I can actually make changes once I have enough clout and where-with-all for people to actually listen. Little by little seems to be mantra in that school. Heterosexism is alive and well at DCS.
We do have something much less elaborate planned for tomorrow. And this morning when we were talking about the Chippendales haunted me all day with the whole spectacle of it. You did have the most sexual item to give out (well, maybe the bathtub stuff), but what about the prayer book? What was that?
Bonnie – did they really give out a prayer book? I had no idea..that just takes things to a whole new level of inappropriateness. Was it a Christian prayer book? Hmmmmm…. If I have anything to say about this next year, things will be different.
your school is kinda on crack, no offense or anything, but still…. that’s just weird. What’s wrong with good ol’ paper valentines and candy all around?
All I can say is “you look handsome!!!”