Watching my school (and my sanity) go down the tubes

I have not updated the old blog in a while mostly because I have been very very angry. So my school was a really great place to work for when I first arrived, but in the past few months it has been going down the shitter. It all started a few months back when our boss told us that enrollment was down. The reasons why kids were quitting was blatantly clear to the teachers, (like excessive vocabulary tests, and materials that are way to hard) but why would the school ask our opinion...we only spend hours on end with the kids. Nope, instead our genius boss decided it was an image thing and that we needed to make kids sit up straight in class. Why change the curriculum so they are not bored in class when you can just force them to not look bored in class. I know I am just a peon teacher, but I think a good start to changing the image of the school would be painting over the walls that have things like "shut up nigger" written on them...just a thought. As any intelligent person would predict, the no slouching policy really hasn't done much to make the school better, so the big man Mr. Jung came up with another brilliant idea. Once again the fact that I am teaching The Great Gatsby and Dr. Zhivago to 6th graders didn't seem to be the problem. Instead he decided that teachers aren't motivated enough to do a good job (which I partially agree with). Solution: Let ELEMENTARY students vote on which teacher they want. As far as I remember the qualifications for a "good teacher" when I was in second grade was one who showed me movies, brought me candy and didn't discipline me....hmmm we have some teachers like that....I wonder who the kids are going to choose? On top of all of this we are in our intensive month where kids come to English school instead of have a a winter break like normal kids. This means I teach morning classes and evening classes. Today I was at work for 13 and a half hours...and they arranged the schedule in such a way that they don't have to pay us overtime. The most annoying part is that I am so close to done and sticking it out is a matter of about $ seven grand. It is such a shame because in a lot of ways this country is really great, but at this point I feel pure hate for the place. I think it really is a crap shoot and I got detoured down a bad shoot.