Bonfire of the Vanities

You will get a lot of freebies this year.
Pens
stationery
coupons
candy
potholders
lightbulbs
tea bags (usually one at a time, not an entire box)
discounts
dusty boxes of file folders
letter openers
Lifesavers
chocolate
mugs
cupcakes


These are meant to make you feel better about your salary. Don't drink the Koolaide. Instead, make a box, and start collecting this stuff. Leave it in your teacher workroom. Maybe label it: "Will trade for cash."

Or, a non-sarcastic, positive response [so hard for us to generate]:

When the PTA is asking for suggestions on how to help, propose real things they can do:

• copying
• filing
• grading (objective tests: True/False, etc)
• babysitting
• DETENTION duty (wow--that even blew our minds!)

When the PTA chairperson says, "And we'd love to make some cookies for Teacher Appreciation Day," continue (as if that utterance had not fallen from her lips), "...faxing, attendance, record-keeping, collating, bulletin boards, textbook inventory, field trip chaperoning, fee collections, fundraising, e-mail spam deleting. phone calls reporting lack of homework, painting, ticket taking at concerts and games, prom chaperoning, class monitoring--(more needed in high school than in elementary school), in-school detention enforcer, "sweepers"-adults to roam the halls and collar roaming kids.

In short--we need help with everything that has NOTHING to do with teaching.

Look, everyone likes a cupcake. And no one isn't saying we don't appreciate the time it took to make them. We know that when you are very tired, it is quite nice of you to make some cupcakes for anybody. Just take that same time and ask us what we need help with. Your cupcakes is like showing up to the tsunami zone with cotillion corsages--"Gee, thanks, and that is so totally not what we need right now!"

P.S. All you people who voted down the millage which would have raised our salaries--please take those cupcakes and stick 'em where the sun don't shine. We are not your servants--do not condescend to proffer cupcakes in lieu of professional pay.

When was the last time someone brought the engineer who built their road CUPCAKES?

This is not a joke--we are tired of being perceived as Members of the Household Staff (by the affluent); or as the beneficent "angel of mercy" to whom you bring a chicken and some radishes because that is the best you have to give.

Perhaps collect all of those staplers and teddy bears and plastic blinking rings and discounted gym memberships and bikini wax coupons and travel sized soaps and popcorn balls...

....and collect them in a huge box, and after announcing, "We are not a charity," donate them to a real charity.

I was going to suggest burning them, hence the post title, but that is just wasteful and rude. And I'm not suggesting you throw out children's gifts. Just the other nonsense.