Today’s assignment is to write about something that would get me fired.

I teach in a psychiatric facility, so the types of things that would get me fired are telling detailed stories about my students, using their names, birth dates, and physical descriptions such that people would be able to figure out who they are.

Also, other fire-able topics to write about include:  having an inappropriate relationship with a student, dissing my immediate boss, revealing my true feelings about the biggest boss of my company, claiming to have abused children in any way, blogging about deep drug or alcohol addiction issues currently raging in my life, pornography, doing jail time, or admitting to murder.

It would be nice to have the freedom to write about absolutely anything I feel like, but it is also nice to get a paycheck and to be trusted with the private confidential information of others as I help them to heal.  When my kids were little they would try to get details out of me about my students because I told them I was like an FBI agent who couldn’t share anything, legally bound and all.

I will tell a brief hodge-podge of craziness that has occurred in my classroom in the last month with scrambled names, genders, and identities to protect privacy:

Sam had a laughing fit that lasted almost 20 minutes.  Uncontrollable, insane, maniacal laughter that ended in tears.  The mania was a result of stopping a certain medication that resulted in hysterics.  Lisa stood up, headed for the door, gave the peace sign, and took off running.  She is quite the track star, so no one could catch her, except the police a few hours later when she turned up at a gas station asking to borrow a phone.  Ben threw up all over the bathroom…literally…all over…in the sink, around the toilet, on the floor, in the trash can, on the door…everywhere except in the toilet.  Sofie is a psychpath and coordinated a plan to sneak into the bathroom with another girl to perform oral sex.  Josh fell asleep on the floor in the middle of the classroom and peed on himself.  Such is my life…

And somehow we still manage to learn about Shakespeare, write poetry, edit essays, debate political ideologies, learn vocabulary, have spelling bees, and share personal narratives to make your heart break.  Today we wrote about bullying after watching Shane Koyczan’s To This Day.  Then we discussed propaganda and watched samples of hilarious commercials to demonstrate rhetorical devices.  We ended the class with planning products they could invent and sell – they will create their own advertisements.  It was a good day.