In the beige.

So, today I'm subbing at perhaps the most unremarkable school I've ever been in. There just seems to be no life here. I think it's probably an incredibly boring place to be whether you're a teacher or a student, but at the same time it's far preferable to some of the places I've been to so far. You know the schools I'm talking about--the ones which are practically in flames. I'm beginning to think that I'm permanently jaded, and that I will never really find a good school to be in because I hate both chaos and absolute order in the classroom. I don't know if I've ever really seen a school that I liked for long enough to determine whether it was a place I'd want to work...and seeing places for one or two days only just encourages me to make rash judgements about how bad they are. On that note, I'm trying to come up with some unusual indicators of good schools. Here are a few of the ones that I think are most accurate:

1. The worse the art/murals are at a school (the more the kids are involved in making them), the better a school is.
2. The more formal of a bathroom policy that a school has, the better it is.
3. The more computers with internet a school has, the better it is.
4. The better the condition of the student work in the hall, the better the school is (kids don't destroy it).
5. The less physically agressive-seeming a principal is, the better a school is.

Anyway...

I had a discussion with a friend on Saturday about what happens when you run away from where you live to find something else--to find a different way of life. Namely, your old way of life eventually catches up with you. I certainly think that going to LA and Africa would be running away, but at the same time I don't care--I have to get out of places like this. I want to feel some kind of desire to participate in a job somewhere. Because at the moment, no matter what way I slice it, I don't really want a job. None of them seem important or necessary. Particularly not teaching jobs at the schools I've been in.