The following excerpts are from TEACHER

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The following excerpts are from TEACHER'S HANDBOOK OF DIRTY TRICKS by Floyd Wells.

DIRTY TRICK # 25 MAKE STUDENTS WHO ABUSE RESTROOM PRIVILEGES SHOW YOU THEIR WORK.

Sooner or later you will have students who chronically take advantage of restroom privileges. Either the student wants to go feed his nicotine habit, or he wants to get out of class. It is particularly frustrating to a teacher when the student asks to use the restroom immediately after students come in from recess.

When you suspect that a student is asking to go to the restroom for other than what restrooms were meant for, try the following tactic.

Send to the office and ask for a staff member to cover your class. Accompany the student to the restroom and ask him not to flush the toilet after he has finished with his business. Tell him you are going to stand outside the door, and when he is finished, you will check the toilet, and the water better be yellow or have something floating in it.

DIRTY TRICK # 24: USE YOUR PRINCIPAL'S MISTAKES TO HARASS HIM.

If your principal is always throwing your mistakes up in your face, don't pass up an opportunity to use his mistakes to harass him. Let's say your principal set a meeting for you at 2:00 PM on Tuesday, but he accidentally put 2:00 AM on the memo. Set your alarm clock for 3:00 AM and call him at home on your cell phone. Explain that you have been waiting out in front of the school for your 2:00 AM meeting for an hour, and you wonder if perhaps he has forgotten.

When he assures you the meeting was for 2:00 PM, state very firmly that your memo said 2:00 AM. State that you assumed the unorthodox time was to accommodate a parent whose work schedule only permitted an early morning conference. If he tries to make you look like an idiot for waking him up in the middle of the night, respond indignantly that it was his mistake, and don't let him off the hook until he apologizes.

DIRTY TRICK # 22: USE A "SHOW ME HOW, DON'T TELL ME HOW" APPROACH TO SCHOOL IN-SERVICES.

I don't know about you, but it irks me when some high-degreed bureaucrat comes in and proposes to tell me how to do my job. If I've learned anything over the years about advice from the experts, it's this: you don't have to be able to teach to tell somebody else how to do it.

So the next time your district makes you go to a workshop on how to perform some aspect of teaching, structure a situation where the presenter has to back up what he is saying. Let's say you're assigned to a workshop on how to handle disruptive students. Take along two or three of your most disruptive students and let them sit back and heckle the workshop presenter the way they heckle you in class. I'll bet a month's paycheck the expert who is charging the district a fat consultant fee will not be able to handle them any better than you can. Or better yet, sit back and heckle the presenter yourself.

The irony of your being kicked out of a workshop on how to keep disruptive students in class may be lost on your district superintendent, but I'll guarantee you it won't be lost on your local news media.

DIRTY TRICK # 57 HANG UP ON AN OBNOXIOUS PARENT WITHOUT HIM KNOWING YOU DID IT.

Sooner or later you will get an irate, if not abusive call, from a parent who won't shut up. The call will come at home, perhaps when you are cooking dinner, or the movie you've waited two months to see is on, or even after you've settled down for a good night's sleep.

My take on this is that I pay my phone bill, and I don't pay it to have someone call me up and chew me out. However, you may be reluctant to hang up on abusive or long-winded parents for fear you will incur the wrath of your administration.

Here's how to do it.

Wait until you can get a word in edgewise. Then, right in the middle of your sentence, WHILE YOU ARE TALKING, simply push the disconnect lever. After breaking the connection, take your phone off the hook. The parent will not think you would hang up on yourself, and will assume something is wrong with your phone when he or she calls back and gets a busy signal.

When the parent finally confronts you at school, you can turn around and accuse him of hanging up on you. If you are indignant enough about it, it will take some of the wind out of his sails.

If your principal tells you an angry parent called him and he tried to get in touch with you but your phone was busy, tell him it was busy because you were trying to get back in touch with the parent who hung up on you. And don't feel guilty because he had to take a bullet meant for you. That's what he gets paid the big bucks for.

Pass this email along to a colleague who needs it. It's good for one in-service credit from the Teacher College of Hard Knocks. For more excerpts from TEACHER'S HANDBOOK OF DIRTY TRICKS, visit http://teacherwithanattitude.netfirms.com

Disclaimer: Presented for entertainment purposes only. TEACHER’S HANDBOOK OF DIRTY TRICKS is a joke book, and if you're dumb enough to get caught using any of the underhanded tricks within its pages, or in the excerpts above, you deserve to be fired, or sued, or both.

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