My buddy turned 30 on Saturday, and he had a party. He teaches in one of the most affluent school districts in the Bay Area. I teach in one of the poorest. When we get together, I love listening to his unbelievable stories. They are so crazy I don’t know if I can believe him half the time. It doesn’t make any sense. The world he teaches in is a completely different universe than the one I call reality. So we sit around and laugh, and compare our lives, and I hear things that amaze me.

Of course, with school starting on Monday, we talked about the week of preparation leading up to the first day of school. My buddy, we’ll call him Guy, told some stories I still have a hard time believing.

At his school, the teachers have six paid days to prepare. They go to meetings, they have workshops, they have time to collaborate, and even weirder, they get time to actually set up their rooms. Yes, I’m serious. They get paid to put up posters, move around the desks, and work on their curriculum, alone, uninhibited, in their own quiet room for days at a time. Guy tells me all this with a smile, already anticipating my reaction. He knows my version of the week leading up to school is going to be different, but he is still never fully prepared for it, and stares at me much the same way I stare at him when he’s talking crazy.

I guess the first difference between our schools is that we don’t have a week of preparation, we have one day. A single Friday to meet as a staff meet as a department, get your keys, get your computer, and try to get your agendas up on the boards.

Of course, there isn’t a SINGLE teacher at my school who can do anything resembling enough in a half a day on the Friday before school starts. We are all still coming in almost every day of that week, we just don’t get paid to do it. We also make a lot less as it is. Guy is approaching six-figures after 7 years of teaching in his district. I will never make six-figures in my entire life, I know, because our pay scale tops out about $20,000 short of that.

The fun continues.

In our English department, two new teachers were hired on that Friday (three days before the start of school). Both are first year teachers. So, like the rest of us, the new teachers also showed up Saturday and Sunday to prepare on their own time pro bono.

I have grafitti covering EVERY INCH of my door. I asked the maintenance guy if he could have someone paint over it before the first day. I don’t want the Surenos who hang out in front of my room getting the wrong ideas. Unfortunately the head of maintenance laughed at me and led me to believe it probably wasn’t going to get done at all, let alone by Monday. That leads me to believe I’m going to have to bring a can of paint to the first day of school and do it myself.

I also don’t have a room number over my door. Every classroom got new black plastic rectangles, and for some reason I found mine on the floor of my classroom, not on the wall outside my door. All I need is four screws and I can drill it into the wall myself. Maintenance guy told me he’d bring me some. I left my classroom at around 5 pm this Sunday. No screws. That leads me to believe I will be bringing my own screws to the first day of school, so the students know which classroom is mine.

At Guy’s school, all the teachers have brand new iMacs, LCD projectors, ELMOs, and things called Smart Boards or something, I’m not sure because I don’t really know what they are because I’ve never seen one. But they sound cool, like in Minority Report. Conversely, at my school, we might not have a technology lab this year. That is correct, in the year 2010 we are cutting back on technology. The paid position isn’t there, so the lab isn’t open, and even if it was all the computers are infested with bugs anyway without anyone to monitor them. So a math teacher has been volunteering his time checking out the computers and getting everyone set up.

Problem.

The guy is so busy doing something he isn’t compensated for, he simply doesn’t have the time (remember, he is also setting up his own classroom and all that stuff too). So even though we now take roll on our computers, I don’t have an account yet. So I hope I will be taking roll on the first day. I don’t know any of the names of any of the kids in any of my classes, but maybe I will I before the first bell rings. We’ll see. I’m hoping there will be a paper with that info somewhere when I come in at 6:30 tomorrow.

I know, you’re probably wondering why I haven’t taken it upon myself to get these things. Well, all week I figured I’d wait until Friday, the official workday. Then on Friday, everyone was so busy, I couldn’t get anyone to show me how the new computer program worked. Then on the weekend someone showed me only to discover I wasn’t in the system, and the guy dedicating his time to helping us out with computer problems wasn’t there on Sunday. I now realize I don’t have anything that says who is in my class, although to be honest, I’m pretty sure that stuff will be in my box when I arrive tomorrow. Actually, last time I checked, I don’t have a box yet, I’m hoping that will be there tomorrow too.

I tell all this to Guy and he laughs, comfortably knowing he will have 22 students all year, and he already knows who they are. He teaches 5^th grade, which is good because we can bounce ideas off each other because I teach high school students who read at a 5^th grade reading level, so it’s kind of the same thing, only they sometimes bring knives to school.

So this is what I’m going to do on the first day, hopefully: I’ll go into the office and there will be a box with my name on it. In that box will be rosters with the students’ names. I will then walk to class, paint over all the graffiti on my door, drill in the plastic number outside my door so the students know where to go, and then see if I am in the computer system so I can take roll, which is mandatory in the first half hour.

The more likely scenario? I get there, there is no box and therefore no physical roll sheets or anything with my class info. I paint the door and drill in my room number, I’m not in the computer system, therefore when the kids get there I am unable to identify any of them or take roll when the bell rings. This is what happens when you are paid for one day of preparation. Guy doesn’t have these problems.

The thing is, when I tell Guy all this, and you, I’m not complaining. I’m actually not even worried. What would be weird would be if my door didn’t have graffiti all over it. I’m writing this to point out differences in our schools. Guy’s district has the funding from the surrounding community and parents who don’t mind throwing in extra, you can’t blame them for that. My district is bankrupt, like the rest of the country. You can’t blame them too much for that. It’s the way things are. Tomorrow, Guy is going to prepare for his 22 students (his school doesn’t start until Tuesday, Monday is another day just to prepare).

For me, everything else might be up in the air, but I know one thing: I’m going to teach 130 students tomorrow, whoever they may end up being.